Patres378–720
greek · 370–380 · Caesarea in Cappadocia
And God said, let us make a human. Where are the Jews now, who in what follows — where the light of the Godhead shines as if through certain caverns, and a second person is indeed declared mystically though not yet plainly seen — used to fight back, saying that God was speaking to himself, since he himself said and he himself made, 'let there be light', and there was light? Their absurdities were ready to hand then, as they are now brought out. For what blacksmith, or carpenter, or tanner of hides, standing alone in his workshop with no partner in the craft at hand, says to himself, let us make a sword, or let us put together a plough, or let us shape a shoe — and does not rather begin in silence upon the thing he has settled in his mind? It is empty chatter that any human being should sternly command something to himself, like a judge or a censor. Though what will these men not say, who crucified the Lord, having tongues trained to lying, even though the very voice now present has stopped their mouths altogether? And God said, let us make a human. So long, then, as there was no one to be taught, the preaching of the Godhead lay hidden in the deep. But when the creation of a human began to be looked for, faith was revealed, and the teaching of the truth plainly flashed out. Listen, Jew, you fighter against Christ, how he addresses the partner of the world's making, through whom he made the ages, who does all things by the word of his power: but your mind does not receive the words of piety. For as wild beasts, when they are shut in cages, gnaw at their own wombs with their teeth, showing their own bitterness and yet unable to work off their fury, so the Jew, the adversary of the truth, hemmed in by the straits of these bindings, asserts that there are many persons to whom the Word of God went out, and lies in saying it. For they say that he said it to the angels: let us make a human. A Jewish fiction, truly, and a fabling worthy of their perfidy! So as not to receive one, they confess many; they take the Son into fellowship with servants by a sharing of dignity, and make our fellow slaves the authors of the human form, and want the one who perfected the human to be equalled with angels — when it is absurd that any thing made should be equal to its maker. Let us consider what follows too: let us make a human to our image. What do you answer? Is there one image of God and of the angels? For the Father's must necessarily be the same as the Son's, yet in such a way that the figure is understood as befits God, that is, not consisting in bodily form but in the divine property. Listen, you too, who come forward out of the new circumcision, commending the cult of Judaism under a pretence of Christianity. To whom does he say, to our image, if not to the radiance of the glory and the stamp of the paternal substance, which is the image of the invisible God? He speaks, then, to his own image, which said: I and the Father are one; and, whoever sees me sees my Father also — to this one he says: let us make a human to our image. For where there is a unity of image, nothing can be unlike. For he did not say, to our images, as Scripture also testifies: God made, it says, the human: they did not make. He prudently avoided a multitude of persons here: so that where he confounded the Jew, here he might shut out the rite of the gentiles. Therefore he called to mind the unity, so that you might know the Son to be together with the Father, and might avoid the danger of a multitude of persons.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The most violent page on the site, and the one that proves the two benches were in contact on this question, because it is an answer to an argument the rabbinic bench is on record making. Basil — in Eustathius's Latin, which is how the Latin bench read him — knows three Jewish readings of the plural and takes them in order: that God spoke to himself, which he answers with the workshop analogy (no smith alone says 'let us make a sword'); that God spoke to the angels, which he calls a Jewish fiction and answers from the image (there is not one image of God and of the angels); and, underneath both, that the plural cannot mean persons. Then the sentence that matters most for this daf: Fecit Deus, inquit, hominem: non fecerunt — 'God made the human: they did not make'. That is the singular-verb argument of Bereshit Rabbah 1:7 and of R. Simlai at Bereshit Rabbah 8:9, in Latin, used to the opposite end. The abuse is not incidental and is not softened here: the Jew is a beast gnawing its own womb, the reading is perfidia, and the passage ends by turning on judaizing Christians. It is also, and this is the point for the finding, a Christian text that knows what the other bench says and answers it by name.
Not spoken to the angelsThe Father speaks to the SonThe verb is singular, so one maker
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
greek · 370–380 · Caesarea in Cappadocia
And the Spirit of God, it says, was borne over the water. If by 'spirit' he means the diffusion of this air of ours, understand that the writer is enumerating for you the several portions of the world; for he says that God made heaven and earth, water and air, this liquid and diffused element. Or else — which I judge the truer, and which was approved by those who were before us — by 'the Spirit of God' he means the Holy Spirit. For Scripture reserved it, that it might fittingly declare the special mention of this name; and we ought to believe that no other spirit is spoken of but the Holy, who is the completer of the blessed and venerable Trinity. And taking this understanding, you will find that a greater profit is thereupon conferred on you.
The Greek bench identifying the third term, and doing it as a decision between two readings rather than as an assumption. Either the spirit of v. 2 is the diffusion of the air, in which case the verse is finishing an inventory of the elements — heaven, earth, water, air — or it is the Holy Spirit; and Basil takes the second, on the authority of those before him, with a reason drawn from the shape of the sentence: Scripture held the word back so that the mention of this name should carry its full weight. The word he uses for the Spirit is expletor, the one who completes or fills out the Trinity, which is an odd and strong term and is the whole of the Latin bench's argument in one noun: the Father and the Son are in the first verse, and the third person has been kept for the second. Ambrose, who is reading Basil, makes the same choice at Milan a few years later and says so.
