Bengel, Johann Albrecht

BENGEL, JOHANN ALBRECHT. - Protestant scholar, b. at Winnenden, in Württemberg in 1687, d. at Stuttgart in 1752. He was a minister of the Lutheran worship at Metzingen and elsewhere, a professor in a seminary, as well as an aulic and consistorial councilor.

Above all he distinguished himself as an exegete, after having been the editor of the Letters of Cicero (Stuttgart 1719), of the Panegyric of Origen by St. Gregory the Wonderworker (1722), and of the books On the Priesthood of Chrysostom (1725). In the biblical field, B. rose to fame for his works on the New Testament text. In 1734, he brought out an Apparatus criticus and a revised edition of the Greek New Testament. His exegetical criterion was that of «explaining Scripture by Scripture without adding anything to it, but drawing from it everything it contains, without omitting anything». His masterpiece, dating from 1742, was, however, the Gnomon Novi Testamenti in quo ex nativa verborum vi, simplicitas, profunditas, concinuitas, salubritas sensuum coelestium indicatur, reprinted several times and translated into German by Werner (Stuttgart 1853). Both with the Apparatus and with the Gnomon, B. gained fame as the first author who, within Protestantism, treated New Testament exegesis with a fine critical sense, thereby rising to the rank of founder of a science whose further developments he certainly had not foreseen. John Wesley, having become acquainted with the Gnomon, gave up a commentary of his own.

Piero Chimielli