Erasmus may be regarded as the chief founder of modern textual and Biblical criticism

Erasmus may be regarded as the chief founder of modern textual and Biblical criticism. He must always hold an honoured place among the interpreters of Scripture. In his Paraphrases, which Luther bitterly called Paraphroneses, he endeavoured, he says, “to supply gaps, to soften the abrupt, to arrange the confused, to simplify the involved, to untie the knotty, to throw light on the obscure, to give the Roman franchise to Hebraisms … to say the same things though in another way.” It was his aim, above all, to brighten the meaning of words which had been partly deadened by familiarity, partly perverted by mistaken applications.(Dedicat. Paraphr. in Ep. ad Rom. Herder said that his Paraphrases were worth their weight in gold. Tischendorf, Lachmann, and Tregelles do justice to his merits.)

...He pointed out the strange textual phenomena of the passage about the woman taken in adultery. In his Annotations he described the general characteristics of Hellenistic Greek, and many of the peculiarities which mark the style of St. Paul. He did not deny the possibility of trivial errors and discrepancies in the sacred writers.(Annott. in Luke 22:36; John 2:19, 20, &c.) He usefully illustrates, the form into which our Lord sometimes threw His teaching. He did not confuse inspiration with supernatural infallibility in expressions and details.1 “Christ alone,” he said, “is called the Truth. He alone was free from all error.”

Frederic William Farrar, History of Interpretation (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886), 320–321.