Father, Beginning, SpiritThe spirit of v. 2 is the Holy Spirit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
…especially since there follows: 'And the Spirit of God was borne above the waters.' Some take this as the air, others as the breath we draw and take in, the breath of this life-giving atmosphere; but we, agreeing with the judgment of the saints and the faithful, take it as the Holy Spirit, so that in the founding of the world the working of the Trinity may shine out. […] Finally the Syriac, which is neighbor to the Hebrew and in most things agrees and chimes with it in wording, has it thus: 'And the Spirit of God warmed the waters,' that is, quickened them, so as to gather them into new creatures and by his warmth bring them alive. For we also read that the Holy Spirit is creator, Job saying, 'The divine Spirit who made me' (Job 33:4).
Ambrose is reading Basil's Greek directly (Milan, 387; Eustathius' Latin is later). He carries the Syriac 'warmed' but drops the hen. The Latin excerpt here spans two columns; the middle (Ps 33:6 on Word and Spirit) is elided in the English.
Bird brooding, warmingThe Trinity named
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
Let us make, he says, a human to our image and to our likeness (Gen 1:26). Who says this? Is it not God, who made you? What is God? Flesh, or spirit? Not flesh, surely, but spirit, whose likeness flesh cannot be; because he is incorporeal and invisible, whereas flesh is grasped and seen. To whom does he say it? Not to himself, surely, for he does not say, I shall make, but, let us make. Not to angels; because they are servants; and servants with their lord, and works with their author, cannot have a partnership of working: but he says it to the Son, even if the Jews are unwilling, even if the Arians fight back. Let the Jews be silent, and let the Arians be struck dumb along with their parents, who, while they shut one out from the fellowship of the divine working, bring in many; and the prerogative they deny to the Son they make a gift of to little servants. But be it so — that God should seem to you to have needed the support of little servants in order to work. If the working is common to God with the angels, is the image then common to God and the angels? Would he say to angels: let us make a human to our image and to our likeness?
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Ambrose puts the question in the sharpest possible form — cui dicit?, to whom does he say it? — and works through the same three candidates as Basil, whom he is reading, in the same order: not to himself, because the verb is not faciam; not to the angels, because a servant is no partner in the master's work; therefore to the Son. What he adds to Basil is the polemical pairing: the Jews and the Arians are refuted in one breath, and by the same argument, that whoever denies the Son a share in the working has to give that share to somebody, and ends by handing it to servuli, little servants. The rabbinic bench's own answer — that God took counsel with the household above — is thus not merely rejected on this daf but is treated as the position a Christian falls into by mistake if he gets the Son wrong. Note also that the Latin argument turns on a Latin fact: faciam against faciamus is exactly the alternative Rashi weighs at Troyes seven hundred years later, in Hebrew, when he writes that had it said e'eseh adam we could not have learned that God speaks with his court.
Not spoken to the angelsThe Father speaks to the Son
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 393 · Hippo Regius
And since many heretics have been accustomed to drag the exposition of the divine Scriptures to their own opinion, which is beside the faith of catholic teaching, before the treatment of this book the catholic faith must briefly be set out. It is this: that God the Father almighty made and established the whole creation through his only-begotten Son, that is, his Wisdom and Power, consubstantial with him and coeternal, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, himself also consubstantial and coeternal. That this Trinity, then, is called one God, and that he made and created all things that are, in so far as they are, catholic teaching bids us believe; so that every creature, whether intellectual or corporeal — or, as it may be more briefly said in the words of the divine Scriptures, whether invisible or visible — is made not of God's nature but by God out of nothing: and that there is nothing in it belonging to the Trinity, except that the Trinity founded it and it was founded. Wherefore it is not lawful to say or believe that the whole creation is either consubstantial with God or coeternal.
Augustine states, before he has expounded a word of Genesis, what the exposition will have to come out to, and gives the reason: many heretics drag the divine Scriptures to their own opinion. So the Trinity is the rule under which the first chapter will be read, not a conclusion drawn from it — which is worth having on the daf, because every other Latin witness here proceeds as though the three persons were found in the words. The content of the rule is exactly what a reader of Gen 1:1–2 needs: the Father made everything through the Son who is his Wisdom, in the unity of the Spirit; the three are one God; and nothing in the creature belongs to the Trinity except that the Trinity made it. That last clause is aimed at the Manichees and does on the Latin bench what R. Yitzḥak's 'no creature can say that two authorities created the world' does on the rabbinic: it forecloses a dualism.
