WETSTEIN (also WETTSTEIN), JOHANN JAKOB (1693-1754), New Testament critic, was born at Basel on the 5th of March 1693. Among his tutors in theology was Samuel Werenfels (1657-1740), an influential anticipator of modern "scientific" exegesis. 

While still a student he began to direct his attention to the special pursuit of his life—the text of the Greek New Testament. A relative, Johann Wetstein, who was the university librarian, gave him permission to examine and collate the principal MSS. of the New Testament in the library, and he copied the various readings which they contained into his copy of Gerard of Maestricht's edition of the Greek text. In 1713 in his public examination he defended a dissertation entitled De variis Novi Testamenti lectionibus, and sought to show that variety of readings did not detract from the authority of the Bible. Wetstein paid great attention also to Aramaic and Talmudic Hebrew.

In the spring of 1714 he undertook a learned tour, which led him to Paris and England, the great object of his inquiry everywhere being manuscripts of the New Testament. In 1716 he made the acquaintance of Richard Bentley at Cambridge, who took great interest in his work. The great scholar induced him to return to Paris to collate carefully the Codex Ephraemi, Bentley having then in view a critical edition of the New Testament. In July 1717 Wetstein returned to take the office of a curate-at-large at Basel, a post which he held for three years, at the expiration of which he exchanged it to "become his father's colleague and successor in the parish of St Leonard's. At the same time he pursued his favourite study, and gave private lectures on New Testament exegesis. It was then that he decided to prepare a "critical edition" of the Greek New Testament. 

He had in the meantime broken with Bentley, whose famous Proposals appeared in 1720. [Note: Rememver that this is the same Bentley whom Lachmann - [another "Textual Critic" had claimed as his "example" to follow in attacking the Bible]  His earlier teachers, however, J. C. Iselin and J. L. Frey, who were engaged upon work similar to his own, became so unfriendly towards him that after a time he was forbidden any-further use of the manuscripts in the library. Then a rumour got abroad that his projected text would take the Socinian side in the case of such passages as 1 Timothy 3: 16 ; and in other ways (e.g. by regarding Jesus's temptation as a subjective experience, by explaining some of the miracles in a natural Way) he gave occasion for the suspicion of heresy. 

In other words, Wettstein was blatant in his attempts to attack the Bible and suggested that the Biblical description of the Temptation of Jesus by the Devil was only in Jesus's own imagination. Wettstein also suggested that the Miracles described in the Gospel did not take place, because Wettstein did not think that they had. This is not the "suspicion" of...Heresy. This is Heresy - plain and simple.

At length in 1729 the charge of projecting an edition of the Greek Testament savouring of Arian and Socinian views was formally laid against him. The end of the long and unedifying trial was his dismissal, in May 1730, from his office of curate of St Leonard's. He then removed from Basel to Amsterdam, where a relative, Johann Heinrich Wetstein, had an important printing and publishing business, from whose office excellent editions of the classics were issued, and also Gerard of Maestricht's edition of the Greek Testament. Wetstein had begun to print in this office an edition of the Greek Testament, which was suddenly stopped for some unknown reason. As soon as he reached Amsterdam he published anonymously the Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci editionem, which he had proposed should accompany his Greek Testament, and which was republished by him, • with additions, as part of his great work, 1751. 

The next year (1731) the Remonstrants offered him the chair of philosophy in their college at Amsterdam, vacated by the illness of Jean le Clerc, on condition that he should clear himself of the suspicion of heresy. He thereupon returned to Basel, and procured a reversal (March 22, 1732) of the previous decision, and re-admission to all his clerical offices. But, on his becoming a candidate for the Hebrew chair at Basel, his theologically orthodox opponents (standard Protestants) procured his defeat. Wettstein then retired to Amsterdam. 

Poor Wettstein...after all, he was "only" a follower of Arius. And he [Wettstein] was only using his teaching and preaching positions to attack the authenticity of the Bible and of Jesus Christ. After his administrative hearing on charges of heresy (i.e. deliberately teaching false and anti-Christian doctrine), Wettstein was removed from those positions. He waited some years, and then tried to get his positions back, but Textual Critics (Bible Attackers) still did not have enough Academic Influence, and had not steered enough students into supporting their own false teachings - so that Wettstein was unable to use positions of teachings to assist students in departing from Christianity.

However, this is something that later Textual Critics would work diligently at: to obtain secured positions from which they would be immune to removal from their teaching positions, in order to be sure that they could continue to influence the young and sway the minds of many unschooled in their own faith. 

Wettstein was one of the Prototypes of the Textual Critics. He understood the formula well: Attack the Bible, but do it by pretending to be on the side of the Bible and of Christianity. Textual Critics would learn from his example, and duplicate it hundreds of times, in all countries were Christianity had previously had a great impact.

Sources: Ravenous Wolves: Textual Criticism and the Abandonement of the Reformation- A History of HIgher Criticism and German Theology by Lichtenberger. In addition, the works of the subjects of this biography, and Early Editions of Ency. Brit.