Johann Albrecht Bengel - Greek New Testament

Greek New Testament

His edition of the Greek Testament was published at Tübingen in 1734, and at Stuttgart in the same year, but without the critical apparatus. So early as 1725, in an addition to his edition of Chrysostoms De Sacerdotio, he had given an account in his Prodromus Novi Testamenti Graeci recte cauteque adornandi of the principles on which his intended edition was to be based. In preparation for his work Bengel was able to avail himself of the collations of upwards of twenty manuscripts, none of them, however, of great importance, twelve of which had been collated by himself. In constituting the text, he imposed upon himself the singular restriction of not inserting any variant reading which had not already been printed in some preceding edition of the Greek text. From this rule, however, he deviated in the case of the Apocalypse, where, owing to the corrupt state of the text, he felt himself at liberty to introduce certain readings on manuscript authority. In the lower margin of the page he inserted a selection of various readings, the relative importance of which he denoted by the first five letters of the Greek alphabet in the following manner: α was employed to denote the reading which in his judgment was the true one, although he did not venture to place it in the text; β, a reading better than that in the text; γ, one equal to the textual reading; and δ, readings inferior to those in the text. R Etienne's division into verses was retained in the inner margin, but the text was divided into paragraphs.

The text was followed by a critical apparatus, the first part of which consisted of an introduction to the criticism of the New Testament, in the thirty-fourth section of which he laid down and explained his celebrated canon, Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua (The difficult reading is to be preferred to that which is easy), the soundness of which, as a general principle, has been recognized by succeeding critics. The second part of the critical apparatus was devoted to a consideration of the various readings, and here Bengel adopted the plan of stating the evidence both against and in favor of a particular reading, thus placing before the reader the materials for forming a judgment. Bengel was the first definitely to propound the theory of families or recensions of manuscripts.

His investigations had led him to see that a certain affinity or resemblance existed amongst many of the authorities for the Greek text manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers; that if a peculiar reading, e.g., was found in one of these, it was generally found also in the other members of the same class; and this general relationship seemed to point ultimately to a common origin for all the authorities which presented such peculiarities. Although disposed at first to divide the various documents into three classes, he finally adopted a classification into two: the African or older family of documents, and the Asiatic, or more recent class, to which he attached only a subordinate value. The theory was afterwards adopted by JS Semler and JJ Griesbach, and worked up into an elaborate system by the latter critic.

Bengel's labors on the text of the Greek Testament were received with great disfavour in many quarters. Like Brian Walton and John Mill before him, he had to encounter the opposition of those who believed that the certainty of the word of God was endangered by the importance attached to the various readings. JJ Wetstein, on the other hand, accused him of excessive caution in not making freer use of his critical materials. In answer to these strictures, Bengel published a Defence of the Greek Text of His New Testament, which he prefixed to his Harmony of the Four Gospels, published in 1736, and which contained a sufficient answer to the complaints, especially of Wetstein, which had been made against him from so many different quarters. The text of Bengel long enjoyed a high reputation among scholars, and was frequently reprinted. An enlarged edition of the critical apparatus was published by Philip David Burk in 1763.