# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S376
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

376 The Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

A good, critical, inexpensive edition of the „Confessions“ is the following: „S. Aurelii Augustini Confessiones. Edidit C. H. Bruder. Lipsiae sumtibus et typis Caroli Tauchnitii. 1837.“ 12mo. Among German translations of this little work there are known to us, besides an older and very clumsy one (with which we had to make shift as a student), two more recent ones: first, the one already named, „Die Bekenntnisse des heil. Augustinus. Translated from the Latin by Georg Rapp. Stuttgart. Published by S. G. Liesching. 1838“ — and the following: „Aurelius Augustinus Bekenntnisse. Translated from the Latin by Adolf Gröninger. Third edition. Münster, published by the Theissing bookshop. 1853.“ 8vo. As regards the Rapp translation, its excellence consists in the beauty and liveliness of the diction and the elegance of its production. But when Rapp discloses to us in his foreword: „Many of these meditations were spun out at length by the saint out of regard for conflicting opinions of his contemporaries, and have been drawn together more closely by us. The same was done where the meditation fell into the tone of a learned treatise. Obscurer passages we developed in order to make them clear“ — then at least we give him no thanks for it. In a translation too we wish to hear the author alone and whole. An essential defect of this translation is the omission of the last three books, the 11th to the 13th, which the translator did not include for the reason that they in fact contain no further „Confessions“, but rather, by way of appendix, an excursus on Genesis 1. The Gröninger translation stands far behind the former in agreeableness of style, but it is faithful and contains the Confessions unabridged; the translator of the last three books, however, is not Gröninger, but an unnamed friend of his.

c. As concerns the last church-historical discipline which calls for a special treatment, namely archaeology, the following excellent work ought, we think, to be missing from no Lutheran pastor's library: „Lehrbuch der christlich kirchlichen Archäologie. By Dr. H. E. F. Guericke. Leipzig, Gebauer bookshop. 1847.“ 8vo. The author conceives the discipline of archaeology as the historical-genetic presentation of the form or forms of the church (of the outward appearance of churchly life and Christian church-life, in institutions as in customs), and takes the period from the age of the apostles down to that of Gregory the Great, about 600, as the basis of the whole churchly development and thus at the same time as the field on which archaeology gathers its content. Our textbook, after prefatory introductory remarks, falls into two principal parts. The introduction treats of the concept and limits, content, division and task, sources and treatments of churchly archaeology. The first part comprises the archaeology of the social conditions of the church, and treats accordingly: 1. of the members of the church; 2. of the congregations and the constitution of the church; 3. of the offices of the church; 4. of churchly com-