The rule of faith comes first
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 393 · Hippo Regius
But that sense is rather to be chosen in these divine words, that we should understand it as said not in the singular but in the plural — let us make a human to our image and likeness — because the human was made not to the image of the Father alone, or of the Son alone, or of the Holy Spirit alone, but to the image of the Trinity itself. Which Trinity is so a Trinity that it is one God; is so one God that it is a Trinity. For he does not say, speaking to the Son, let us make a human to your image, or, to my image: but he says in the plural, to our image and likeness: and who would dare to separate the Holy Spirit from that plurality? And since that plurality is not three gods but one God, it is therefore to be understood that Scripture afterwards brought it in in the singular, and said, and God made the human to the image of God; so that it should not be taken as though God the Father made him to the image of God, that is, of his Son: otherwise how is it true, what was said, to our image, if the human was made to the image of the Son alone? And by this, since what God says is true, to our image, it was said, God made the human to the image of God, as though it were said, to his own image, which is the Trinity itself.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Augustine refuses the reading Ambrose and Basil had settled on, and he does it on grammatical grounds. If the Father is speaking to the Son, then ad imaginem nostram would have to mean 'to your image' or 'to my image', and it says neither; and if the plural is the Father and the Son only, who would dare to shut the Holy Spirit out of it? So the plural is neither a conversation nor a plural of two: it is the Trinity speaking about itself, and the human is made to the image of the whole. Then the second half, which is the move the whole Latin bench inherits: the plural of v. 26 and the singular of v. 27 are read as one argument, the plural giving the persons and the singular the one God. That pairing is the exact formal structure of R. Simlai's answer to the minim at Bereshit Rabbah 8:9 — let us make is met with and he created, not and they created — with the conclusion reversed. Augustine is not answering the midrash and cannot have known it; he has arrived at the same reading of the same two verses as a pair, and taken the plural to be real.
To the image of the Trinity itself'Let us make' is the Trinity
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 397–401 · Hippo Regius
Behold, the Trinity appears to me in a riddle, which you are, my God; since you, Father, in the Beginning of our wisdom — which is your Wisdom, born of you, equal to you and coeternal, that is, in your Son — made heaven and earth. And we have said many things about the heaven of heaven, and about the earth invisible and unordered, and about the darksome deep, according to the wandering falls of a spiritual formlessness, unless it were turned to him from whom it had whatever life it had, and by illumination were made a beautiful life, and were the heaven of that heaven which was afterwards made between water and water. And I already held the Father in the name of God, who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Beginning, in whom he made these things; and believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings — and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters. Behold the Trinity, my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, creator of all creation.
The three-term reading in its classical form, and it is autobiography rather than exegesis: the Father in the name of God, the Son in the name of the Beginning, and then — 'believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings, and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters.' The order of the sentence is the order of the search. He held two of the three from the first verse, he already believed the third, and he went looking for it in the text; and the chapter heading the editors gave it says what he does not, that the Trinity which is God is understood from the first words of Genesis. Augustine himself calls it a riddle, in aenigmate. This is the passage that Bede, the Glossa, Bruno, Honorius and Abelard are all repeating, and none of them keeps the word riddle.
Father, Beginning, SpiritThe rule of faith comes first
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 400 · Hippo Regius
Was not the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters too? If we mean by place, as a body is, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if we mean the eminence of unchangeable Godhead over everything changeable, then Father and Son and Holy Spirit were borne above the waters. Why then is this said only of your Spirit? Why of him alone? As if there were a place there, where there is no place, for him alone of whom it is said that he is your gift. In your gift we rest; there we enjoy you. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us there, and your good Spirit raises our lowliness from the gates of death. In good will is our peace. A body by its weight strives toward its own place. Weight is not only toward what is lowest, but toward its own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are driven by their weights; they seek their places.
The question turned inward: not what 'above' means but why the Spirit alone is said to be above. Answer: because the Spirit is gift, and love is weight. 'Pondus meum amor meus' follows a few lines on.
Love, gift, weight
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
Therefore, before it was written 'God said, Let there be light,' Scripture went before it, saying, 'And the Spirit of God was borne above the water.' For whether by the name of water he meant the whole of corporeal matter, so as to intimate by that means whence all the things we can now distinguish in their kinds were made and formed (calling it water because we see everything on earth formed and grown together out of a moist nature through its various species), or a kind of spiritual life, floating as it were before the form of its turning: in either case the Spirit of God was borne above, because whatever it was that he had begun, to be formed and perfected, lay beneath the good will of the Creator; so that when God said in his Word, 'Let there be light,' what was made might abide in his good will, that is in his good pleasure, after the measure of its kind; and so it is right that it pleased God, Scripture saying, 'And light was made; and God saw the light, that it was good.' […] But why, after the creature had first been mentioned, imperfect as it was, is the Spirit of God mentioned afterwards, Scripture first saying 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the abyss,' and then bringing in 'And the Spirit of God was borne above the water'? Is it because a needy and destitute love so loves that it is subjected to the things it loves; and therefore, when the Spirit of God was mentioned, in whom his holy benevolence and love are understood, he was said to be borne above, lest God should be thought to love the works he was to make out of the necessity of want rather than out of the abundance of bounty?
