Samuel Prideaux Tregelles [1813-1875] Tregelles was an English Bible scholar, textual critic, and theologian. He was born to Quaker parents at Wodehouse Place, Falmouth on January 30, 1813. He was the son of Samuel Tregelles (1789–1828) and his wife Dorothy (1790–1873). He was at Falmouth Grammar School. He lost his father at the young age of fifteen, moving him to take a job the Neath Abbey ironworks. However, he had a gift and love of language, which led him to his free time to study Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and Welsh. He began the study of the New Testament before the age of twenty-three, which would become his life’s work.

Notice the Two Different Mindsets

Daniel Wallace (born June 5, 1952) is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. In the Foreword of MYTHS AND MISTAKES In New Testament Textual Criticism, he writes in 2019, “The new generation of evangelical scholars is far more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than previous generations.” – Elijah Hixon and Peter J. Gurry, MYTHS AND MISTAKES In New Testament Textual Criticism (Downer Groves, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 14.

Samuel Tregelles (1813– 1875) an English Bible scholar, a textual critic, and theologian, writing in 1854 defines textual criticism as the means “by which we know, on grounds of ascertained certainty, the actual words and sentences of that charter [the Bible] in the true statement of its privileges, and in the terms in which the Holy Ghost gave it.” – An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament, with Remarks on Its Revision upon Critical Principles (London: Samuel Bagster, 1854), viii.

Tregelles writes in 1844 with no papyrus manuscripts, no catalog of manuscripts (5,898), no high definition images, no computer programs, no Wescott and Hort, no Nestle-Aland critical text, no textual commentaries, and having no insights from hundreds of world-renowned textual scholars from 1844 to 2020, and Wallace writes in 2019, having all of the above and more. Personally, I am adopting that phrase ascertained certainty. It is going to become my new textual studies motto.

Those who believe skepticism is needed in academia, those who have struggled with uncertainty, and doubts, ponder this, why have some Christians been martyred with horrible deaths throughout the last 2,000 years with only a basic Bible education by scholars like the happy Agnostic Dr. Bart D. Ehrman loses his faith having had access to mountains of evidence? FAITH! One ascertained certainty and maintained faith.

Tregelles Discovered that the Textus Receptus was not based on any ancient witnesses, he determined that he would publish the Greek text of the New Testament grounded in ancient manuscripts, as well as the citations of the early church fathers, exactly what Karl Lachmann was doing in Germany. In 1845, he spent five months in Rome, hoping to collate Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican Library. Philip W. Comfort writes, “Samuel Tregelles ([“attended a grammar school for three years where he would have been taught Latin” (Timothy F. Stunt], self-taught in Hebrew, and Greek), devoted his entire life’s work to publishing one Greek text (which came out in six parts, from 1857 to 1872).  Because he was of modest means, Tregelles had to ask sponsors to help him with the cost of publishing. On his finances, Timothy F. Stunt tells us, “In fact his wife had a modest annuity and the Census records indicate that there were one or two servants in his household.” I would reply that owning a servant or having a servant does not necessarily equal wealth. The text came out in six volumes over a fifteen-year period—the last being completed just prior to his death. I consider myself fortunate to own a copy of Tregelles’s Greek New Testament with his signature. As is stated in the introduction to this work, Tregelles’s goal was ‘to exhibit the text of the New Testament in the very words in which it has been transmitted on the evidence of ancient authority.’[1] During this same era, Tischendorf was devoting a lifetime of labor to discovering manuscripts and producing accurate editions of the Greek New Testament.”[2]

Tregelles’ Life

Tregelles was born at Wodehouse Place, Falmouth, of Quaker parents, but he himself was for many years in communion with the Plymouth Brethren and then later in life became a Presbyterian (or perhaps an Anglican).[3] He was the son of Samuel Tregelles (1789–1828) and his wife Dorothy (1790–1873) and was the nephew of Edwin Octavius Tregelles. He was educated at Falmouth classical school from 1825 to 1828.

For a time Tregelles worked at the ironworks, Neath Abbey, Glamorgan, where he devoted his spare time to learning Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Welsh. Some have stated that his interest in Welsh developed from a desire to spread the Christian gospel and especially to combat the influence of atheism, Roman Catholicism, and Mormonism in Wales.[4] Timothy C F Stunt says, “his evangelical conversion (1835) occurred after his time in Wales (1828-35) which was when he had learned Welsh.” Tregelles became a private tutor in Falmouth and finally devoted himself to scholarship until incapacitated by paralysis in 1870.

