# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S138
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

138 Lutheran-Theological Pastor’s Library.

is also revealed with regard to the existing variations in the biblical text. The less time and fewer resources a theologian here has for an independent study of New Testament textual criticism, and the more, since Bengel, this criticism has turned into hypercriticism and skepticism has become the principle of investigation, the more urgently Bengel’s work must be recommended to everyone; for he is generally acknowledged to have blazed the trail for the more recent positive developments in the treatment and application of this discipline. Added to this is Bengel’s incomparable gift for making even the driest subject lively through his treatment, which throughout bears the stamp of holy fear of God, and through the insertion of brief, vigorous, anointed observations.

As a second isagogical work for the New Testament, we name here the “Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Neue Testament von Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke, Dr. der Philosophie und Theologie und Professor der Theologie zu Halle. Leipzig bei Köhler. 1843,” which, besides the general introduction to the New Testament canon, also contains special introductions to each individual book in it. Like all Guericke’s writings, this isagogical work contains such a concentrated wealth of material in a clearly arranged order that no work of this kind from recent times, even apart from orthodoxy, can be placed alongside Guericke’s. It admittedly cannot be denied that, in this work too, the dear and highly esteemed author speaks to the learned enemies and falsifiers of Christianity and the Bible in a manner that must offend those who have recognized that such enemies must be judged and treated according to Matthew 5:18–19 and John 8:43–45. Dr. Guericke himself here and there makes concessions to the adversaries that can scarcely be reconciled with the Church’s faith in the inspiration of the holy writers. As is always the case when using more recent writings, it will therefore be necessary and beneficial for the beginning theologian here as well to use alongside it the work of an older, pure theologian. For this purpose we especially recommend Johann Gerhard, who published a supplementary volume to his Loci theologici under the title “Exegesis sive uberior explicatio,” which contains, among other things, an altogether excellent isagogical treatment of the Old and New Testaments in a nutshell. We shall return to this work below in connection with dogmatics.

4. Fourth in the field of exegesis come those works that contain the rules for the correct interpretation of the Bible, or biblical hermeneutics. Our Church is so rich in works of this kind that it is in fact difficult to select from among them the one that under no circumstances ought to be absent from the library of a Lutheran pastor. If we are to name the one that combines the greatest completeness and thoroughness with brevity, we scarcely know of a more suitable work than the following little book: Augusti Pfeifferi Thesaurus hermeneuticus. The author of this work was professor of Oriental languages (in whose