Pioneer in NT textual criticism. As a pietistic Lutheran student at Tübingen, Bengel was disturbed to discover that the "received text" of the printed editions of the Greek NT was not infallible, since many mss. preserved variant readings. So when he joined the faculty of a seminary near Stuttgart he began meticulous study of then known mss. to develop a consistent corrected text. Two things distinguished Bengel's version from prior texts:

• It was based on objective criteria of literary criticism &

• It contained a critical apparatus to identify passages where mss. presented different readings.

Several of Bengel's principles are still used in analyzing the development of biblical texts:

• Mss. can be classified by genetic type. [Bengel identified two major families of mss. --- the Asiatic (from Constantinople) & the African (from Egypt to Algeria); and he was the first scholar to recognize that African mss. were older than the Byzantine].

• The text that can account for all the variants is earliest. Thus, it is the archetype, not the number of copies that is of primary importance.

• The more difficult readings takes precedence over the easier [based on the principle that a later scribe is more likely to correct a problematic text than invent one].

Bengel demonstrated his dedication to objectivity by appending an apparatus that not only listed variant readings but rated them. Some of the alternate readings in the apparatus were marked as historically preferable to the ones he adopted in the main text.

Other On-line Resources:

• Johann Albrecht Bengel  - brief biography & major works; based on entry in 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica  (Wikipedia).

• Rules of Textual Criticism - Excerpts from works of Bengel, Griesbach, and Westcott & Hort, along with well annotated summaries of Bengel's major works (from Michael Marlowe's Bible Research).