John Calvin's Commentaries On Daniel 1- 6

John Calvin, John King

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9783849620578
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

This is the annotated edition including* an extensive biographical annotation about the author and his lifeCalvin produced commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. His commentaries cover the larger part of the Old Testament, and all of the new excepting Second and Third John and the Apocalypse. His commentaries and lectures stand in the front rank of Biblical interpretation.THE PROPHECIES OF DANIEL are among the most remarkable Predictions of THE ELDER COVENANT. They are not confined within either a limited time or a contracted space. They relate to the destinies of mighty Empires, and stretch forward into eras still hidden in the bosom of the future. The period of their delivery was a remarkable one in the history of out race. The Assyrian hero had long ago swept away the Ten Tribes from the, land of their fathers, and he in his turn had bowed his head in death, leaving magnificent memorials of his greatness in colossal palaces and gigantic sculptures. The Son of the renowned SARDANAPALUS, the worshipper of ASSARAC and BELTIS, had already inscribed his name and exploits on those swarthy obelisks and enormous bulls which have lately risen from the grave of centuries. The glory of NINEVEAH, passed away, to be restored again in these our days by the marvelous excavations at KOYUNJIK, KHORABAD, and NIMROUD. Another capital had arisen on the banks of the Euphrates, destined to surpass the ancient splendor of its ruined predecessor on the banks of the Tigris. The worshipper of the eagle-headed NISROCH - a mighty leader of the Chaldean hordes - had arisen, and gathering his armies from their mountain homes, had made the palaces and halls of NINEVE a desert, had marched southwards against the reigning PHARAOH of Egypt - had encountered him at CARCHEMISH - hurried on to THE HOLY CITY, and carried away with him to his favorite capital the rebellious people of the Lord. Among them was a captive of no ordinary note.

Commentaries On Daniel 1- 6

John Calvin

Contents:

John Calvin – A Biography

Commentaries On Daniel 1- 6

Translator’s Preface

Authenticity Of The Book Of Daniel

The Divines Of Germany

False Systems Of Scripture Exposition

English Philosophical School

The Recent Eastern Discoveries

Ancient Assyrian Remains

Ancient Babylonian Remains

Persian And Egyptian Antiquities

Positive Evidence

Jewish Testimonies — Sinaitic Inscriptions

The Contents Of The Book Of Daniel.

The Seventy Weeks.

Tiie Praeterist, Anti-Papal,

Calvin Prophetic Scheme.

Oecolampadius, Zuingle, And Bullinger.

Grotius

Maldonatus.

Joseph Mede.

Method Of Exposition.

Contemporary Events In France.

The General Synod

Edict Of Poissy.

Parallel Between The Protestants In France Andthe Jews In Babylon.

Arrangement Of The Present Work.

To The Pious Reader.

Dedicatory Epistle.

Chapter 1

Lecture Second

Lecture Third.

Lecture Fourth.

Chapter 2

Lecture Fifth.

Lecture Sixth

Lecture Seventh

Lecture Eighth

Lecture Ninth

Lecture Tenth

Lecture Eleventh

Lecture Twelfth

Chapter 3

Lecture Thirteenth

Lecture Fourteenth

Lecture Fifteenth

Lecture Sixteenth

Chapter 4

Lecture Eighteenth.

Lecture Nineteenth.

Lecture Twentieth

Lecture Twenty-First.

Lecture Twenty-Second.

Lecture Twenty-Third.

Chapter 5

Lecture Twenty-Fourth

Lecture Twenty-Fifth

Lecture Twenty-Sixth.

Lecturer Twenty-Seventh.

Chapter 6

Lecture Twenty-Eighth.

Lecture Twenty-Ninth.

Lecture Thirtieth.

Lecture Thirty-First.

Dissertations

Dissertation 1

Dissertation 2

Dissertation 3.

Dissertation 4

Dissertation 5

Dissertation 7.

Dissertation 8.

Dissertation 9.

Dissertation 10.

Dissertation 11.

Dissertation 12.

Dissertation 15.

Dissertation 16.

Dissertation 17.

Dissertation 18.

Dissertation 19.

Dissertation 20.

Dissertation 21.

Dissertation 22.

Dissertation 23.

Dissertation 24

Concluding Remarks.

Footnotes

Commentaries On Daniel 1- 6, John Calvin

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Germany

ISBN: 9783849620578

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

John Calvin – A Biography

By William Barry

This man, undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by his disciples of any Western writer on theology, was born at Noyon in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May, 1564.

A generation divided him from Luther, whom he never met. By birth, education, and temper these two protagonists of the reforming movement were strongly contrasted. Luther was a Saxon peasant, his father a miner; Calvin sprang from the French middle-class, and his father, an attorney, had purchased the freedom of the City of Noyon, where he practised civil and canon law. Luther entered the Order of Augustinian Hermits, took a monk's vows, was made a priest and incurred much odium by marrying a nun. Calvin never was ordained in the Catholic Church; his training was chiefly in law and the humanities; he took no vows. Luther's eloquence made him popular by its force, humour, rudeness, and vulgar style. Calvin spoke to the learned at all times, even when preaching before multitudes. His manner is classical; he reasons on system; he has little humour; instead of striking with a cudgel he uses the weapons of a deadly logic and persuades by a teacher's authority, not by a demagogue's calling of names. He writes French as well as Luther writes German, and like him has been reckoned a pioneer in the modern development of his native tongue. Lastly, if we term the doctor of Wittenberg a mystic, we may sum up Calvin as a scholastic; he gives articulate expression to the principles which Luther had stormily thrown out upon the world in his vehement pamphleteering; and the "Institutes" as they were left by their author have remained ever since the standard of orthodox Protestant belief in all the Churches known as "Reformed." His French disciples called their sect "the religion"; such it has proved to be outside the Roman world.