The passage the Glossa quotes in its margin on 1:2 (as 'lib. I de Gen. ad lit., c. 5'). Two answers at once: water is matter or formless spiritual life, and the Spirit is 'above' because divine love is not needy. The middle chapter, which finds the Trinity in the verse, is elided in the English.
Power, not placeLove, gift, weightThe Trinity named
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
This first we say briefly, that it is not to be taken as a matter of indifference that in the other works it is said, God said, let it be; but here, God said, let us make a human to our image and likeness: namely, to intimate, if I may so put it, a plurality of persons on account of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yet he at once warns us that the unity of the deity is to be understood, saying, and God made the human to the image of God; not as though the Father to the image of the Son, or the Son to the image of the Father; otherwise it was not truly said, to our image, if the human was made to the image of the Father alone, or of the Son alone: but it was said thus, God made to the image of God, as though it were said, God made to his own image. And since it now says, to the image of God, when it had said above, to our image, it is signified that that plurality of persons does not work so that we should either say, or believe, or understand many gods; but that we should take the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — on account of which Trinity it was said, to our image — as one God, on account of which it was said, to the image of God.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The mature statement of the same reading, twenty years after the unfinished commentary, and the sentence the twelfth century will read as the settled Latin answer: the change of formula is not indifferent. Everywhere else dixit Deus, fiat; here dixit Deus, faciamus — and the difference is there to intimate a plurality of persons. Augustine's whole argument is an argument from the shape of the sentence and from nothing else: he has no Hebrew, no grammatical claim about the verb, and no interest in what the word for God is. The observation that the formula changes at this one verse is, on the other bench, R. Yeshoshua's and R. Ami's question at Bereshit Rabbah 8:3 — be-mi nimlakh, with whom did he take counsel — and Rupert of Deutz will state it as mutavit vocem suam, he changed his voice. It is this passage, and not the Confessions, that the Glossa prints on Gen 1:26 under Augustine's name, so it is the form in which the schoolroom of 1150 receives the question.
'Let us make' is the TrinityTo the image of the Trinity itself
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 413–427 · Hippo Regius
That too, when the human was made, could have been understood of the angels — what was said, let us make a human, since he did not say, I shall make: but because there follows, to our image; and it is not lawful to believe that the human was made to the image of the angels, or that the image of the angels and of God is the same; therefore the plurality of the Trinity is rightly understood there. Which Trinity, however, because it is one God, even when he had said, let us make, it says, and God made the human to the image of God: he did not say, the gods made, or, to the image of the gods. Here too the same Trinity could be understood, as though the Father had said to the Son and the Holy Spirit, come, and going down let us confound their language there — if there were anything to prevent the angels being understood: to whom it rather belongs to come to God by holy motions, that is, by pious thoughts, by which the unchangeable Truth is consulted by them, as an eternal law in that supernal court of theirs.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The chapter is headed what kind of speech is to be understood, by which God speaks to the angels, and it is the closest the two benches come to holding the same page open. Augustine treats Gen 1:26 and Gen 11:7 — venite, et descendentes confundamus ibi linguam eorum — as one problem with one shape: both are plural, both could be addressed to angels, and each has to be decided on its own evidence. At Gen 1:26 he decides against the angels, because of ad imaginem nostram; at Gen 11:7, where there is no image clause, he grants that nothing prevents the angels being understood, and takes it that way. Now the other bench pairs the same two verses. R. Yoḥanan at b. Sanhedrin 38b lists the places where the minim found an opening and the refutation beside each: 'let us make a human in our image' answered by 'and God created the human in his image', and 'come, let us go down and confound their language' answered by 'and the LORD came down to see the city and the tower'. The same two verses, chosen for the same reason — a plural verb of divine speech — and set out as a pair. Augustine is refuting the angel reading of the first and accepting it for the second; R. Yoḥanan is refuting a plurality of makers in both. Neither knows the other. The pairing is not a topic they share but a structure the Hebrew text itself imposes, and both benches found it.
Not spoken to the angels'Let us make' is the TrinityThe verb is singular, so one maker
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 720 · Jarrow
And rightly, having first declared that in the beginning, that is, in the Son, the Father made heaven and earth, he brought in mention of the Holy Spirit too by adding, 'And the Spirit of God was borne above the waters,' so as to signify that the power of the whole Trinity together worked in the creation of the world.
Bede has no bird and no Syrian on this verse: his 1:2 is Trinitarian (K3). Included here because Rabanus copies this sentence verbatim and it becomes the Glossa's spine.
