THE FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF EDEN

Translated in the late 1800’s

by

Dr. S. C. Malan and Dr. E. Trumpp.

Translated into King James English from both the Arabic version and the
Ethiopic version which was then published in The Forgotten Books of Eden in
1927 by The World Publishing Company.

PREFACE

TODAY the medley of outward life has made a perplexity of inward life. We
moderns have ruffled our old incertitude’s to an absurd point–incertitude’s
that are older than theology.

Not without justification have priests mounted altars for generations and
cried, “Oh my soul, why dost thou trouble me?”

We are active, restless both in body and mind. Curiosity has replaced blind
faith. We go groping, peering, searching, scornful of dogmas, back, further
back to sources. And just as the physicist thrills at the universes he discovers
as he works inward in the quest of his electrons, so the average man exults
in his apprehension of fundamentals of psychology. New cults spring up, attesting
to the Truth–as theysee it–countless fleets of Theism, Buchmanism,
Theosophy, Bahai’ism, etc., sail under brightly colored flags; and Atheism is
flaunting itself on the horizon.

Almost the passengers have turned pilots. Everyman is thinking for himself.

The findings here–in this strange volume–bring the reader into a large
inland sea, cut off from the traffic and the tempest that have sprung up in
the West; and untouched by the crosscurrents of dogmas and presumptions that
have cluttered historic centuries. Here is virgin water that gushes, troubled
by abysmal forces only, out of the very earth itself.

Whence are these writings–these emotions–these profound pages of wisdom?
You might as well inquire, whence is human nature? The fact is–they are.
It isn’t as though you can compare this literature with any other, as you might
compare the French Romanticists with the Russian school. If you do so, this
man may say it is too fantastic; that man, it is too coarse; the other man,
it is too “out of date”! And they straightway lose all sight of the fact that
it is simply fundamental.

To be sure scholars will argue, and inquire. They would find the exact history;
the shape of this or that Greek stem; they would set the opinion of this erudite
authority against the opinion of that. It is right that they, as scholars, should
do so. It is right that the average man who is not a scholar should also do
so-if he wants to; and should not have to do so, if he does not want to.

It is, however, only just to pay a tribute to scholarship which has preceded
and made possible this book. The publishers are indispensably indebted to The Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphaedited by R. H. Charles, D. Litt., D. D.;
The Odes and Psalms of Solomonby Dr. Rendel Harris; The Book of Adam
and Eveby the Rev. S. C. Malan, D. D., published in England in 1882.

* * *
*

It is appropriate to leave this book in your hands with the invocation of
San Peladan, which Conrad has translated for us. San Pelandan believed in astrology,
spirits of the air, elves, nymphs and everything that is deliciously fantastic.
However, he did say:

“O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive! Open your arms to the son, prodigal
and weary.

“I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from
us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery. . . . dipus, half
way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust, regretting already the simple
life, the life of the heart, I come back to you repentant, reconciled, O gentle
deceiver!”

* * *
*

Adam and Eve; Solomon; Pharaoh; Aristeas; Ahikar; and the Twelve Intellectual
Giants–we come back to you.

R. H. P. JR.

New York, August I, 1927.