Johann Albrecht Bengel

Life

Bengel was born on June 24, 1687, in Winnenden in the Duchy of Württemberg, the son of a Lutheran deacon (Diakon, a clergyman who assisted in pastoral ministry). In Korean, his name is transliterated both as 벵엘 and as 벵겔. During his childhood, a French invasion forced his family to flee their hometown, and he lost his father at an early age. After attending school in Stuttgart, he entered the Tübinger Stift in 1703 to study theology. The Tübinger Stift was an institution that supported gifted students in their theological studies by providing free room and board.

After serving as an assistant preacher and in other posts, he became a teacher at the monastery school in Denkendorf, near Stuttgart, in 1713. The school trained candidates for the ministry, and Bengel taught there for about twenty-eight years, until 1741. Some three hundred students are said to have studied under him during this period. In 1741 he became Prälat (prelate, a senior clerical office overseeing the churches of a region) of Herbrechtingen. In 1749 he received the title of abbot of Alpirsbach and became a member of the consistory in Stuttgart (the body responsible for church administration). He died in Stuttgart on November 2, 1752.

Ministry and Achievements

• New Testament textual criticism: Textual criticism is the discipline that compares the slightly differing texts of Scripture found in various manuscripts in order to identify the readings closest to the original. From his student days, Bengel took an interest in the variant readings of New Testament manuscripts. In 1734 he published a Greek New Testament with a critical apparatus (Apparatus criticus), an edition regarded as the starting point of modern New Testament textual criticism. He is credited with being the first to formulate the principle that "the more difficult reading is to be preferred." The reasoning is that because copyists tended to simplify difficult expressions, the more awkward reading is more likely to be the original.
• Gnomon: His Gnomon Novi Testamenti (1742) is a commentary offering brief explanations of the Greek text, down to individual words. It was later translated into German and English. In 1736 he also published a harmony of the Gospels, weaving the contents of the Gospels into a single account.
• Pietism and eschatology: Pietism was a movement that arose within German Lutheranism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, emphasizing the reading of Scripture and a devout life. Bengel is counted, along with Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke, among the leading figures of Pietism, and he is especially known as the founder of Swabian Pietism in southern Germany. In his studies of the Book of Revelation, such as his Exposition of Revelation (1740) and Ordo temporum (1741), he calculated dates from the numbers in Scripture and concluded that the Millennium would begin in 1836. While serving on the consistory, he also offered a measured critique of the Herrnhut Brethren (the Moravian Brethren), who were then entering Württemberg.

Influence on the Korean Church

Bengel's influence was transmitted mainly indirectly. John Wesley translated a substantial portion of the annotations in the Gnomon and incorporated them into his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755). Through this work, Bengel's interpretation of Scripture passed into the Methodist tradition. The Gnomon has also been made available in Korean under the title Bengel's New Testament Commentary (『벵겔 신약주석』) and is sometimes cited in sermons and in Bible meditation materials.

Assessment

Bengel is often called "the father of modern textual criticism." Among Continental Pietists he was widely recognized as an authority on biblical interpretation. The Gnomon remains in use among evangelical scholars today. On the other hand, his calculation that the Millennium would begin in 1836 was not fulfilled, and his interpretation linking the beast of Revelation with papal power is likewise regarded as reflecting the perspective of his own era.