Description
This volume contains four shorter works by the influential eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Translators George F. Dole and Jonathan S. Rose have produced an accessible rendering of these important yet easily overlooked works.
New Jerusalem: In this work Swedenborg outlines his theology in twenty-three brief chapters on major Christian topics such as love, faith, regeneration, the inner self and outer self, and the nature of the Bible. Nearly every chapter ends with what is in effect an index to that topic as it appears in his much larger study Secrets of Heaven.
Last Judgment: This work on the “end times” asserts that the Last Judgment foretold in the Bible does not involve the end of the physical world. Rather, the Last Judgment was an event of tremendous upheaval in the spiritual world, a nonmaterial apocalypse which has already occurred and which Swedenborg himself witnessed.
White Horse: This brief work is divided into two parts. The first presents the inner meaning of the white horse mentioned in chapter 19 of the book of Revelation. The second is effectively an index to passages concerning the Bible and its inner meaning in Swedenborg’s much larger work Secrets of Heaven. This work is a good short introduction to Swedenborg’s principle of correspondences between the spiritual and physical worlds, as well as to his unique view of the nature of the Bible.
Other Planets: Building on the eighteenth-century fascination with the possibility of life on other worlds and with traveler’s tales of other cultures, this work describes life on other planets in our solar system and elsewhere in the universe. Swedenborg undertook this work specifically to demonstrate that Jesus is God not just of planet Earth but also of the universe as a whole.
About the Deluxe Edition
The Shorter Works of 1758: New Jerusalem, Last Judgment, White Horse, Other Planets, by Emanuel Swedenborg. Originally published in four separate volumes by Swedenborg in London in 1758. Translated by George F. Dole and Jonathan S. Rose. This Deluxe volume includes a translator’s preface; a note on editions and translations by Jonathan S. Rose and Stuart Shotwell; an editors’ preface by Jonathan S. Rose and Stuart Shotwell; an introduction by Richard Smoley; an explanation of conventions used in the series, along with a list of works by Swedenborg referred to in the volume; the complete, newly translated text of Swedenborg’s works; one hundred pages of endnotes by Susanna Åkerman-Hjern, Glenn M. Cooper, Lisa Hyatt Cooper, George F. Dole, David N. Gyllenhaal, Kristin King, Robert H. Kirven, Grant H. Odhner, Jonathan S. Rose, Fitzhugh L. Shaw, Stuart Shotwell, Jeremy F. Simons, Richard Smoley, and Lee S. Woofenden; a bibliography of works cited in the notes; an index to the preface, introduction, and notes; an index to scriptural passages in the volume; a table of parallels between the shorter works of 1758 and Swedenborg’s other theological works; an index to the translated text of the shorter works of 1758; and a biographical note on Swedenborg. 2018.
