Johannes Alberti

He stood upon a wooden crate in the living room, recited the text of the sermon, and declaimed parts of it with such simplicity that his mother had tears in her eyes.

When he finished his studies in Franeker after six years, he was known as a person with excellent ability who held great promise for the advancement of science and his homeland.

Here, following the examples of Elsner, Raphelius, his teacher Bos and some other theologians, he collected passages and sayings from non-Christian texts that were similar to those used in the Greek language New Testament.

The results of this careful research were published by Alberti in 1725 in his Letterkundige Aanteekeningen op de gewijde Schriften des Nieuwen Verbonds (Literary notes made on the sacred scriptures of the New Testament).

Instead, it highlighted some aspects of the Christian holy books by comparing them with the works of other Greek writers, explaining why the language used in the Old Testament was necessary, and indicating the best interpretation according to Alberti.

Although it was lauded by many, the notes were mocked in the Acta Eruditorum, a critical journal published in Latin in Leipzig, and the young scholar was accused of plagiarism.

Alberti replied to this in 1727 with a new publication, Kritische Proeve (Critical Essay), where he justified his earlier work extensively in the preamble and where he showed an extraordinary knowledge of Greek dictionaries and grammars.

This thorough knowledge, developed in a work of only some 100 pages, showed the independent writer to be a staunch defender of Biblical truth and silenced his enemies.

Because Alberti dedicated himself to skills that were necessary and useful to a valuable minister and servant of the word of God, his fame as a preacher spread far and wide, and he was relocated from Hoogwoud to Krommenie in 1726 and to Haarlem in 1728.

Among the papers presented to him for this purpose by Hamburg professor Johann Albert Fabricius was an old unpublished Greek dictionary of the New Testament.

One of the consequences of this openness was that he became involved in the difficulties and persecution of one of his most proficient students, Antony van der Os, a teacher from Zwolle.

Even after his slow recovery, he was left with a persistent, partial paralysis of his hands, such that he could barely lift the pages of his books and found it very hard to write.