Bengel

Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752).
Gnomon Novi Testamenti:
Tubingen: Johann Heinrich Philipp Schramm, 1742. (AFT2238)

Bengel, the father of New Testament textual criticism, was a scholar of Biblical languages and history as well as a minister and teacher. He began his theological studies at Tübingen and continued them at Halle, where he came under the influence of Francke. “Gnomon of the New Testament” is one of Pietism’s great works of Biblical interpretation. A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. Bengel used the metaphor to suggest that his book was an indicator intended “to point out the full force of words and sentences in the New Testament.”