Apart from Chapter 1 by Tim Noble and Chapter 14 by Viorel Coman and the Foreword by Aristotle Papanikolaou, the book was originally written in Czech. The two chapters written in English were edited and the original versions have been modified to fit in with the way they appeared in the Czech edition.
The title of the Czech book included the word ÄlovÄk. This is the standard Czech word to refer to the human being in general (similar to âMenschâ in German, or in older English texts âman.â). With one or two exceptions, the word has been translated into English as âhuman beingâ or âhuman beings.â In almost all cases where these expressions occur in the translation, the original has drawn on the word ÄlovÄk from the title.
Where access has been possible either to English originals or translations of texts cited from their Czech translations or from another language, such as German or French, I have used the English versions. In one or two cases, I have not been able to access the original, so have translated the Czech into English and have noted the English original in the bibliography. Czech translations from other languages for which there are no English versions are cited according to the Czech version. I have, for the most part, not translated the titles of Czech books into English. However, to give those who do not read Czech some insight into the academic world in the Czech Republic (and to some extent Slovakia), we have left the footnotes referring to the Czech-language discussion of different themes.
Full bibliographies are given at the end of each chapter. Where more than one source for an author is cited, the publications are given in descending order of date, with the most recent being given first, down to the oldest.
Scripture quotations follow the New Revised Standard Version, except in one or two cases where it is modified to fit in with the authorâs argument. In such cases, this is noted in the relevant footnote.