The principle was one among a number that became established in early 18th-century text criticism, as part of attempts by scholars of the Enlightenment to provide a neutral basis for discovering an urtext that was independent of the weight of traditional authority.
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.
[4] It was also laid down by Johann Albrecht Bengel, as "proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua", in his Prodromus Novi Testamenti Graeci Rectè Cautèque Adornandi, 1725, and employed in his Novum Testamentum Graecum, 1734.
He suggested that to the principle "should be added a corollary, difficult readings created by individual scribes do not tend to perpetuate in any significant degree within transmissional history".
[11] However, for scholars like Kurt Aland, who follow a path of reasoned eclecticism based on evidence both internal and external to the manuscripts, "this principle must not be taken too mechanically, with the most difficult reading (lectio difficillima) adopted as original simply because of its degree of difficulty".