Bengel’s idea that the “more difficult” reading is more likely to be original. This is premised on the idea that scribes are more likely to try to correct what they take to be mistakes, to harmonize passages that they regard as contradictory, and to bring the theology of a text more into line with their own theology. Readings that might seem, on the surface, to contain a “mistake,” or lack of harmony, or peculiar theology, are therefore more likely to have been changed by a scribe than are “easier” readings. This criterion is sometimes expressed as: The reading that best explains the existence
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