MSS.

mss., none of them, however, of great importance, twelve of which had been collated by himself. in constituting the text, he imposed upon himself the singular restriction of not inserting any various reading which had not already been _printed_ in some preceding edition of the greek text. from this rule, however, he deviated in the case of the apocalypse, where, owing to the corrupt state of the text, he felt himself at liberty to introduce certain readings on manuscript authority. in the lower margin of the page he inserted a selection of various readings, the relative importance of which he denoted by the first five letters of the greek alphabet in the following manner:--[alpha] was employed to denote the reading which in his judgment was the true one, although he did not venture to place it in the text; [beta], a reading better than that in the text; [gamma], one equal to the textual reading; [delta] and [epsilon], readings inferior to those in the text. r. etienne's division into verses was retained in the inner margin, but the text was divided into paragraphs. the text was followed by a critical apparatus, the first part of which consisted of an introduction to the criticism of the new testament, in the thirty-fourth section of which he laid down and explained his celebrated canon, _"proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua"_ ("the difficult reading is to be preferred to that which is easy"), the soundness of which, as a general principle, has been recognized by succeeding critics. the second part of the critical apparatus was devoted to a consideration of the various readings, and here bengel adopted the plan of stating the evidence both _against_ and _in favour_ of a particular reading, thus placing before the reader the materials for forming a judgment. bengel was the first definitely to propound the theory of families or recensions of mss. his investigations had led him to see that a certain affinity or resemblance existed amongst many of the authorities for the greek text--mss., versions, and ecclesiastical writers; that if a peculiar reading, e.g., was found in one of these, it was generally found also in the other members of the same class; and this general relationship seemed to point ultimately to a common origin for all the authorities which presented such peculiarities. although disposed at first to divide the various documents into three classes, he finally adopted a classification into two--the african or older family of documents, and the asiatic, or more recent class, to which he attached only a subordinate value. the theory was afterwards adopted by j.s. semler and j.j. griesbach, and worked up into an elaborate system by the latter critic. bengel's labours on the text of the greek testament were received with great disfavour in many quarters. like brian walton and john mill before him, he had to encounter the opposition of those who believed that the certainty of the word of god was endangered by the importance attached to the various readings. j.j. wetstein, on the other hand, accused him of excessive caution in not making freer use of his critical materials. in answer to these strictures, bengel published a _defence of the greek text of his new testament_, which he prefixed to his _harmony of the four gospels_, published in 1736, and which contained a sufficient answer to the complaints, especially of wetstein, which had been made against him from so many different quarters. the text of bengel long enjoyed a high reputation among scholars, and was frequently reprinted. an enlarged edition of the critical apparatus was published by philip david burk in 1763. (b.) the other great work of bengel, and that on which his reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his _gnomon novi testamenti, or exegetical annotations on the new testament_, published in 1742. it was the fruit of twenty years' labour, and exhibits with a brevity of expression, which, it has been said, "condenses more matter into a line than can be extracted from pages of other writers," the results of his study. he modestly entitled his work a _gnomon_ or index, his object being rather to guide the reader to ascertain the meaning for himself, than to save him from the trouble of personal investigation. the principles of interpretation on which he proceeded were, to import nothing _into_ scripture, but to draw _out of_ it everything that it really contained, in conformity with grammatico-historical rules; not to be hampered by dogmatical considerations; and not to be influenced by the symbolical books. bengel's hope that the _gnomon_ would help to rekindle a fresh interest in the study of the new testament was fully realized. it has passed through many editions, has been translated into german and into english, and is still one of the books most valued by expositors of the new testament. john wesley made great use of it in compiling his _expository notes upon the new testament_ (1755). besides the two works already described, bengel was the editor or author of many others, classical, patristic, ecclesiastical and expository. the more important are: _ordo temporum_, a treatise on the chronology of scripture, in which he enters upon speculations regarding the end of the world, and an _exposition of the apocalypse_ which enjoyed for a time great popularity in germany, and was translated into several languages. authorities.--for full details regarding bengel the reader is referred to oskar wachter's _j.a. bengels lebensabriss_ and to the _memoir of his life and writings_ (_j.a. bengels leben und wirken_), by j.c.f. burk, translated into english by rev. r.f. walker (london, 1837); see also herzog-hauck, _realencyklopadie_, and e. nestle, _bengel als gelehrter_ (1893). benguella (sao felipe de benguella), a town of portuguese west africa, capital of benguella district, on a bay of the same name, in 12 deg. 33'