Accounts of the rise in early modern Europe of new methods of investigating and understanding the natural world have often overlooked the importance of biblical metaphors of knowledgte. Four Old Testament episodes in particular assumed special signifcance in the period: the stories of the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and Solomon's Temple . . . The Garden, the Ark, the Tower, the Temple illustrates the significance of biblical metaphors of knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through an examination of contemporary books, bibles and others objects. Particular focus is placed on the circle of authors and projectors which formed in England from the 1630s around the emigre German activist, Samuel Hartlib, as documented in his extensive correspondence and notebooks. -- Book cover.