The family name, spelt in many ways, was Cauvin latinized according to the custom of the age as Calvinus. For some unknown reason the Reformer is commonly called Maître Jean C. His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as "beautiful and devout"; she took her little son to various shrines and brought him up a good Catholic. On the father's side, his ancestors were seafaring men. His grandfather settled at Pont l'Evêque near Paris, and had two sons who became locksmiths; the third was Gerard, who turned procurator at Noyon, and there his four sons and two daughters saw the light. He lived in the Place au Blé (Cornmarket). Noyon, a bishop's see, had long been a fief of the powerful old family of Hangest, who treated it as their personal property. But an everlasting quarrel, in which the city took part, went on between the bishop and the chapter. Charles de Hangest, nephew of the too well-known Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, surrendered the bishopric in 1525 to his own nephew John, becoming his vicar-general. John kept up the battle with his canons until the Parliament of Paris intervened, upon which he went to Rome, and at last died in Paris in 1577. This prelate had Protestant kinsfolk; he is charged with having fostered heresy which in those years was beginning to raise its head among the French. Clerical dissensions, at all events, allowed the new doctrines a promising field; and the Calvins were more or less infected by them before 1530.

Gerard's four sons were made clerics and held benefices at a tender age. The Reformer was given one when a boy of twelve, he became Curé of Saint-Martin de Marteville in the Vermandois in 1527, and of Pont l'Eveque in 1529. Three of the boys attended the local Collège des Capettes, and there John proved himself an apt scholar. But his people were intimate with greater folk, the de Montmor, a branch of the line of Hangest, which led to his accompanying some of their children to Paris in 1523, when his mother was probably dead and his father had married again. The latter died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for not sending in his accounts. The old man's illness, not his lack of honesty, was, we are told, the cause. Yet his son Charles, nettled by the censure, drew towards the Protestant doctrines. He was accused in 1534 of denying the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist, and died out of the Church in 1536; his body was publicly gibbeted as that of a recusant.

Meanwhile, young John was going through his own trials at the University of Paris, the dean or syndic of which, Noel Bédier, had stood up against Erasmus and bore hard upon Le Fèvre d'Etaples (Stapulensis), celebrated for his translation of the Bible into French. Calvin, a "martinet", or oppidan, in the Collèege de la Marche, made this man's acquaintance (he was from Picardy) and may have glanced into his Latin commentary on St. Paul, dated 1512, which Doumergue considers the first Protestant book emanating from a French pen. Another influence tending the same way was that of Corderius, Calvin's tutor, to whom he dedicated afterwards his annotation of I Thessalonians, remarking, "if there be any good thing in what I have published, I owe it to you". Corderius had an excellent Latin style, his life was austere, and his "Colloquies" earned him enduring fame. But he fell under suspicion of heresy, and by Calvin's aid took refuge in Geneva, where he died September 1564. A third herald of the "New Learning" was George Cop, physician to Francis I, in whose house Calvin found a welcome and gave ear to the religious discussions which Cop favoured. And a fourth was Pierre-Robert d'Olivet of Noyon, who also translated the Scriptures, our youthful man of letters, his nephew, writing (in 1535) a Latin preface to the Old Testament and a French one — his first appearance as a native author — to the New Testament.

By 1527, when no more than eighteen, Calvin's educatlon was complete in its main lines. He had learned to be a humanist and a reformer. The "sudden conversion" to a spiritual life in 1529, of which he speaks, must not be taken quite literally. He had never been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his ill-regulated conduct have no foundation; and by a very natural process he went over to the side on which his family were taking their stand. In 1528 he inscribed himself at Orléans as a law student, made friends with Francis Daniel, and then went for a year to Bourges, where he began preaching in private. Margaret d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I, and Duchess of Berry, was living there with many heterodox Germans about her.

He is found again at Paris in 1531. Wolmar had taught him Greek at Bourges; from Vatable he learned Hebrew; and he entertained some relations with the erudite Budaeus. About this date he printed a commentary on Seneca's "De Clementiâ". It was merely an exercise in scholarship, having no political significance. Francis I was, indeed, handling Protestants severely, and Calvin, now Doctor of Law at Orléans, composed, so the story runs, an oration on Christian philosophy which Nicholas Cop delivered on All Saints' Day, 1532, both writer and speaker having to take instant flight from pursuit by the royal inquisitors. This legend has been rejected by modern critics. Calvin spent some time, however, with Canon du Tillet at Angoulême under a feigned designation. In May, 1534, he went to Noyon, gave up his benefice, and, it is said, was imprisoned. But he got away to Nerac in Bearn, the residence of the Duchess Margaret, and there again encountered Le Fèvre, whose French Bible had been condemned by the Sorbonne to the flames. His next visit to Paris fell out during a violent campaign of the Lutherans against the Mass, which brought on reprisals, Etienne de la Forge and others were burnt in the Place de Grève; and Calvin accompanied by du Tillet, escaped — though not without adventures — to Metz and Strasburg. In the latter city Bucer reigned supreme. The leading reformers dictated laws from the pulpit to their adherents, and this journey proved a decisive one for the French humanist, who, though by nature timid and shy, committed himself to a war on paper with his own sovereign. The famous letter to Francis I is dated 23 August, 1535. It served as a prologue to the "...

Table of contents

• John Calvin – A Biography