Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/84

 Ixxvi INTRODUCTION* TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

ter of Revelation in Greek and Latin as a specimen. The scheme was frustrated by an angry controversy between him and Conyers Middleton, and other contentions in which he was involved, by his unruly temper, at Cambridge. The money paid in advance (two thousand guineas) was return- ed to the subscribers by his nephew, whom lie made his literary executor. All that is left is a mass of critical ma- terial in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, includ- ing the collation of the Codex Vaticanus, which was tran- scribed by Woide and edited by Ford in 1799. Bentley was too sanguine in his expectations, and too confident and hasty in his conclusions ; but his edition, as Tregelles says, " would have been a valuable contribution towards the establishment of a settled text: it would at least have shaken the foundations of the Textus JReceptus; and it might well have formed the basis of further labours."

After Bentley's death active interest in Biblical criticism in England ceased for nearly a century, and the work was carried on mainly by German scholars.

(8.) J. A. BENGEL (1687-1752), a most original, pro- found, pregnant, and devout commentator, author of the invaluable Gnomon, which is a marvel of multum in parvo, edited a Greek Testament at Tubingen, 1734 and 1755, and wrote several critical dissertations. He became a critic from conscientious scruples, but was confirmed in his faith by thorough research. He divided the textual witnesses into families; facilitated the method of comparing and weighing the readings; suggested true principles of criti- cism ; and departed, in the Apocalypse (his favorite study), from the Textus Receptus. Most of his cautious changes have been approved. In the apparatus criticus he first set the example of recording the testimonies for and

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