Editing Lectio difficilior potior (section)

==History==
[[Rabbeinu Tam]] (1100-1171) expressed the idea in his work 'Sefer Hayashar': 
"ובעל התלמוד כתבו, שתלמידים המגיהים אינם מגיהים דברים של תימה"
("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", responsum 44).
[[Erasmus]] expressed the idea in his ''Annotations'' to the [[Novum Instrumentum omne|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."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bentley |first1=Jerry H. |title=Erasmus, Jean Le Clerc, and the Principle of the Harder Reading |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |date=1978 |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=309–321 |doi=10.2307/2860228 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2860228 |issn=0034-4338|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

According to Paolo Trovato, who cites as source [[Sebastiano Timpanaro]], the principle was first codified by [[Jean Leclerc (theologian)|Jean Leclerc]] in 1696 in his ''Ars critica''.<ref>Page 117 in  Trovato, P. (2014). Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method. libreriauniversitaria.it.</ref>
It was also laid down by [[Johann Albrecht Bengel]], as {{lang|la|"proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua"}}, in his ''Prodromus Novi Testamenti Graeci Rectè Cautèque Adornandi'', 1725, and employed in his ''Novum Testamentum Graecum'', 1734.<ref>Noted in an observation by [[Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener]] in ''A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New testament'' (E. Miller, ed. 1894: vol. ii, p. 247) by [[William Laughton Lorimer|W.&nbsp;L. Lorimer]], "Lectio Difficilior", ''The Classical Review'' '''48'''.5 (November 1934:171).</ref> It was widely promulgated by [[Johann Jakob Wettstein]], to whom it is often attributed.<ref>E.g. by [[H. J. Rose]] in ''The Classical Review'' '''48''' (126, note 2), corrected by Lorimer 1934.</ref>