117. Religion has existed from ancient times, and the inhabitants of the world have everywhere known of the existence of God, and something of the life after death, not on their own or owing to their own acumen, but from the Ancient Word (as discussed above, nos. 101-103 above), and later from the Israelite Word.

From these two sources religions have spread to southeast Asia and its islands, through Egypt and Ethiopia into African kingdoms, and from the maritime regions of Asia to Greece, and from there to Italy.

However, because the Word could be written only in representational terms, namely in terms of such things as are found in the world, which correspond to heavenly things and so symbolize them, therefore the religions of many nations were turned into idolatrous ones, and in Greece into myths, where Divine attributes and predicates became so many gods, over which the people set a supreme one that they called Jove, after the name Jehovah.

It is common knowledge that people had a concept of paradise, of the flood, of holy fire, and of the four ages, extending from the first, golden one to the final, iron one, which in the Word symbolize the four states of the church, as in Daniel 2:31-35.

People also know that the Muslim religion which followed, and which destroyed many peoples’ earlier religions, was derived from the Word of both Testaments.

3. The natural man, however, still cannot be persuaded by these considerations that the Word is Divine truth itself, containing Divine wisdom and Divine life; for he regards it in terms of its style, in which he does not see this wisdom and life.

Nevertheless, the style in the Word is the Divine style itself, with which no other style can be compared, however sublime and admirable it seems. For it is as darkness compared to light.

The style in the Word is such that there is something holy in every sentence and in every word, indeed in some places in the very letters. Because of that the Word conjoins a person with the Lord and opens heaven.

[2] There are two emissions emanating from the Lord: Divine love and Divine wisdom. Or to say the same thing, Divine goodness and Divine truth. For Divine goodness is a property of His Divine love, and Divine truth a property of His Divine wisdom. In its essence the Word is both of these. And because, as we said, it conjoins a person with the Lord and opens heaven, therefore the Word fills a person who reads it prompted by the Lord, and not by himself simply. It fills him with the goodness of love and truths of wisdom — his will with the goodness of love, and his intellect with truths of wisdom. The person has life as a result through the Word.