Lectio difficilior potior

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Lectio difficilior potior (Latin: "the difficult reading is stronger") is an important, internal criterion in textual criticism. When different manuscripts of a text conflict, this principle requires that the harder, unusual, more obtuse reading is to be preferred. It is based on the assumption that scribes are more likely to replace odd words in difficult places with more familiar vocabulary in more expected positions. It was one principle among many that became established in early 18th-century textual criticism, being part of an attempt by scholars of the Age of Enlightenment to provide a neutral basis for discovering an urtext that was independent of the weight of traditional authority. Rabbeinu Tam (1100 – 1171) expressed the idea in his responsa The Book of right (Heb. ספר הישר, Sefer haYashar), it was written by the author of the Talmud, since students who correct the text do not correct it in order to make the text difficult. Erasmus expressed the idea in his Annotations to the New Testament in the early 1500s, And whenever the Fathers report that there is a variant reading, that one always appears to me to be more esteemed [by them is the one] which at first glance seems the more absurd—since it is reasonable that a reader who is either not very learned or not very attentive was offended by the specter of absurdity and changed the text. According to Paolo Trovato, who cites Sebastiano Timpanaro, the principle was first codified by Jean Le Clerc in his Ars critica. It was also laid down by Johann Albrecht Bengel as "proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua" in his "Prodromus Novi Testamenti Graeci Rectè Cautèque Adornandi" in 1725 and employed in his "Novum Testamentum Graecum" in 1734. Otherwise, it is often attributed to Johann Jakob Wettstein. Many scholars considered the employment of lectio difficilior potior an objective criterion that would even override other evaluative considerations.