1752 Folio First Edition Greek New Testament With Robert Estiennes Text, Wettsteins Criticism, and a Syriac Version of Saint Clements Epistles

Importance: A first edition of this major landmark in Modern Textual Criticism. Johann Jakob Wettstein (5 March 1693- 23 March 1754) was a Protestant Swiss theologian, and was best known as a New Testament critic. His “text-critical ideas and the changes to the text that he suggested were an important step toward the modern text established about a hundred years later. He introduced the numbering system for New Testament manuscripts that is still in use today, and he collected citations from classical authors that illustrate the New Testament. Wettstein was also a controversial figure: he had to leave Basel for religious reasons, textual criticism of the New Testament being an eyebrow-raising activity. His way of using classical authors also touched upon sensitive matters: he allowed secular texts to elucidate sacred ones as if Athens rules over Jerusalem. His hermeneutical rules (rules of interpretation) were clearly grounded in or, perhaps better, were grounding - the historical-crit