Erasmus on Greek

I can see what utter madness it is even to put a finger on that part of theology which is specially concerned with the mysteries of the faith unless one is furnished with the equipment of Greek as well, since the translators of Scripture, in their scrupulous manner of construing the text, offer such literal versions of Greek idioms that no one ignorant of that language could grasp even the primary, or, as our own theologians call it, literal, meaning.

Epistle 149. The Correspondence of Erasmus, vol. 2 in the
Collected Works of Erasmus, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1975), p. 25, as quoted by William Comb, “Erasmus and the Textus Receptus” DBSJ, 1996