0. The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture ¹

By Emanuel Swedenborg, (First published in 1763)

Translator’s Table of Contents:

The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself. 1

The Word Contains a Spiritual Meaning, One Previously Unknown. 4

1. What the spiritual meaning is. 5
2. The presence of the spiritual meaning in each and every particular of the Word. 9
3. The spiritual meaning is what causes the Word to be Divinely inspired and holy in every word. 18
4. The spiritual sense of the Word has been previously unknown. 20
5. The Word’s spiritual meaning is granted after this only to someone who possesses genuine truths from the Lord. 26

The Word’s Literal Sense Is the Foundation, Containing Vessel and Buttress of Its Spiritual and Celestial Meanings. 27

In the Word’s Literal Sense, Divine Truth Is Present in Its Fullness, in Its Holiness, and in Its Power. 37

Truths in the Word’s literal sense are meant by the foundations of the wall of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. 43

Truths and goods in the Word’s literal sense are meant by the Urim and Thummim. 44

Truths in the Word’s literal sense are meant by the precious stones in the Garden of Eden in which the King of Tyre is said in Ezekiel to have been. 45

The Word’s literal sense is symbolized by the curtains and veils of the Tabernacle. 46

The outer constituents of the Temple in Jerusalem represented the outer constituents of the Word, which are those of its literal sense. 47

When the Lord was transfigured, He represented the Word in its glory. 48

The Church’s Doctrine Must Be Drawn from the Word’s Literal Sense and Verified by It. 50

1. The Word is not understood apart from doctrine. 51
2. Doctrine must be drawn from the Word’s literal sense. 53
3. Genuine truth, of which doctrine ought to consist, is apparent in the Word’s literal sense only to people who are enlightened by the Lord. 57

The Word’s Literal Sense Makes Possible a Conjunction with the Lord and Affiliation with Angels. 62

The Word Exists in All of the Heavens, and Is the Source of the Angels’ Wisdom. 70

The Church Is Formed by the Word, and Its Character Is Such as Its Understanding of the Word. 76

Every Single Constituent of the Word Contains a Marriage of the Lord and the Church, and So a Marriage of Goodness and Truth. 80

Heresies May Be Seized On from the Word’s Literal Sense, But It Is Harmful to Affirm Them. 91

The Lord Came into the World to Fulfill Everything in the Word, and to Become as a Consequence Divine Truth, or the Word, Also in Outmost Expressions. 98

Before the Current Word in the World Today, There Was a Word That Has Been Lost. 101

The Word Is the Means by Which Those Have Light Who Are Outside the Church and Do Not Have the Word. 104

Without the Word No One Would Have Any Knowledge of God, of Heaven and Hell, of Life after Death, and Still Less of the Lord. 114

译者注释或脚注:

61. I have been granted to see many people after death who believed they would shine like stars in the sky, because, as they said, they had held the Word holy, read it often, took much from it, used it to affirm the dogmas of their faith, and because of that were celebrated in the world as learned. They believed that on that account they would be Michaels and Raphaels.

[2] But many of them were examined to discover what love prompted them to study the Word, and some were found to have done so out of a love of self, in order to appear great in the world and be worshiped as leaders of the church, and some out of a love of the world, in order to gain riches. When they were examined to discover what they knew from the Word, they were found to know nothing of any genuine truth from it, but only the kind of truth that we call truth falsified, which in itself is false. Moreover, they were told that this was the case with them because they had themselves and the world as their goals — in other words, what they loved — and not the Lord or heaven. And when self and the world are the goals, then when people read the Word, their minds remain fixed on themselves and the world, and as a consequence they think continually in terms of their own self-interest, which is in darkness as regards anything having to do with heaven. A person in this state cannot be withdrawn by the Lord from his self-interest and so be raised into the light of heaven, and so neither can he receive any influx from the Lord through heaven.

[3] I have also seen people like this admitted into heaven; but when they were found there to be without truths, they were cast down. Yet even so the conceit remained in them that they were deserving of heaven.

A different experience befell people who had studied the Word out of an affection to know the truth because it was true, and because it fostered useful life endeavors, not only their own, but also the neighbor’s. I have seen them raised into heaven and so into the light that surrounds Divine truth there, and they were raised at the same time into angelic wisdom, and into its felicity, which is eternal life.

49. We have so far shown that the Word in its natural sense, the literal sense, is in its holiness and in its fullness. We must now say something about the Word’s being in that sense present also in its power.

The magnitude and nature of the power of Divine truth in heaven, as well as on earth, can be seen from what we said in the book Heaven and Hell 228-233, about the power angels have in heaven.

The power of Divine truth is especially a power against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. One must fight against these by means of truths from the Word’s literal sense. It is also by means of the truths a person has that the Lord has the power to save him. For a person is reformed and regenerated by means of truths drawn from the Word’s literal sense, and he is then released from hell and introduced into heaven. This power is one that the Lord took on also in respect to His Divine humanity, after He had fulfilled everything in the Word, even to its outmost expressions. [2] That is why, when the Lord was about to fulfill the last of these by His suffering of the cross, He said to the chief priest,

“...hereafter you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the Power, coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:64, cf. Mark 14:62)

The Son of man is the Lord in relation to the Word. The clouds of heaven are the Word in its literal sense. Sitting at the right hand of God (as also in Mark 16:19) is omnipotence exercised by means of the Word.

The Lord’s power emanating from the outmost expressions of the Word was represented in the Jewish Church by Nazirites, and by Samson, of whom we are told that he was a Nazirite from his mother’s womb, and that his power lay in his hair. Nazirite or the state of being a Nazirite also means a person’s hair.

[3] That Samson’s power lay in his hair, he himself declared, saying,

No razor has come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite...from my mother’s womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man. (Judges 16:17)

It is impossible for anyone to know why the vow of a Nazirite, which means a person’s hair, was instituted, and why it is that Samson drew his power from his hair, unless he knows what the head symbolizes in the Word. The head symbolizes the wisdom of heaven, which angels and people have from the Lord by means of Divine truth. Therefore the hair of the head symbolizes the wisdom of heaven in outmost expressions, and also Divine truth in outmost expressions.

[4] Because this is the symbolic meaning of the hair by its correspondence with the heavens, therefore it was a statute for Nazirites that they not shave the hair of their heads, because it was the consecration of God upon their heads (Numbers 6:1-21). And for the same reason it was also a statute that the high priest and his sons not shave their heads, lest they die, and wrath come upon the whole house of Israel (Leviticus 10:6).

[5] Because the hair, on account of that symbolic meaning, which it had from its correspondence, was so holy, therefore the Son of man, that is, the Lord in relation to the Word, is described even in respect to His hair, that it was “like wool as white as snow” (Revelation 1:14). The Ancient of Days is described similarly (Daniel 7:9).

On this subject, see also something above in no. 35.

In sum, the power of Divine truth, or of the Word, lies in the literal sense, and that is because the Word is present there in its fullness, and because in that sense angels in both of the Lord’s kingdoms and people are together.