Biography
Johann Albrecht Bengel was born on June 24, 1687, in Winnenden, in the German state of Württemberg. His father was a Lutheran pastor who died when Johann was six. His mother was left in difficult circumstances, and the boy was raised by relatives and by the church. He was an able student and entered the University of Tübingen at the age of sixteen. He studied theology and was influenced by the Pietist movement, with its emphasis on a personal faith and a deep love of Scripture. He was a devout and thoughtful young man.
In 1713 he was appointed as a teacher at the school of the monastery at Denkendorf, where he taught for more than twenty years. He gave himself to the study of the Greek New Testament. He was troubled by the fact that the manuscripts of the Bible differed from one another in many places, and he wished to find out what the original text was. He collected manuscripts and compared the readings. In 1734 he published an edition of the Greek New Testament, in which he put forward principles of textual criticism that have been used ever since. One of these was the principle that the more difficult reading is usually the original one, since a copyist would tend to smooth out a hard passage. Another was that manuscripts should be weighed and grouped into families, not just counted.
He was a pioneer in the study of the text of the New Testament, and his work laid the foundation for the labors of later scholars such as Griesbach and Westcott and Hort. He was careful and cautious. He held that the text of the New Testament had been preserved with remarkable accuracy, and that the variations did not affect the central teachings of the faith. He said that the variations, though many, did not shake any doctrine. This conviction gave confidence to many who feared that the study of the manuscripts might undermine the Bible.
His most famous work was the Gnomon of the New Testament, published in 1742. It is a brief commentary on the whole New Testament, in Latin. The word gnomon means an index or a pointer. It is marked by compactness and by deep insight into the text. He tried to say in a few words the full meaning of a passage. John Wesley admired it greatly and translated much of it into English for his preachers. Charles Spurgeon also valued it. The work has been used by readers for more than two centuries.
He was also a student of the book of Revelation and of biblical prophecy. He worked out a scheme of the end times and calculated that the thousand years of the reign of Christ would begin in 1836. This prediction did not come true, and it has been a source of embarrassment. He was a man of his age, with a fascination for numbers and chronology. He held that the end was near and that the church should be ready. His prophecies gave rise to a following in Württemberg.
In 1741, he became a prelate in the Lutheran church of Württemberg, and he lived in Stuttgart in his last years. He was an influence on the church and on the state. He was a man of warm piety, and he was loved by his students. He was a friend of Count Zinzendorf and took an interest in the Moravians, though he did not agree with all their views. He died on November 2, 1752, in Stuttgart, at the age of sixty-five. His life shows that careful scholarship and warm faith belong together, and that a man who studies the text with reverence can serve the church for centuries.