The Trinity named
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 720 · Jarrow
But when it is said, let us make a human to our image and likeness, the unity of the holy Trinity is openly commended. For indeed the same undivided Trinity had been mystically intimated in the preceding forming of things, when it was said: and God said, let it be; and God made; and God saw that it was good. Now, however, this same thing is intimated more plainly, when it is said: let us make a human to our image and likeness — and rightly, because so long as there was no one who might be taught, the preaching of the Godhead lay hidden in the deep; but when the creation of a human began to be looked for, faith was revealed, and the teaching of truth plainly flashed out. For in the fact that it says, let us make, one working of three persons is shown; and in what follows, to our image and likeness, the one and equal substance of that same holy Trinity is indicated. For how would the image and likeness be one, if the Son were less than the Father, if the Holy Spirit were less than the Son, if the glory of the whole Trinity were not consubstantial and of the same power? Or how would it be said, let us make, if the cooperating power of three persons in one deity did not exist? For it could not be said to angels by God, let us make a human to our image and likeness, since no reasoning whatever allows us to believe that the image and likeness of God and of the angels is one and the same.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Bede takes the whole question over from the Latin Basil — 'so long as there was no one who might be taught, the preaching of the Godhead lay hidden in the deep' is Eustathius's sentence word for word — and turns a polemic into a lesson. The Jews are gone; what is left is a clean division of the verse into two proofs: faciamus gives one working of three persons, ad imaginem nostram gives one substance, and the angels are excluded by a ratio rather than by abuse. He also does something Augustine does not, and it is Rupert's argument three centuries early: the Trinity was already intimated mystically in the threefold formula of the earlier days — God said, God made, God saw that it was good — and is intimated more plainly here. This is the version that travels. Rabanus copies it verbatim at Fulda (PL 107:459C) and Angelomus at Luxeuil (PL 115:145A); neither is on this daf, because neither adds a word.
'Let us make' is the TrinityNot spoken to the angelsThe threefold formula of the six days
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
VersionesLXX · Vulgate
greek jewish · c. 250 BCE · Alexandria
In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.
ἐν ἀρχῇ without an article and without a governing noun: the Greek turns a Hebrew word that may be construct into an adverbial phrase, and in doing so closes off the reading Rashi and Ibn Ezra will call the plain sense. Note also ἐποίησεν, 'made', where the Vulgate will write creavit: the Latin bench's whole argument that creare means to make from nothing has no purchase on the Greek. Every Latin witness here quotes fecit or creavit according to which Latin text is in front of him, and the variation is evidence, not noise.
In the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 392 · Bethlehem
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Jerome translates in principio and not in Filio, and in the Hebrew Questions he says in so many words why: the reading 'in the Son' is false as a translation, however true as a sense. But he also writes creavit where the Old Latin his own contemporaries quote has fecit — Augustine, Ambrose, Bede and the Glossa all argue from fecit — so the Latin bench spends seven centuries reasoning about a verse in two versions at once.
In the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
Glossa ordinariaLaon, c. 1120
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
« And the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters. » [var: Vulg. Gen. 1:2 *Spiritus Dei*, "the Spirit of God"] [n: (AUG., lib. I de Gen. ad lit., c. 5, tom. III.)] Either he called the whole corporeal matter water, that he might intimate whence were made and formed all the things which we see formed on the earth out of a moist nature through divers species; or the spiritual life, as it were floating, before the [0070B] form of its conversion. The Spirit of God was borne above, because that which he had begun to be formed and perfected lay beneath the good will of the Creator. It is also said, « The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters. » Lest, by doing works, God should be thought to love through the necessity of want rather than through the abundance of beneficence. For fittingly is something first intimated to have been begun, over which he might be borne: not in place, but by a power surpassing all things.
« And the Spirit of the Lord was borne, » etc. [n: (HIERON. in Gen. t. III, col. 939.)] In the Hebrew it has *merahephet,* that is, it brooded, or cherished, after the manner of a bird warming eggs with the heat of a living thing. We understand therefore that this is not said of the spirit of the world, as many suppose; but of the [0070C] Holy Spirit, who is himself the quickener of all things: and if the quickener, also the founder; if the founder, also God. Psal. CIII: « Send forth, he says, thy Spirit, and they shall be created. » [var: Vulg. Ps. 103:30 *Emittes*, "Thou shalt send forth"]
« And the Spirit, » etc. In whom, subsisting, we might rest, quickened by his breath and washed by the wave of baptism. « And the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters, » etc. As God, namely, and Creator, he presided over the floating and confused matter, that he might distinguish it when he willed. The whole Trinity therefore is understood to have worked here, God, that is, the Father; the beginning, the Son; the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.
« And the Spirit, » etc. [n: (ISID., in Gen.? )] The hearts, namely, that were tossing to and fro, which had lost the quiet of the mind, [0070D] because the Spirit did not rest upon them, but was borne above them: as one able to call back their nature from confusion into something better. Then throughout the whole text of this Scripture we see certain six laborious ages, though distinguished as it were by neighbouring bounds, so that in the seventh rest may be hoped for; and we see that they have a likeness to the six days in which those things were made which Scripture records God to have made. For the first beginning of the human race, in which it began to enjoy this light, is compared to the first day, on which God made light. This age is as it were the infancy of the whole world, which we think of, by the proportion of its greatness, as one man. For man, when he is first born into the light, passes his infancy, the first age, which extends from Adam to Noah in ten generations: the flood is as it were the evening of this [0071A] day, because our infancy is blotted out by the flood of forgetfulness.
