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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
139. Therefore men should carefully and accurately look upon the Old Testament, especially the first book of Moses: for the veil of Moses hangs before it; there is always somewhat more signified under the text. Although we will have the text left also standing as a history, and doubt not at all thereof; which is known to God, who has thus suffered it to be described.
240. For the text says, They fell upon the city, and slew all the males, and took all their children and wives captive, and plundered and spoiled all that was in their houses (Gen. xxxiv. 25-29). Which though it does indeed seem that these two men were not able to do it, yet even Jacob himself witnesses that there were no more than these two, when he said to Simeon and Levi, You have raised mischief unto me, that I stink before the inhabitants of this land (Gen. xxxiv. 30). Which stands very right in the figure, that the murdering sword of the Levites has raised such disturbance in the world that Christendom, for their base murdering practices, stinks before the strange nations; so that they say, If they were God's people they would not be such tyrants and outrageous scorners. And they hate them for that very cause; and slay and kill them as a turbulent evil people, that contend only about religion, and kill one another for it; therefore there can be no certainty among them, and their divine service and worship of God must needs be false, say they. For which cause the potent countries of the east are departed from them, and have subjected themselves to a doctrine of reason. As is to be seen by the Turks, which ought further to be considered of. The Sixty-Third Chapter
3How God called Jacob to depart from Shechem, and what happened upon it. And how afterwards Rachel bare Benjamin, and died in the birth; also how Isaac died: And what is to be understood thereby [Gen. xxxv.] I. WHEN Simeon and Levi had committed that murder, God said to Jacob, Get up, and go to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar to God, who appeared unto you when you did flee from your brother Esau. Then said Jacob unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away from you the strange gods which are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments. And let us arise, and go to Bethel; that I may there make an altar to God, who has heard me in the time of my trouble, and has been with me in the way which I have gone. Then they gave unto him all the strange gods which were in their hands, and their earrings; and he huried them under an oak which was by Shechem. And they went forth: and the fear of the Lord came upon the cities which lay round about them, that they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. Thus Jacob came to Luz, in the land of Canaan, which is called Bethel, with all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-Bethel: because God there appeared to him, when he fled from his brother (Gen. xxxv. 1-7).
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
139. Therefore men should carefully and accurately look upon the Old Testament, especially the first book of Moses: for the veil of Moses hangs before it; there is always somewhat more signified under the text. Although we will have the text left also standing as a history, and doubt not at all thereof; which is known to God, who has thus suffered it to be described.
240. For the text says, They fell upon the city, and slew all the males, and took all their children and wives captive, and plundered and spoiled all that was in their houses (Gen. xxxiv. 25-29). Which though it does indeed seem that these two men were not able to do it, yet even Jacob himself witnesses that there were no more than these two, when he said to Simeon and Levi, You have raised mischief unto me, that I stink before the inhabitants of this land (Gen. xxxiv. 30). Which stands very right in the figure, that the murdering sword of the Levites has raised such disturbance in the world that Christendom, for their base murdering practices, stinks before the strange nations; so that they say, If they were God's people they would not be such tyrants and outrageous scorners. And they hate them for that very cause; and slay and kill them as a turbulent evil people, that contend only about religion, and kill one another for it; therefore there can be no certainty among them, and their divine service and worship of God must needs be false, say they. For which cause the potent countries of the east are departed from them, and have subjected themselves to a doctrine of reason. As is to be seen by the Turks, which ought further to be considered of. The Sixty-Third Chapter
3How God called Jacob to depart from Shechem, and what happened upon it. And how afterwards Rachel bare Benjamin, and died in the birth; also how Isaac died: And what is to be understood thereby [Gen. xxxv.] I. WHEN Simeon and Levi had committed that murder, God said to Jacob, Get up, and go to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar to God, who appeared unto you when you did flee from your brother Esau. Then said Jacob unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away from you the strange gods which are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments. And let us arise, and go to Bethel; that I may there make an altar to God, who has heard me in the time of my trouble, and has been with me in the way which I have gone. Then they gave unto him all the strange gods which were in their hands, and their earrings; and he huried them under an oak which was by Shechem. And they went forth: and the fear of the Lord came upon the cities which lay round about them, that they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. Thus Jacob came to Luz, in the land of Canaan, which is called Bethel, with all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-Bethel: because God there appeared to him, when he fled from his brother (Gen. xxxv. 1-7).
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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