Searching Swedenborg

As you might have noticed if you’ve followed links to passages from Swedenborg’s theological works  from this or other Swedenborgian blogs, there’s little consistency in terms of what site those links might send you to. I most often link to the Swedenborg collection on sacred-texts.com, since in my opinion it is the best site for seeing passages in their context. Unfortunately, that site doesn’t allow search, and it only provides one translation, and a fairly dated one at that. All of the other sites containing Swedenborg’s works have limitations: heavenlydoctrines.org allows search, but does not allow you to browse directly to a specific passage; baltimorenewchurch.org/search allows you to jump directly to specific passages with different translations, but the search function is broken; and smallcanonsearch.com allows both searching and browsing, but does not include any of Swedenborg’s posthumously published works.

Enter a new website: the New Christian Bible Study, at newchristianbiblestudy.org. The site is the main platform for an ambitious project: to provide New Church (Swedenborgian) commentary on every passage in the Bible. Progress on that continues, and it is very exciting. But the most immediately exciting part of the site for me is its search functionality. Using the advanced search tool, it’s very simple to search the text of all of Swedenborg’s theological works, or to search within a specific book. Several translations are available for almost every title. And from the “Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg” page, there’s an easily navigable sidebar to look up specific references; so, for example, with a few clicks I can get to the John Potts translation of Arcana Coelestia n. 1812. And maybe best of all, the site is mobile-friendly, so I can easily search for references with my phone even if I’m away from my computer. It’s hands down the best online tool I’ve found for interacting with these books. Go check it out, and support the project!