[n: (STRAB.)] « Void and empty. » Useless, namely, and unfruitful, and unordered. For all the elements were mingled and confused, and this whole space of air was full of waters; not such as they now are, but they were like thin clouds, such as those above the heavens still are.
Four glosses stand on the verse in the margin: Augustine Gn. litt. I.5 (water as matter; love not from need; 'not in place but by a power surpassing all'); Jerome's merahephet, cited by PL column; an unlabelled sentence that is Bede's Trinity gloss via Rabanus ('Tota ergo Trinitas hic operata'); and one Migne marks 'ISID. in Gen.?' (the floating hearts, which is Isidore's moral reading in Augustine's wording). The lemma reads 'Spiritus Domini', the Old Latin, not the Vulgate's 'Spiritus Dei' — Wilson's [var:] flags it. The bird enters the Glossa through Jerome only; the Syrian and the craftsman are both absent.
Power, not placeBird brooding, warmingThe Trinity namedOver the heart
English: Wilson Pruitt
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
Verse 26. 'Let us make a human.' (AUG., ibid., c. 19.) A plurality of persons is intimated — of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit — and at once the unity of the deity, when it is said: 'and God made the human to the image of God', not the Father to the image only of the Son. For it would not truly be said, to our image; but it was said thus: 'God made the human to the image of God', as if it were said 'to his own image'. And when it says 'to the image of God', when above it had said 'to our image', it is signified that the plurality of persons does not work so that we should believe in many gods, but so that we should take the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit as one God.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The school answer in the form the twelfth century actually read: Augustine's De Genesi ad litteram III.19, printed under his name, abridged to the two moves that matter and set beside the verse. What the abridgement drops is the argument — Augustine's careful 'otherwise how is it true, what was said, to our image, if the human was made to the image of the Son alone?' becomes the flat 'for it would not truly be said, to our image' — so that a reader of the Gloss gets the conclusion with the reasoning compressed to a clause. This is the page on which Peter Comestor, Hugh and Abelard all begin. The same volume of the Gloss, ninety columns later, prints the angel reading of Gen 11:7 without a word of warning; see `glossa-11-7-angeli`.
'Let us make' is the TrinityTo the image of the Trinity itself
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
Verse 7. 'Come, therefore', etc. He is understood to have said it to the angels; or according to that: 'let us make a human to our image and likeness.' For it is added in the singular number: 'and he divided them', etc., just as there: 'God made the human to his own image and likeness.'
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. ⚠ A second anchor note applies: this is a gloss on Gen 11:7, the tower of Babel, not on Gen 1:26 or on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf because it says of venite, confundamus what nobody in the Gloss says of faciamus: he is understood to have said it to the angels. And it gets there by the same route the rabbinic bench does. The gloss pairs Gen 11:7 with Gen 1:26 as the two plural verses; it then answers the plural of Gen 11:7 with the singular of Gen 11:8 — 'and he divided them' — exactly as the plural of Gen 1:26 is answered by the singular of Gen 1:27. That is R. Yoḥanan's rule at b. Sanhedrin 38b, which lists the same two verses in the same order with the same singular refutations beside them, and it is the structure of Augustine's chapter de locutione qua Deus Angelis loquitur (`aug-civ-16-6`), where Gen 1:26 is refused to the angels and Gen 11:7 is granted to them. Three benches, the same pair of verses, the same test. The Gloss is the one place where a Latin schoolbook prints the angel reading as the plain sense, and it does so where the image clause is missing and the argument against it therefore fails.
He said it to the angelsThe verb is singular, so one maker
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
מפרשיםTargums · Midrash · Bavli · Rashi
rabbinic · 100–300 · Palestine
In the beginning the LORD created the heavens and the earth.
be-qadmin, a plain adverb of time and nothing else: no construct, no wisdom, no first thing. Onkelos hears the verse as the Greek does. Etheridge's Onkelos did not return from Sefaria by version title (see notes/SOURCES-FINDINGS.md) and the Metsudah English is CC BY-NC, so the English is a fresh draft.
In the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
rabbinic · 100–300 · Palestine
And the LORD said: let us make a human in our image, as our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the bird of the heavens and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Evidence by omission, and it only reads as evidence next to the same targum's Gen 1:1. There Onkelos writes YY for Elohim, the Tetragrammaton, which is not plural in form, so that a reader of the Aramaic cannot raise the question of two authorities from the noun at all (see `targ-onk-1-1`). Here the plural verb is left standing: na'avid enasha be-tzalmana ki-dmutana — let us make a human in our image, as our likeness — with nothing added, nobody addressed, and no angels. The one difficulty the Aramaic could have removed as easily as the other, and did not. Whatever governed Onkelos's hand at Gen 1:1, it was not a general policy of smoothing plurals out of the creation account; and Pseudo-Jonathan, working on the same verse in the same language, does add the angels in so many words.
