# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastors’ Library. 137

of the relevant hypotheses of several other philologists. The latter part therefore appeared in London in English translation one year after its publication in Germany, under the title: “Dr. J. G. Carpzov, A Defence of the Hebrew Bible. Translated from the Latin, with additional notes by Moses Marcus” (a Jewish convert to Christianity and teacher of Oriental languages in London). — This general introduction to the writings of the Old Covenant, containing Old Testament criticism, is followed by the special introduction by the same author. After the introductions to the historical, poetic, and prophetic books of the Old Testament had first appeared separately, it was finally published in a single volume in 1721 as Introductio ad libros canonicos Bibliorum Veteris Testamenti omnes, comprising more than 1,100 quarto pages. Space does not permit us to give an outline of the contents of this substantial work; we merely note that, as is evident upon inspection, it still remains the mine from which the best material in more recent works on Old Testament isagogics has been drawn.

b. As for New Testament isagogics, and once again textual criticism first of all, we wish especially to draw attention to a work by the famous Swabian theologian Joh. Albrecht Bengel (died in 1751 as consistorial councillor and prelate in Stuttgart). The title of this work is: He Kaine Diatheke. Novum Testamentum graecum, ita adornatum, ut textus probatorum editionum medullam, margo variantum lectionum in suas classes distributorum, locorumque parallelorum delectum, apparatus subjunctus criseos sacrae compendium exhibeat. Tubingae 1734 (large quarto). As the title already indicates in part, the work contains, first, the Greek New Testament, with the most important variant readings listed and divided into specific classes according to their value; this is followed by an “Apparatus criticus” comprising 519 pages. This second and larger half of the entire work, which totals 884 pages, is in turn divided into three sections. The first explains the nature of the various readings in the New Testament text and discusses the principles by which the original reading is to be identified. In the second section, the critical principles developed in the first are applied to the existing variants; judgments are rendered on all the more important variants, chapter by chapter and verse by verse, thus justifying the readings adopted in Bengel’s edition of the Greek New Testament. Since Bengel, on the one hand, encountered much opposition because his recension of the text departed in many passages from the Textus receptus of his day, while, on the other hand, he was accused of excessive timidity in departing from the readings that had been received almost universally for centuries, Bengel answers these objections and accusations with his defense in the third section and concludes by pointing to the footprints of divine wisdom and power, which