Adamites and Preadamites: Or, a Popular Discussion Concerning the Remote Representatives of the Human Species and Their Relation to the Biblical Adam - Couverture rigide
Présentation de l'éditeur
In Europe the Bible was the source and basis of all belief. Whatever the ecclesiastical authorities had accepted and sanctioned was held to be taught by the Bible. Whatever the ecclesiastical authorities did not understand the Bible to teach was denounced as heresy. The meaning of the Bible was extracted according to the canons of grammar. There are doctors high in authority amongst us at this day, who maintain that grammatical structure and Hebrew usage are sufficient to light the way to the meaning of the darkest passages of revelation. I suppose a knowledge of Hebrew history and usages is admitted to shed its light upon interpretation, because the text is generally occupied with Jewish affairs. But the inspired writers have sometimes plunged into the midst of the profound and mysterious facts of science; why not, then, summon all our knowledge to the task of evoking the meaning of the text I maintain, against the narrow and pernicious dogma that the Bible is sufficient everywhere to interpret itself, that, on the contrary, it was ordained to be interpreted under the concentrated light of all the learning which has been created by a God-given intelligence in man. I believe that the Bible was written for all lime, and that its meaning is so deep and so rich that the accumulated learning of the latest generation of men will be unable to exhaust it. Not so the contemporaries of Peyrerius. Even where two or more different meanings of the text were equally grammatical and legitimate, that was held to be the true meaning which accorded best with current beliefs. An alternative interpretation, when once promulgated, was held to be divine truth, as absolute and authoritative as if no other interpretation were possible. Perhaps the well-established infallibility of the church had an interest in consistency. No matter if it concerned a fact of a purely scientific or
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
Présentation de l'éditeur
Wmilp ftttb yjiakmllts. CHAPTER I. A SAGACIOUS DUTCHMAN. In 1655 a small book appeared in Paris, which had for its title the unheard-of subject, Pre-A damites. It was writtei in Latin, and its full title was as follows: Fne-A danita;, sire Exercitatio super Versihiis thiodecimo, decimo tertio et decimo quarto capitis qiiinti EpistoliC D. Paidi ad Roinanos, quibus inducuntiir Frimi Homines ante A danitim conditi. The book appeared anonymously; and those acquainted with the spirit of the dominant ecclesiasticism of that date will readily divine the motive of its author. It very soon became known, however, that it was written by La Peyrere, a Dutch ecclesiastic, whose name when Latinized was Peyrerius. The work was an attempt to prove from biblical authority that men must have lived on the earth before A dam. Within a year appeared its complement, from the pen of the same author, in which the whole subject was newly argued and more thoroughly discussed. This was a Theological System based on the Hypothesis of Pre Adamites. The two works may now occasionally be found in one volume. The Syracuse University possesses a coi)y. The following year a book appeared in London, the title of which is a literal translation of that of Pra2-A damit;e, but it includes also the Syslema Theologicum of Peyrerius.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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