Beza engaged in rigorous textual criticism

We provide substantial evidence that the Reformers—particularly Beza—engaged in rigorous textual criticism and acknowledged interpretive differences rather than defending a single perfect textual tradition.

Beza’s textual scholarship reached its highest expression in his 1565 Greek New Testament, which included the Vulgate and his own translation and was “the best Greek text available at the time.”[1] Critically, Beza used the Codex Bezae and Codex Claromontanus[1]—meaning he actively compared different manuscript sources rather than accepting a single tradition uncritically. His New Testament textual work was important in the development of textual criticism, eventually influencing the Authorized Version of 1611.[1]

More broadly, among the Reformers themselves as among the Reformed orthodox, there were differences of interpretation and of emphasis in the exegesis of particular texts.[2] Exegetes like Calvin and Beza represented a “more literal-grammatical approach,” with their emphasis falling “on the text and its literal meaning, often on issues of philology and right translation.”[2] This methodological commitment to linguistic precision and textual comparison directly contradicts the notion that one tradition was perfectly preserved.

The discontinuities in Reformed interpretation appear “largely in the shifting methods of the seventeenth century, brought on by increasing expertise in the biblical and cognate languages and in the realm of textual criticism.”[2] The Reformers themselves pioneered this expertise, treating textual criticism as integral to faithful exegesis rather than as a threat to Scripture’s authority. Their willingness to compare manuscripts and acknowledge interpretive differences demonstrates that defending Scripture’s reliability never required defending textual perfection in any single tradition.

[1] R. W. A. Letham, “Beza, Theodore,” in Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed. Timothy Larsen et al. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 49–50.
[2] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 4: The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 198.