Overview

In 4to. Pp. [2] f.e., [20], 308, [2] r.e., [1] folded plate

First edition of this Portuguese essay, belonging to the long European effort to reconcile Genesis with scientific discoveries and the astronomy of its own century, written by a presbyter of the Oratory of Porto. The Gazeta Litteraria reviewed the book in the same year as its publication and judged it among the works that did honor to the Portuguese nation, establishing its importance among contemporary works. Alvares organizes his work into chapters and dissertations rather than as a continuous narrative, debating Creation under two main aspects. The first is how the world was made, drawing from the Bible but also reporting modern scientific and astronomical theories, to which he adds his own contribution. The second aspect analyzed is how long the world has lasted, in what season it was created, and how many years have passed since. Here Alvares folds in Ussher's "Annals of the World" (1650), which counted the biblical generations backward to fix Creation at 4004 BC, with its chronology corrected in this edition by P. Hadriano Daude. That chronology runs straight into the book's sharpest argument, "Dissertação VII": a direct rebuttal of Isaac de la Peyrère, whose 1655 Pre-Adamite thesis (i.e. that men existed before Adam) had been burned and whose author was forced to recant in Rome. The rebuttal was not aimed at a dead controversy: Enlightenment writers across Europe were reviving Pre-Adamism as a challenge to biblical chronology, and Alvares felt compelled to answer the argument. Inocêncio 5, 353 confirms that this is the first and only edition: the work was intended to continue beyond this first volume, but no further volume is recorded as having been published.

Ref. Inocêncio 5, 353