WETTSTEIN, JOHANNES JAKOB. – Philologist and scholar of textual criticism, Protestant, born in Basel on 5 March 1693, died in Amsterdam on 22 March 1754.
The son of a Calvinist pastor, he was professor of philosophy and ecclesiastical history; but he soon devoted himself to the study of the New Testament, consulting manuscripts in Basel, Zurich, Bern, Lyon, Paris, and England. Certain doctrinal positions, stigmatized as Socinian, and his claim to offer a text of the New Testament that would shake the deep-rooted confidence placed in the textus receptus, earned him many enemies, so much so that he was forced to leave Switzerland. He went to Amsterdam (1733), where he published his work. His Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci editionem accuratissimum (1730) had already appeared there, followed by the Novum Testamentum Graecum (2 vols., Amsterdam 1751–52). In this pioneering work W. made use of approximately 100 manuscripts and many patristic texts. Although he did not modify the textus receptus, he offered the intelligent reader abundant material from which, on the basis of the notes, he could have selected readings far better than those printed in the text. The desire for a new edition of the work on the part of the «Society for promoting christian knowledge» is still alive (cf. E. von Dobschutz, Der Plan eines neuen W., in Zeitschr. für die neutest. Wiss., 21 [1922], pp. 146–48).
In studying the various manuscripts, W. devised a system for distinguishing them, which is still partly in use today, despite the innovative attempt of H. Soden (v.). He designated majuscule manuscripts with the capital letters of the alphabet, and minuscule manuscripts with Arabic numerals. The principal drawback lies in the limited number of alphabetic letters and in the fact that two or more codices containing different material may be represented by the same sign, because W. began new series according to content (Gospels, Acts and Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse).