Short Titles and Other Conventions
Used in This Edition
M
OST of the following conventions apply generally to the translations
in the New Century Edition Portable series. For introductory mate-rial on the content and history of Heaven and Hell, and for annotations on
the subject matter, including obscure or problematic content, and extensive
indexes, the reader is referred to the Deluxe New Century Edition volume.
Section numbers Following a practice common in his time, Swedenborg
divided his published theological works into sections numbered in sequence
from beginning to end. His original section numbers have been preserved
in this edition; they appear in boxes in the outside margins. Tradition-
ally, these sections have been referred to as “numbers” and designated by
the abbreviation “n.” In this edition, however, the more common section
symbol (§) is used to designate the section numbers, and the sections are
referred to as such.
Subsection numbers Because many sections throughout Swedenborg’s
works are too long for precise cross-referencing, Swedenborgian scholar
John Faulkner Potts ( 1838 – 1923 ) further divided them into subsections;
these have since become standard, though minor variations occur from one
edition to another. These subsections are indicated by bracketed numbers
that appear in the text itself: [ 2 ], [ 3 ], and so on. Because the beginning of
the fi rst subsection always coincides with the beginning of the section proper,
it is not labeled in the text.
Citations of Swedenborg’s text As is common in Swedenborgian stud-
ies, text citations of Swedenborg’s works refer not to page numbers but
to section numbers, which are uniform in most editions. In citations
the section symbol (§) is generally omitted after the title of a work by
Swedenborg. Thus “Heaven and Hell 239 ” would refer to section 239
(§ 239 ) of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, not to page 239 of any edi-
tion. Subsection numbers are given after a colon; a reference such as
“ 239 : 2 ” indicates subsection 2 of section 239. The reference “ 239 : 1 ” would
indicate the first subsection of section 239 , though that subsection is not
in fact labeled in the text. Where section numbers stand alone without
titles, their function is indicated by the prefixed section symbol; for
example, “§ 239 : 2 ”.
ix