LACHMANN, KARL. — German Protestant philologist (1793–1851), professor in Berlin, famous not only for his works on Germanic 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 had prevailed for a full 200 years, the Greek text published by Robert Estienne and especially by Elzevier in 1633. Although this widely disseminated text had no critical value, being based as it was on few and relatively late manuscripts, no one had nevertheless dared to publish a better text; instead, the textus receptus continued to be printed, at most recording its variants and emending it here and there. The famous philologist R. BENTLEY, RICHARD (v.) had intended to abandon the textus receptus, but did not carry out his plan. Only L. broke completely with this text, 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 the discrimination of the various readings with a scientific method. L. did not claim already to be providing a restoration of the primitive text, the aim of all textual criticism; but, while also abandoning the fruitful principle GRIESBACH, JOHANN JAKOB (v.) and the use of the internal principles of criticism, he confined himself in his recension to giving the text which he found to have been most widespread in the Church at the time of St. Jerome (ca. 380). This seemed to him the best foundation on which further critical work could later, by means of internal criteria, draw closer to the primitive text. The first stereotype edition was published in 1831 in Berlin and reprinted in 1837 and 1846: it contained 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 prepared by Ph. Buttmann.
