1. The superlative term "earliest church" here might be taken as implying that the earliest people said such things of generations of their church that were later than their own. It is more likely, however, that Swedenborg is using "earliest" here as an umbrella term that includes many generations. Indeed, he seems in discussing the first seven chapters of Genesis to use "earliest church" in two ways: in a strict sense to mean the first, pure state represented by "Adam" (see, for example, §66:1; sometimes referred to as "the very earliest church"); and in a wider sense, as here, to mean the pure state and also all the other spiritual "generations," or stages of descent, down to "the Flood" (see, for example, §231). [JSR]

1. By "the church among non-Jews" (ecclesia gentium, in the Latin) Swedenborg seems to mean the early Christian church as expanded by Paul to include non-Jews (see, for example, Acts 9:15; 13:47). Specifically, the Latin word here translated as "non-Jews" is gentium, literally, "nations;" the traditional translation is "Gentiles." Swedenborg uses this term differently in different contexts. In §367 below, the term clearly means "non-Jews" as opposed to Jews; in Heaven and Hell 516, it means certain unspecified non-Christians who are also not Muslims. In Heaven and Hell 308, he uses the term to refer to "people who are outside the church, where the Word is not found," and this seems to be the core meaning of the term as he employs it (see §410 below). In sum it would be safe to say that, although in the current passage the term refers to those within the church, in most instances when Swedenborg speaks of "Gentiles" he refers to those who are outside the church of a given dispensation. [LHC, GFD, RS]