Samuel Prideaux Tregelles

1813-75. English NT textual critic. Brought up among the Society of Friends,* a fact which prevented him from pursuing a university career, he showed exceptional talent as a teenager by learning Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Welsh while working at the same time in an iron works. His scholarly abilities were recognized by G.V. Wigram, who employed him to work on his famous Englishman's Greek and Hebrew Concordances. Quite independently he developed critical principles which paralleled those of Lachmann.* He traveled extensively across Europe for the purpose of systematically examining and collating all the then-known uncials and many of the more important minuscules; he was able to correct many erroneous citations by previous editors.

In An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (1854), Tregelles surveyed previous work and laid down the principles for his own work. His Greek NT was published in six parts between 1857 and 1872. In addition to translating Gesenius's Hebrew Lexicon into English (1847), he authored many books on “Bible prophecy,” including The Man of Sin (1840), The Hope of Christ's Second Coming (1864), and The Prophetic Visions of Daniel (1845), in which he defended what later came to be known as “post-tribulational premillenialism.” Associated with the Plymouth Brethren* in the early days of the movement (he was the brother-in-law of B.W. Newton*), he later worshiped with the Presbyterians and finally the Church of England.

See G.H. Fromow, B.W. Newton and Dr. S.P. Tregelles (n.d.); and B.M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (1964), pp. 127-28.