LACHMANN, KARL. - German Protestant philologist (1793-1851), professor in Berlin, famous not only for his works in German studies and classical philology, but also for his contributions to the textual criticism of the New Testament, in which he inaugurated a new era.
Until L., the textus receptus, the Greek text published by Robert Estienne and especially by Elzevier in 1633, had dominated for fully 200 years. Although this widely circulated text had no critical value, based as it was on few and late manuscripts, no one had yet dared to publish a better text; instead the textus receptus continued to be printed, at most noting the variants and emending it here and there. The famous philologist R. Bentley (v.) had intended to abandon the textus receptus, but he did not carry it out. Only L. broke completely with that text by publishing in 1831 a Greek text of the New Testament based solely on the most ancient documents. It was the first systematic attempt to replace arbitrary choice in discriminating among the various readings with a scientific method. L. did not claim to give already a restoration of the primitive text, the goal of all textual criticism, but renouncing also the fruitful principle of the classification of texts of Griesbach (v.) and the use of the internal principles of criticism, he limited himself to giving in his recension the text that he found to have been most widespread in the Church at the time of St. Jerome (ca. 380). This seemed to him the best basis on which further critical work could then, by means of internal criteria, come closer to the primitive text. The first stereotype edition was published in 1831 in Berlin and reprinted in 1837 and 1846: it gave only the text restored by L. and an appendix with variant readings of the textus receptus. Another more extensive edition appeared in 2 vols. (1842 and 1850) with a critical apparatus by Ph. Buttmann.
It cannot be denied that the principles established by L. for determining the sacred text were good. Nevertheless his text was imperfect, both because he did not consistently follow his own norms, and because the manuscripts he chose were too few and the best codices were accessible to him only in defective collations. His example was, however, without doubt, decisive in the textual criticism of the New Testament.