Background
Johann Albrecht Bengel was born at Winnenden in Wurttemberg, Holy Roman Empire (now Baden-Württemberg, Germany) on the 24th of June 1687. His father died in 1693.
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ... Part II. HIS OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENTS. CHAPTER I. AS TUTOR OF A THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. Section I. IN THE SEMINARY ITSELF. Bengel returned in September to his native province, with a variety of useful information, fully resolved to devote his talents to the service of God. Meanwhile, the buildings for the seminary of Denkendorf were so nearly completed, that before the end of November he was able to commence residence there. Accustomed not to take any step without an eye to the Divine will, to submit to it with child-like resignation upon all occasions, and to supplicate help from above, he entered on his new employment with special prayer and renewed self-dedication, and could say, " What passed between God and my soul the first night of my residence at Denkendorf, gave me good ground of encouragement for the whole period of my abode there." The following memoranda of rules for his own conduct, which have been found among his papers, may certainly be regarded as the fruit of his pious reflections of that very night; though they appear to have received some additions from his pen on subsequent occasions. "Prayer and thanksgiving. Self-reflection. Laboriousness. "Zealous exertion to advance the pupils of the Institution in their various departments of knowledge. "Wise economy, especially in purchasing books. "Temperance. Liberality to the poor. "Looking to the Lord while engaged in the work. "Careful observation of the least whispers of my thoughts and inclinations, as well those which arise of themselves, as those which are produced by outward impressions. "Using all diligence to set an edifying example every where, and in every thing. "Combating against fear and alarm of every kind. "Perusal of the Scriptures: composition of spiritual songs.*...
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Excerpt from Bengelius's Introduction to His Exposition of the Apocalypse: With His Preface to That Work, and the Greatest Part of the Conclusion of It TH E jizme year he publi/hed, at S tutgard, an 8 Edition of the text and marginal various readings and parallel places, but without the critical Apparatus which I have not been able to procure, though defirous to have it as a Curiofity in its kind, as having but one error of the preg/i, viz, a wrong accent on the word paxsiovtav, 1 Cor. Xvi. 5, vid. Gnom. In locum. He had al/h begun a fecond 8 edition, entirely the fizme, in the tex T, with the two former, but a little diferent in the margin as to the Greek letters a, (3, y, 3, e. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Johann Albrecht Bengel was born at Winnenden in Wurttemberg, Holy Roman Empire (now Baden-Württemberg, Germany) on the 24th of June 1687. His father died in 1693.
Bengel was educated by a friend, who became a master in the gymnasium at Stuttgart. In 1703 Bengel left Stuttgart and entered the university of Tubingen, where, in his spare time, he devoted himself specially to the works of Aristotle and Spinoza, and in theology to those of Philipp Spener, Johann Arndt and August Franke. His knowledge of the metaphysics of Spinoza was such that he was selected by one of the professors to prepare materials for a treatise De Spinosismo, which was afterwards published.
After taking his degree, Bengel devoted himself to theology. Even at this time he had religious doubts; it is interesting in view of his later work that one cause of his perplexities was the difficulty of ascertaining the true reading of certain passages in the Greek New Testament. In 1707 Bengel entered the ministry and was appointed to the parochial charge of Metzingen-unter-Urach. In the following year he was recalled to Tubingen to undertake the office of Repetent or theological tutor. Here he remained till 1713, when he was appointed head of a seminary recently established at Denkendorf as a preparatory school of theology. Before entering on his new duties he travelled through the greater part of Germany, studying the systems of education which were in use, and visiting the seminaries of the Jesuits as well as those of the Lutheran and Reformed churches. Among other places he went to Heidelberg and Halle, and had his attention directed at Heidelberg to the canons of scripture criticism published by Gerhard von Mastricht, and at Halle to C. Vitringa's Anacrisis ad Apocalypsin. The influence exerted by these upon his theological studies is manifest in some of his works. For twenty-eight years-from 1713 to 1741-he was master (Klosterpraeceptor) of the Klosterschule at Denkendorf, a seminary for candidates for the ministry established in a former monastery of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. To these years, the period of his greatest intellectual activity, belong many of his chief works. In 1741 he was appointed prelate (i. e. General Superintendent) at Herbrechtingen, where he remained till 1749, when he was raised to the dignity of consistorial counsellor and prelate of Alpirsbach, with a residence in Stuttgart. He now devoted himself to the discharge of his duties as a member of the consistory. A question of considerable difficulty was at that time occupying the attention of the church courts: the manner in which those who separated themselves from the church were to be dealt with, and the amount of toleration which should be accorded to meetings held in private houses for the purpose of religious edification. The civil power (the duke of Wurttemberg was a Roman Catholic) was disposed to have recourse to measures of repression, while the members of the consistory, recognizing the good effects of such meetings, were inclined to concede considerable liberty. Bengel exerted himself on the side of the members of the consistory. He died after a short illness, in 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 was published at Tubingen 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 Chrysostom's De Sacerdotio, he had given an account in his Frodromus 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 various 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 favour of a particular reading, thus placing before the reader the materials for forming a judgment.
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 J. S. Sender and J. J. Griesbach, and worked up into an elaborate system by the latter critic.
Bengel's labours 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. J. J. 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. The other great work of Bengel, and that on which his reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament, published in 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 extracted from pages of other writers, " the results of his study. He modestly entitled his work a Gnomon or index, his object being rather to guide the reader to ascertain the meaning for himself, than to save him from the trouble of personal investigation. 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 hope that the Gnomon would help to rekindle a fresh interest in the study of the New Testament was fully realized. It has passed through many editions, has been translated into German and into English, and is still one of the books most valued by expositors of the New Testament. John Wesley made great use of it in compiling his Expository Notes upon the New Testament (1755). Besides the two works already described, Bengel was the editor or author of many others, classical, patristic, ecclesiastical and expository. The more important are: Ordo Temporum, a treatise on the chronology of Scripture, in which he enters upon speculations regarding the end of the world, and an Exposition of the Apocalypse which enjoyed for a time great popularity in Germany, and was translated into several languages.
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Bengel was a member of the consistory, certain ruling bodies in various churches.