Description

The Swedenborg Society, 1981. Hard cover, 517 pp. No other printings listed. Very good in acceptable dust jacket. Tan cloth covered boards with brown lettering on front and spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges and corners of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a 2" tear along the front edge of the spine at the bottom and a few other smaller nicks and tears and creasing along edges. Light overall scuffing, aging and soiling to jacket as well. Now in an archival quality Brodart cover. NOT Ex-Library. No remainder marks. [From Foreword by Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt] Emanuel Swedenborg was first a scientist, then an anatomist, and finally a theologian. His recognition by the world in general has followed a similar pattern. His contemporaries saw him as a genius in science and invention, but it was not until much later that anatomists began to appreciate his contributions to the study of the human body. Swedenborg's achievements in the province of religion are not yet well known. They have always been recognized by a few but opinions as to his importance in this field have varied sharply.....It is not surprising that many accounts have been written of the life of so remarkable a man, and from many different points of view. The present work does not attempt to interpret Swedenborg's life, but rather to tell the story of it as it unfolds itself from the epic of events. The documentary material has, for the first time, been broken up into strictly chronological order based on internal evidence. My effort has been to present Swedenborg as he appeared to his contemporaries and, as nearly as such a thing is possible, autobiographically. At the sacrifice of brevity I have tried to cover the ground thoroughly, passing by no documents of importance to make this volume a storehouse of information leaving its interpretation to the wisdom of other scholars.The broad outlines of Swedenborg's life have always been known, the chief source of information being Doctor Rudolph Leonard Tafel's monumental work, The Documents concerning Swedenborg, published in London, 1875-7. Later researches have unearthed numerous details that throw the first lines into sharper relief without altering them in any essential, but the chronological order into which the documentary material has now for the first time been arranged, produces the effect of a new light.The work of collecting and listing all the documents pertaining to Swedenborg's life was initiated by the late scholar, Alfred Henry Stroh, and afterwards continued by the present writer who worked with him on this project for several years in Sweden. These as yet unpublished collections and lists are in the possession of the Academy of the New Church, in Pennsylvania, and of several societies who have shared in the labor of publishing and translating Swedenborg's works, and of reproducing, by photographic processes, all of his remaining manuscripts.