textual criticismArticle Free Pass
- The materials of the investigation
- Critical methods
- History of textual criticism
From Bentley to Lachmann
The decisive influence on the editing of secular texts came from the New Testament critics of the 18th century. The printed text of the Greek New Testament in common use was still essentially that established in 1516 by Desiderius Erasmus. For his edition, produced in great haste, he had used such manuscripts, neither ancient nor good, as chanced to be accessible to him. Superficially revised, this was the text termed in the Elzevier edition of 1633 “now received by all,” nunc ab omnibus receptum. Bentley proposed an edition on radical lines in which he engaged to give the text “exactly as it was in the best exemplars at the time of the Council of Nice. So that there shall not be twenty words, nor even particles, difference.” This project never materialized, but editions of the Greek text that did not reproduce the textus receptus were published in England by Daniel Mace (1729), William Bowyer, the Younger (1763), and Edward Harwood (1776). On the Continent, meanwhile, New Testament criticism was being developed on scientific and historical lines by a succession of distinguished scholars, notably J.A. Bengel, J.J. Wettstein, J.S. Semler, and J.J. Griesbach. They shaped the genealogical method that was later refined by editors of classical texts. Wettstein also deserves commemoration as the first New Testament critic to use sigla systematically. This was important, since some at least of the deficiencies of classical editions at this time are attributable to the lack of suitable conventions for the presentation of critical information, together with a conservative and belletristic attitude to technical jargon by publishers, scholars, and users of books in general. Though sigla occur sporadically in editions as early as the 16th century and were used by S. Haverkamp in his Lucretius (1725) in something like the modern style, they did not become normal until the second half of the 19th century.
The genealogical, or stemmatic, method of recension has already been described. It is usually associated with the name of the German Karl Lachmann, but it had its origins in the work of J.A. Bengel and his successors, and almost every essential feature of it was already present in the work of Lachmann’s precursors such as J.A. Ernesti, F.A. Wolf, K.G. Zumpt, F.W. Ritschl, and J.N. Madvig. Nevertheless Lachmann occupies a central position in the development of textual criticism because of the unusual power and penetration of his scholarship, the range of textual material on which he worked, and his immense contemporary and posthumous influence. His edition of the Greek New Testament (1831; 2nd ed. 1842–50) was intended primarily as a vindication of the principles of Bentley and Bengel and a demonstration that the textus receptus must be finally rejected. Similarly his famous edition of Lucretius (1850) is important as an exemplification of the method in action, since the tradition of Lucretius is peculiarly suitable for the purpose. The demonstration fell short of completeness, for Lachmann had not fully grasped the problem and so failed to exploit the method fully. It has been suggested that Lachmann’s best critical work was in his editions of medieval German texts; their influence will be considered below. The Lachmannian model of recension derived added authority from seemingly analogous models in other fields, especially that of comparative philology. As propagated by disciples, notably Moritz Haupt, it dominated textual studies for half a century.
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