The verb is singular, so one maker
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
rabbinic · 100–400 · Palestine
In the beginning and in great wisdom, God created and finished the heavens and the earth.
The single most consequential word on this crux: Neofiti does not translate bereshit, it interprets it — min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, 'from the first, in wisdom' — and then adds a second verb, shakhlel, 'and finished'. A Palestinian targumist and the Latin fathers reach the same gloss on the same word, 'in Wisdom', and then part company entirely over what Wisdom is: for Bereshit Rabbah it is the Torah, for Augustine and Bede it is the Son. Neither side knows the other is there. The CC0 English prints 'in great wisdom'; there is no word for 'great' in the Aramaic, and the reading בחוכמתא recorded in the manuscript's own margin is simply the emphatic state. Note that this witness and K7's targ-neof-1-2 are two slices of one Sefaria segment: the whole of Gen 1:1–5 comes back as a single block.
In Wisdom
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yudan said in the name of Akilas: To this One it is fitting to call God. The ordinary way of the world is that a flesh-and-blood king is praised in his province though he has not yet built any public baths in it and has not yet built private baths in it. First he proclaims his name and then presents his works. The Unique One of the world, however, first acted and then He was praised. Shimon ben Azai says: “Your humility has made me great” (II Samuel 22:36) – a flesh-and-blood [king] mentions his name first and then his title of praise: So-and-so Augustoli, So-and-so Pro titulo. But the Holy One blessed be He is not so; instead, after creating the needs of his world, only then does He mention His name: “In the beginning…created [bereshit bara]” and then “God [Elohim].”
Why the divine name comes third in the sentence, answered from court protocol and in Greek loanwords. R. Yudan in the name of Akilas — Aquila the proselyte, the translator — says: to this one it is fitting to call God. A flesh-and-blood king is acclaimed in a province before he has built it a public bath or a private one; he proclaims his name first and produces his works afterwards. The Unique One of the world acted first and was praised afterwards. Ben Azzai gets the same from 2 Sam 22:36, 'your humility has made me great': mortals put the name first and the titles after — So-and-so Augustalis, So-and-so pro titulo — but the Holy One, after creating the needs of his world, only then mentions his name: bereshit bara, and after that Elohim. The interest for this crux is that the rabbinic bench has a positive account of the Hebrew word order that the Greek elders were obliged to destroy, and its terms are the honorifics of the Roman provincial administration.
God is named after his works
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yitzḥak began: “The beginning of Your word is truth…” (Psalms 119:160) – Rabbi Yitzḥak said: Right from the beginning of the creation of the world [it can be seen that] “the beginning of Your word is truth” – “in the beginning, God created.” “But My Lord God is truth” (Jeremiah 10:10), “All Your righteous laws are eternal” (Psalms 119:160) – as each and every edict that You decree upon Your creations, they accept the judgment upon themselves and receive it faithfully, and no person can come and say that two authorities created the world: “God [Elohim] spoke [vaydaberu]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God spoke [vaydaber];” “God [Elohim] said [vayomeru]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God said [vayomer]”; “In the beginning God created [bare’u]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God created [bara].”
The rabbinic answer to this crux, and it is a grammatical argument made three times over. R. Yitzḥak reads Ps 119:160, 'the beginning of your word is truth', of the opening of Genesis: from the beginning of the creation of the world the head of your word is truth, 'in the beginning God created', and the Lord God is truth (Jer 10:10). Then the point: no creature can come and say that two authorities created the world — vaydaberu Elohim is not written here but vaydaber Elohim; vayomeru Elohim is not written here but vayomer Elohim; bereshit bare'u Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim. Three verbs, all singular, against a noun that is plural in form. The observation is exactly Abelard's at the Paraclete seven hundred years later and Ibn Ezra's at Lucca, and the three of them draw three different conclusions from it. Note what the argument is aimed at: not idolatry in general but shtei reshuyot, two authorities — the dualism the same midrash elsewhere calls minut — and the verse is being used as a proof text against it.
The verb is singular, so one maker
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
“And God said: Let us make Man” – with whom did He consult? Rabbi Yehoshua said in the name of Rabbi Levi: He consulted with the works of the heavens and the earth. This is analogous to a king who had two members of his council and he would not do anything without their knowledge. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: He consulted with what was made on each and every day. This is analogous to a king who had an adviser and he would not do anything without his knowledge. Rabbi Ami said: He consulted with His heart. This is analogous to a king who built a palace through the services of an architect, but it was not pleasing for him. At whom should he be angry? Is it not the architect? This is a rhetorical question. That is, “He was saddened in His heart” (Genesis 6:6). Rav Asi said: This is analogous to a king who conducted a business transaction through an intermediary, and he suffered a loss. At whom should he be angry? Is it not the intermediary? This is a rhetorical question. That is, “He was saddened in His heart.”