In April 1839, Tregelles married Sarah Anna Prideaux (born 22 September 1807), a daughter of the Plymouth banker and Quaker Walter Prideaux, whose bank Hingston & Prideaux later became the Devon and Cornwall Bank.[5] They had no children. Tregelles received an LL.D. degree from St. Andrews in 1850 and a pension of £200 from the civil list in 1862. He died at Plymouth.[6]

Tregelles’ Works

Deciding that the Textus Receptus did not rest on ancient authority, Tregelles decided to publish a new version of the Greek text of the New Testament based on ancient manuscripts and the citations of the early church fathers, his work paralleling that of German philologist and textual critic, Karl Lachmann. Tregelles first became generally known through his Book of Revelation in Greek Edited from Ancient Authorities (1844), which contained the announcement of his intention to prepare the new Greek New Testament. In 1845, he went to Rome intending to collate the codex belonging to the Vatican. Although he was not allowed to copy the manuscript, he did note important readings.[7] From Rome he went to Florence, Modena, Venice, Munich, and Basel, reading and collating manuscripts. He returned to England in November 1846, continuing to collate manuscripts in the British Museum. Tregelles also visited Paris, Hamburg, Berlin (where he met Lachmann), and Leipzig (where he collaborated with Constantin von Tischendorf), Dresden, Wolfenbüttel, and Utrecht.

Most of his numerous publications had reference to his great critical edition of the New Testament (1857-1872). They include an Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (1854), a new edition of T. H. Horne’s Introduction (1860), and Canon Muratorianus: Earliest Catalogue of Books of the New Testament (1868).[8] Tregelles was a member of the English revision committee overseeing the preparation of the Bible translation known as the Revised Version (or English Revised Version) of which the New Testament was published in 1881, six years after his death.[9]

Tregelles also wrote Heads of Hebrew Grammar (1852), translated Gesenius’s Hebrew Lexicon (1846, 1857) from Latin, and was the author of a little work on the Jansenists (1851) and of various works in exposition of his special eschatological views including Remarks on the Prophetic Visions of Daniel (1852, new ed., 1864) and The Hope of Christ’s Second Coming (1864).[10] Like his cousin by marriage, Benjamin Wills Newton, who was instrumental in Tregelles’s conversion and who helped finance publication of his books, Tregelles was a post-tribulationist.[11]

An acquaintance said of Tregelles that he was “able to shed a light upon any topic that might be introduced,” but that to ask him a question was dangerous because “doing so was like reaching to take a book and having the whole shelf-full precipitated upon your head.”[12] Despite his erudition, Tregelles was also a warm-hearted evangelical who wrote many hymns, now largely forgotten, the earliest of which was published in the Plymouth Brethren’s Hymns for the Poor of the Flock (1838).[13]

By Edward D. Andrews and Wikipedia

SCROLL THROUGH DIFFERENT CATEGORIES BELOW

BIBLE TRANSLATION AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM

BIBLICAL STUDIES / INTERPRETATION

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC EVANGELISM

TECHNOLOGY

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

CHRISTIAN FICTION

[1] See Prolegomena to Tregelles’s Greek New Testament.

[2] (P. Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism 2005, 100)

[3] See Fromow, 28. F. F. Bruce said that the “conflict of evidence suggests that Mr. Fromow is fairly near the mark in using the epithet ‘unattached.'”

[4] Tregelles was especially distressed at the spread of Mormonism and in 1854 wrote to his evangelical friend Eben Fardd, “while Mormonism and other things are spreading themselves in Wales, it is well for some effort to be made to uphold the simple historical authority of the Scriptures which God has been pleased to give us as the sure record of His holy will.” Quoted in Fromow, 33.

[5] Stunt, Timothy C. F., The Elusive Quest of the Spiritual Malcontent: Some Early Nineteenth-Century …, pp.35-61

[6] Chisholm 1911.

[7] S. P. Tregelles, A Lecture on the Historic Evidence of the Authorship and Transmission of the Books of the New Testament, London 1852, pp. 83-85

[8] S. P. Tregelles, A Lecture on the Historic Evidence of the Authorship and Transmission of the Books of the New Testament, London 1852, pp. 83-85

[9] McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia (New York: Harper Brothers, 1880) https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/T/tregelles-samuel-prideaux-lld.html

[10] Excerpt from The Hope of Christ’s Second Coming by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles

[11] Victorian Web. Tregelles later supported Newton in his conflict with John Nelson Darby and the Exclusive Brethren.

[12] J. Brooking Rowe, quoted in Fromow, 31.

[13] welve examples of Tregelles’s hymns may be found in Fromow, 84-90.