Erasmus yearned to make the New Testament an effective instrument of reform in society, church, and everyday life, and to this end he composed the Paraphrases, in which the words of Holy Scripture provide the core of a text that was vastly expanded to embrace the reforming "philosophy of Christ." Paraphrase on Luke 1-10 contains the first half of Erasmus's Paraphrase on Luke - the second half of which appeared in this series in 2003 - and completes the set of translations of the Paraphrases into English. In his Paraphrase on Luke, Erasmus expands on the original Gospel of Luke in the voice of its original author. The narrative is supplemented by Erasmus' explications of the text's moral, theological, and allegorical meanings and its psychological, historical, and geographical context. In addition to a fluid and idiomatic translation, Paraphrase on Luke 1-10 includes extensive annotations for the general or scholarly reader, making this a valuable and accessible resource for the study of both Erasmus and the New Testament. Volume 47 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.

In 1520, the reading public witnessed the eruption of a simmering conflict between Erasmus, the foremost advocate of the new biblical humanism, and Edward Lee, a younger scholar at the University of Louvain and spokesman for the traditionalists in matters of biblical interpretation and church discipline. When Erasmus (perhaps unconsciously) subsumed criticisms Lee had sent to him of his 1516 Annotations on the New Testament into the second edition (1519) without properly crediting their source, Lee resorted to publication of his collection of criticisms. Erasmus responded immediately with the Apologia which is neither arrogant nor biting nor angry nor aggressive, and which responds to the two invectives of Edward Lee, describing his version of the history of the dispute with Lee, and less than two months later produced Responses to Lee's criticisms. This new volume in the Collected Works of Erasmus series contains the first-ever English translations of the Apology and the Responses. These two pieces display Erasmus the humanist in the thick of academic turmoil, deploying all the rhetorical weapons at his command. The volume is an entertaining and informative look into Erasmus as a scholar and as a man. Volume 72 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.