562、大洪水之前的人是这样，最终他们几乎没有任何余剩，因为他们具有这种性情：他们对发生在他们身上或进入他们脑海的一切都充满可怕又可憎的说服，以至于根本不想放弃这类说服。事实上，他们深深迷恋自我之爱，甚至以为自己如神一样，并且凡他们所想的都是神性。这种说服从未存在于在此之前或之后的任何人里面，因为它是致命的，令人窒息。因此，在来世，大洪水前的这些人不能与其他灵人在一起，因为当他们在场时，就会通过注入他们最顽固的可怕说服而夺走其他灵人的所有思考能力。蒙主的神性怜悯，这些以及其它问题容后再述。
New Century Edition
Cooper(2008,2013)
[NCE]562. The pre-Flood people were such that in the end they had almost no remnant. The cause was their mental character, which inclined them to adopt dreadful, odious persuasions about absolutely everything that happened or that sprang into their thoughts. They did not want to retreat a single step from those delusions or, above all, from self-love, considering themselves godlike and their thoughts divine.{*1} A bent for self-deception on this scale has never emerged among any race of people before or since. Such a nature kills by suffocating, and so those people can never be in the vicinity of other spirits in the next life. When present, they rob other spirits of any ability to think, by the pressure of their own immovably determined opinions — not to mention other effects they produce, which are, by the Lord's divine mercy, to be described below [1265-1272].
Footnotes:
{*1} The pre-Flood people, as Swedenborg describes them here and elsewhere, are reminiscent of arrogant semi-divine beings that occur in other traditions. The most familiar ones in the West are the Titans of Greek mythology, who challenged the authority of the gods. Hesiod's Theogony says: "These sons whom he begot himself great Heaven used to call Titans (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed" (Hesiod Theogony 208-210, in Evelyn-White 1914, 94-95). Hindu and Buddhist cosmology speaks of the asuras, or demigods, who are jealous of the gods and perpetually wage war with them (Zimmer 1951, 76). [RS]
Potts(1905-1910) 562
562. The people before the flood were such that at last they had almost no remains, because they were of such a genius that they became imbued with direful and abominable persuasions concerning all things that occurred to them or came into their thought, so that they would not go back from them one whit, for they were possessed with the most enormous love of self, and supposed themselves to be as gods, and that whatever they thought was Divine. No such persuasion has ever existed in any people before or since, for it is deadly or suffocative, and therefore in the other life the antediluvians cannot be with any other spirits, for when they are present they take away from them all power of thought by injecting their fearfully determined persuasions, not to mention other matters which of the Lord's Divine mercy shall be spoken of in what follows.
Elliott(1983-1999) 562
562. The people before the Flood were such that at length they possessed practically no remnants at all, the reason being that they were now of such a disposition that they became steeped in dreadful and abominable persuasions regarding everything that suggested itself to them or entered into their thinking. Consequently they had no wish at all to retreat from such persuasions. And indeed they were possessed so very greatly by self-love as to imagine that they themselves were like gods and that everything they thought was divine. Nowhere else has such persuasion arisen with any set of people before or since that time, for it is deadly or stifling. For this reason in the next life these people cannot possibly be where other spirits are, for when they are present, they deprive other spirits, by flowing in with their own most stubborn persuasions, of all ability to think. These along with other matters will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on.
Latin(1748-1756) 562
562. Antediluviani ita fuerunt ut fere nullas reliquias tandem habuerint, ex causa quod tali genio essent quod imbuerint diras et abominabiles persuasiones de omnibus quaecumque obvenerunt et in cogitationem eorum inciderunt, sic ut ab iis ne hilum recedere voluerint, et quidem quam maxime ex sui amore, putantes se quasi deos esse, et quicquid cogitarent, divinum esse; talis persuasionis natura nusquam apud aliquam gentem exstitit antea et postea, nam est necativa seu suffocativa; quare in altera vita nec usquam possunt esse ubi alii spiritus; cum adsunt, illis per persuasionum pervicacissimarum suarum influxum omnem cogitandi facultatem adimunt; praeter alia, de quibus, ex Divina Domini Misericordia, in sequentibus.