Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament

For his translation of the New Testament, Luther used the edition of the Greek source text by Erasmus.

Luther’s translation of the Bible was in a sense prepared for by the humanists. They went back to the sources — and back to the biblical sources: the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. This meant that scholars started publishing all sorts of texts in their original form.

Erasmus too went back to the source text. As a result, in 1516 he published the New Testament in Greek; this part of the Bible became known again in its original language. He also made a Latin translation of the Greek text. That caused a shock: for the first time, the authority of the Vulgate was attacked.
Erasmus’ translation became the most widely known Latin translation of the Bible after the Vulgate.