BENGEL, JOHANN ALBRECHT Lutheran divine and scholar, was born at Winnenden, Wurttemberg, on June 24, 1687. He studied at the University of Tubingen and from 1713 to 1741 was master (Klosterprdceptor) of the Klosterschule at Denkendorf, a seminary for candidates for the ministry estab lished in a former monastery. To these years, the period of his greatest intellectual activity, belong many of his chief works. In 1741 he was appointed General Superintendent at Herbrech tingen, where he remained till 1749, when he was raised to the dignity of consistorial counsellor and prelate of Alpirspach, with a residence in Stuttgart. He died at Stuttgart on Nov. 2, 1752.
The works on which Bengel's reputation rests as a biblical scholar and critic are his edition of the Greek New Testament, and his Gnomon or Exegetical Commentary on the same.
His edition of the Greek Testament based on 20 mss. 12 of which he had himself collated, was published at Tubingen in and at Stuttgart in the same year, but without the critical ap paratus. 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 vari ous readings, and here Bengel adopted the plan of stating the evidence both against and in favour of a particular reading. Bengel was the first definitely to propound the theory of families or recensions of mss. His investigations had led him to see that a certain affinity or resemblance existed amongst many of the authorities for the Greek text—mss., 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 subordi nate value. In answer to the many strictures passed on his work Bengel published a Defence of the Greek Text of His New Testa ment, which he prefixed to his Harmony of the Four Gospels The work on which Bengel's reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament (1742). It was the fruit of twenty years' labour, and exhibits with a brevity of expression, which, it has been said, "condenses more matter into a line than can be ex tracted from pages of other writerg," the results of his study. The principles of interpretation on which he proceeded were, to import nothing into Scripture, but to draw out of it everything that it really contained, in conformity with grammatico-historical rules ; not to be hampered by dogmatical considerations ; and not to be influenced by the symbolical books. Bengel's Gnomon passed through many editions and was translated into German and into English.
See Oskar Wachter's J. A. Bengels Lebensabriss; J. C. F. Burk (J. A. Bengels Leben and Wirken), translated into English by Rev. R. F. Walker (London, 1837) ; and E. Nestle, Bengel als Gelehrter (1893)