And Speaking of Something Else: Biblical Allegoresis, Swedenborg, and Tradition

This thesis interrogates Emanuel Swedenborg's (1688-1772) claims in the opening paragraphs of Arcana Coelestia (1749) of an ahistorical biblical hermeneutic obtained entirely from heaven, a contention commonly repeated by the church organizations that use his works as foundational for their institutional lives.;The thesis proceeds in chapter one by first establishing biblical (or canonical) allegoresis as a genre in world literature located in the three Abrahamic religions, each of which developed a four-fold structuration such that their historical scriptures are purported to contain three hidden or inner senses. The structuration and vocabulary of Swedenborg's biblical allegoresis is next established to demonstrate striking parallels with the practice of allegoresis in the Abrahamic religions. Chapter two critiques the reception history from authors contemporaneous with Swedenborg to the present day on the question of earthly sources for Swedenborg's biblical hermeneutics and concludes the matter has not been settled.;The pivotal chapter three performs two lines of historical analysis. The first executes a close reading of ten texts (both published and unpublished) by Swedenborg in the eight-year period of 1740-1748 leading up to Arcana Coelestia and exposes compelling evidence of engagement with numerous authors and texts associated with both the correspondence theory and the structuration of the biblical allegoresis the Swedish theosopher produced in the Arcana. This is followed by three case studies shaped through a New Historicist examination of intertextuality and interdiscursivity in arenas relevant to Swedenborg's biblical allegoresis: correspondence theory, Jewish and Christian kabbalah, and Alexandrian-style biblical allegoresis.;The thesis concludes that Swedenborg's dramatic "inner sense" biblical exegesis is embedded in wide-ranging historical conversations and especially is indebted to Augustine, Aquinas, the Zohar, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Wolff, among others, for the vocabulary and structuration of his inner sense(s) of scripture allegedly received strictly from heaven. Thus, this study contributes to the intellectual history of philosophical discourse on questions of ontological and epistemological metaphysics in relation to sacred philology and divine utterance at the height of the European Enlightenment.