John Everard: Translator of Sebastian Franck's Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses

Rufus M. Jones

(Image from Amazon)

From an online copy of Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1914), written by the Quaker scholar Rufus M. Jones, I have learned of an unpublished translation of Sebastian Franck's book Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses. Supposedly, this is the same book (Vom dem Baum des Wissen Gutes und Böses) that was later separately translated and published in English as The Forbidden Fruit: or, A Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill, of Which Adam at the First, and as Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death. I'm not entirely sure, for I seem to recall that Franck wrote two books on the tree of knowledge (though I may be recalling his Paradoxa, which speaks of the Tree of Knowledge as death).

Anyway, here's what Mr. Jones has written in Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries on John Everard's translation, The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, And the Tree of Life in the Midst of the Paradise of God: Taken out of a Book called The Letter and the Life, or The Flesh and the Spirit:

Before turning to Everard's message, as it finds expression in the rare volume of his sermons -- The Gospel Treasures Opened -- we must consider the Translations {242} which he left unpublished. They are preserved in clearly written manuscripts in Cambridge University Library, under the title "Three Bookes Translated out of their Originall."[9] The first "Book" bears the following title-page: "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, And the Tree of Life in the Midst of the Paradise of God: Taken out of a Book called The Letter and the Life, or The Flesh and the Spirit. Translated by Dr. Everard." An interesting article on Dr. Everard in Notes and Queries[10] concludes that this first "Book" of Everard's is a free translation of the Second Part of Tentzel's Medicina diastica. This guess, however, proves to be incorrect, though there is a slight likeness between Tentzel's book and the English MS. Everard's book is, in reality, a translation of Sebastian Franck's Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses ("Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"). The translation is made from a Latin edition of Franck's little book, which was published in 1561. The entire message of this treatise, written by the wandering chronicler and spiritual prophet of Germany, and here reproduced in English, is the inwardness of everything that concerns the religious life. The Tree of Life was in Adam's heart, and in that same inner region of the soul was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The story of Paradise is a graphic parable of the soul's experience. "That Tree which tested Adam was and is nothing else in truth but the Nature, Will, Knowledge, and Life of Adam, and every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree as Adam was." Franck's significant book contained passages from Hans Denck's Widerruf ("Confession"), and Everard translated them as an appendix to his first manuscript book.[11] They hold the very heart of Denck's message and deal, with Denck's usual sincerity and boldness, with the fundamental nature of spiritual religion. He here declares the primacy of the Word of God in the soul over everything else that ministers to man's life: "I prefer the Holy Scriptures before all Humane {243} Treasure; yet I do not so much esteem them as I do the Word of God which is living, potent, and eternal, and which is free from all elements of this world: For that is God Himself, Spirit and no letter, written without pen or ink, so that it can never be obliterated. True Salvation is in the Word of God; it is not tied up to the Scriptures. They alone cannot make a bad heart good, though they may supply it with information. But a heart illumined with the Light of God is made better by everything." Franck declares, in comment on Denck's words: "I myself know at least twenty Christian Religions all of which claim to rest on the Holy Scriptures which they apply to themselves by far-fetched expositions and allegories, or from the dead letter of the text. . . . They can be understood rightly, however, only by the divine new-man, who is God-born, and who brings to them the Light of the Holy Spirit." There can be no doubt, I think, that Dr. Everard found in the writings of these two sixteenth-century prophets the body and filling of his own new conceptions of Christianity, and it was through his vigorous interpretations that this stream of thought first flowed into England.

[9] John Everard, "Three Bookes Translated out of their Originall," Cambridge University Library, Sig. Dd. xii. p. 68.

[10] Notes and Queries, Fourth series, i. p. 597.

[11] Denck's name is used in its Latin form John Denqui, and he is called magnus theologus.

Of interest is the quote from Franck concerning the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "That Tree which tested Adam was and is nothing else in truth but the Nature, Will, Knowledge, and Life of Adam, and every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree as Adam was." This appears to offer an allegorical reading of the Genesis story, but the wording partly recalls the title of the published translation of Franck's text, The Forbidden Fruit: or, A Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill, of Which Adam at the First, and as Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death. The part stating that "every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree" distantly echoes "Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death" because both entail that everyone continues to eat the fruit of knowledge. I'd still need more evidence, however, that these are the same book, for if Franck wrote two book on the tree of knowledge, he'd likely offer similar views in both.

But nothing is said in the above passage to the effect that "All Mankinde Do Eate Death," so this might not be especially relevant to my quest on "eating Death" in John Milton's Paradise Lost.