Penulis: John William Burgon

John William Burgon (1813–1888) was a British Anglican divine who became a staunch defender of traditional textual sources for the New Testament. His scholarship and conservative views were sharply crystallized in his best-known work, “The Revision Revised” (1883), a critical response to the revised version of the New Testament produced by the Westcott-Hort committee in 1881. In “The Revision Revised”, Burgon ardently defends the Textus Receptus—the Greek text underlying the King James Version of the Bible—against the newly established critical text by Westcott and Hort, which he regarded as a corruption of the authentic scripture. Burgon was a prolific author who also wrote lives of Sir Walter Ralegh and Dean Hook; however, it is his stalwart advocacy for traditional Biblical texts and his contributions to textual criticism, through his meticulous and sometimes polemical scholarship, that have made a lasting impression on Biblical studies. He was also known for his elegant literary style and his acute attention to detail—a style which was employed both to revere the scriptures and to critique any attempt to modernize them. Burgon”s legacy lives on through the Dean Burgon Society, named after him, which continues to support the King James Version of the Bible and the Textus Receptus.