Schmucker - Popular Theology

Ken McGuire
Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

In 1826 Samuel Simon Schmucker became the first theological professor for the oldest presently existing Lutheran Seminary in the United States of America.  At first he translated a 2 volume Dogmatic work from Germany for his students but found that they didn't have the background for it.  And so he wrote one - Elements of Popular Theology in 1834.

This work remained a standard work for an extended time, going through at least 9 editions.  On the web I found the 1st and 2nd editions - both of 1834 as well as the 5th(1846) and 9th (1860).  For a number of reasons I went with the 2nd edition from http://archive.org/details/elementsofpopu00schm

With all these editions, it was obviously influential for many.  Schmucker wrote this work (and his later Lutheran Manual) on the pattern of the Augsburg Confession.  While I applaud his attempt at letting the Confessions speak to the problems of his day, there are times where he seems to be arguing against the text of Augsburg Confession.  But he put it in the hands of his students.  Heck, in the early editions he put in their hands in both English and Latin (the 1st Appendix).

A few words about this edition.  The original text had footnotes that were numbered by page.  This would not make sense here, and so they have been renumbered.  Many times the footnote was just a scripture reference.  In those cases, I have inserted them parenthetically into the main text.  In the original, the greek was printed without accents.  I have often added them from Logos searches...  I personally do not claim any real Hebrew knowledge, so I apologize for the errors made transcribing the text.

To this reader, some of the more interesting features are how he engages the sectional issues that would eventually lead to the Civil War on pages 275-283

As always, SDG...

Ken McGuire

The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze

Tagged:

Comments

  • Dominick Sela
    Dominick Sela Member Posts: 3,641 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Kenneth, great work! Question - should we combine the appendices and index into one document, did you send them this way to ease the uploading process?

  • Dominick Sela
    Dominick Sela Member Posts: 3,641 ✭✭✭

    I have another question [:D] - I have not used indexes in my Personal Books, as they are fully indexed when I build them I guess. But I notice this book as a "Book of Concord" index. How is this used/beneficial?

  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭

    Personal books seem to be able to be made of as many files as you want.  I suppose it is easier for YOU all if you have one file to compile, but editing large files can be a bit cumbersome on wimpy machines like I use.  Often I have separated the various chapters as a way of forcing the Personal Book compiler to restart the footnote numbering.  Probably I should have done so here, but at first I was a bit confused about if the book was organized by Augsburg Confession articles or Chapters.

    I actually edited and tagged the first appendix months ago.  As you have noticed, I have tagged the Latin text of the Doctrinal Articles of the Augsburg Confession as a destination for the "BookOfConcord" datatype.  This means that it SHOULD scroll with available English translations if you have any.  (I have unfortunately noticed that the commercial Logos editions I have of the Book of Concord are at best inconsistently tagged however)

    If not, any book you have in your library that references that portion of the Augsburg Confession will have links to here.  Without pulling up a reference browser on your library, I cannot say how useful this is to you, but I have found links to this datatype as a target in many Logos editions of various theologians, including Barth, and Hodge.

    Unfortunately I do not know how to turn off this tagging when done, and so all the rest of the book is listed as Augsburg Confession, Article 21, paragraph 9...

    SDG

    Ken McGuire

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

    L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

    L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze

  • Dominick Sela
    Dominick Sela Member Posts: 3,641 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Kenneth for the explanation. But I am wondering, shouldn't I see Book of Concord as a Search Term if I do a Basic Search of All Text  my my Library? I do have other resources with that Index, still not sure how to actually search or scroll with it.

  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭

    To find an edition with which you can scroll, with the work open to a passage in Appendix 1, hit the index box to select the Book of Concord index instead of page index.  Then you can go over to the Right to parallel resource sets and and see what you've got.  If wanted, you can then set up a link set to maintain scrolling...

    As far as the exact syntax for the reference search - I don't have that off the top of my head.  I go to cited by tool and ask for "more" which gives me the syntax when I can then modify if needed.  Doing that gives the following search syntax to see what all in your library would be a target for this...

    <BookOfConcord The Confession of Faith: I>

    In my library this results in almost 500 hits.  Admittedly almost 400 of them are in my personal books <g>

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

    L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

    L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze

  • Dominick Sela
    Dominick Sela Member Posts: 3,641 ✭✭✭
  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭

    One of the major reasons I went with the second edition instead of the first is that often errors noticed in the first edition can be fixed in the second.  Lo and Behold, Dominick points out that if you tag the text with the language of the text in Microsoft Word, Logos can handle it better.  Since this book has an appendix all in Latin, I have made this improvement.  In addition I quickly tried to tag Greek, Latin, Hebrew and German in the main text.

    In the process I did find and fix a few minor typos.

    SDG

    Ken McGuire

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

    L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

    L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze