Sunday, February 08, 2009

Sunday Quote: Pascal on Bible Prophecy

"Prophecies. If a single man had written a book foretelling the time and manner of Jesus' coming and Jesus had come in conformity with these prophecies, this would carry infinite weight. But there is much more here. There is a succession of men over a period of 4,000 years, coming consistently and invariably one after the other, to foretell the same coming; there is an entire people proclaiming it, existing for 4,000 years to testify in a body to the certainty they feel about it, from which they cannot be deflected by whatever threats and persecutions they may suffer. This is of a quite different order of importance."

- Blaise Pascal, (Pensees, 332)

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

Would be helpful to tell us which edition you're referring to here

Brian said...

There are two ways of referencing Pascal's Pensées, based on the first copy and the second copy. The text differences aren't really any different, just the numbering and order of the contents. The 332 reference here is not referring to the page number, but the number of the 'saying' - or however you want to call it. In the other copy, it would be numbered as 710.

So if you want to reference it for a paper or something, you would probably want to quote it like this: (332/710) -- that would refer to the saying number according to both copies.

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