From the book
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe first two chapters of the first book of Moses are introduced at pp. 43–442 as a source from which the first matter of the great material World could be demonstrated.
- In KhunrathThe first proposed demonstration concerns what the world's first matter is.
- In this editionUse Genesis as a familiar English alias while retaining the source’s first-book-of-Moses designation.
- A reading distinctionThe numbered marginal demonstrations are part of Khunrath’s printed organization.
Meaning
The first two chapters of the first book of Moses are introduced at pp. 43–442 as a source from which the first matter of the great material World could be demonstrated. The reference begins a structured proposal, not an exposition of every detail in the creation narrative.
Use in the book
The first proposed demonstration concerns what the world's first matter is. The second identifies one unworked natural thing; the subsequent argument asks how that thing is related to the universal material origin and to present metallic generation. Scripture therefore enters at a definite logical step in the construction of the subject's claim.
The direction of application matters. It is not only Nature furnishing an illustration of a biblical doctrine: the named biblical chapters are offered as evidence concerning the matter under investigation. The later account of God creating first matter from nothing supplies the author's cosmological continuation.
The passage does not assign specific days, creatures or verses to a sequence of laboratory operations. Supplying such a scheme would go beyond the two-chapter reference and the actual propositions laid out.
Places to read
- 1599 p. 43The proposal begins with the first two chapters of the first book of Moses
- 1599 p. 44The first proposed question concerns the material World’s first matter
- 1599 p. 49The subsequent cosmological account names creation by God from nothing
Translation in this edition
Use Genesis as a familiar English alias while retaining the source’s first-book-of-Moses designation. Do not turn its broad chapter reference into invented individual verse citations.
Source note
The numbered marginal demonstrations are part of Khunrath’s printed organization. They show the inferential role of the scriptural reference without supplying a full commentary on Genesis.