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The rabbinic bench asks the Latin bench's question in three words — be-mi nimlakh, with whom did he take counsel — and then, instead of answering it, prints four answers side by side and lets them stand. R. Yehoshua in R. Levi's name: he took counsel with the work of heaven and earth, and the parable is of a king with two sanqlitin, the Greek synklētikoi, senators, without whose knowledge he did nothing. R. Shmuel bar Naḥman: with the work of each day, like a king with one counsellor. R. Ami: be-libbo nimlakh, he took counsel with his own heart — and the parables that follow are about blame rather than about counsel, the architect and the broker who lose the king's money, so that 'he was saddened in his heart' (Gen 6:6) explains the counsel backwards from the regret. Rav Asi repeats the second. Note what is not here and is in every Latin witness on this daf: nobody suggests that the plural could point to a plurality in God. The question is whom God consulted, not who spoke; and the two extremes the midrash offers, a senate and a soliloquy, are the two Rupert of Deutz will name in Latin at Liège six hundred years later — non tam senatu quam soliloquio — choosing the soliloquy, as R. Ami does, and meaning by it the opposite thing.
He took counsel with the household aboveA soliloquy, not a senate
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: When Moses was writing the Torah, and was writing what was made on each day, when he reached this verse: “And God said: Let us make Man in our image, in our likeness” – he said before Him: ‘Master of the universe, why do you provide the heretics with basis for a claim? This is bewildering.’ He said to him: ‘Just write, and if someone wants to err, let him err.’ The Holy One blessed be He said to Moses: ‘Is it not so regarding this man whom I created, that I will bring forth descendants of greater and lesser status? If someone of greater status is about to seek approval from one of lesser stature than he, but he says: Why do I need to seek approval from one who is of lesser stature than I? One may say to him: Learn from your Creator, as He created the heavenly realms and the earthly realms, but when He came to create man, he consulted with the ministering angels.’ Rabbi Levi said: There is no consultation here; rather, this is analogous to a king who was strolling at the entrance to his palace, and saw a large hewn rock set off to the side. He said: ‘What should we use this for?’ Some of them [of his advisers] said: ‘[Use it for] the public baths,’ and others said: ‘For private bathhouses.’ The king said: ‘I am going to craft it into a statue.’ Who will prevent it?
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The single most important passage on this daf, because it is the rabbinic bench saying out loud that it knows what the other bench does with this verse. Moses is writing the Torah at dictation; he reaches na'aseh adam and stops: ribbon ha-olam, mah attah noten pitchon peh la-minim — Master of the world, why are you giving the minim an opening? And the answer is not a defence of the plural but a refusal to protect it: 'write, and whoever wants to err, let him err.' Then the reason the risk was worth taking, and it is a moral one: God made greater and lesser, and a great man who will not ask leave of a lesser is to learn from his Creator, who consulted the ministering angels before making a human. R. Levi will not have even that — let hakha malkhu, there is no consulting here — and gives a parable in which the king asks what to do with a block of stone, hears his advisers say baths, and makes a statue: who is going to stop him? So the passage holds three positions at once: that the plural is dangerous, that it teaches humility, and that the consultation was never real. What it does not do is deny that the verse can be read as the minim read it. That is the concession the Latin bench never makes and never needs to, and it is the clearest evidence on the site that the two readings of Gen 1:26 were known to each other.
He took counsel with the household aboveBecause the heretics attack itThe consultative form marks the creature's standing
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
The heretics once asked Rabbi Samlai: ‘How many deities created the world?’ He said to them: ‘Let you and I inquire into the early days.’ That is what is written: “For inquire now into the early days that were before you, from the day that God created [bara] man” (Deuteronomy 4:32) – “that [God] baru” is not written here, but rather, “that [God] bara.” They said to him: ‘What is this that is written: “In the beginning God [Elohim] created”?’ He said to them: “Baru Elohim” is not written here, but rather, “bara Elohim.” Rabbi Samlai said [moreover]: Everywhere you find a basis for a claim of the heretics, you find a refutation alongside it. They asked him further, saying to him: ‘What is this that is written: “Let us make Man in our image, in our likeness”?’ He said to them: ‘Read what is written thereafter: God created [vayivre’u] man in their image is not stated, but rather, “God created [vayivra] man in His image,”’ (Genesis 1:27). After they left, his students said to him: ‘Rabbi, those men you pushed off with a reed. What would you respond to us?’ He said to them: ‘In the past, Adam was created from earth and Eve was created from Adam. From now on, “In our image, in our likeness” – a man will not [produce offspring] without a woman, nor will a woman without a man, nor both of them without the Divine Presence.’
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. A disputation, reported as a disputation, on exactly the two verses this crux is built on. The minim ask R. Simlai how many divinities created the world; he answers from Deut 4:32, bara and not baru; they come back with Gen 1:1, and he gives the same answer — baru Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim, which is R. Yitzḥak's argument at Bereshit Rabbah 1:7 word for word (see `br-1-7`); they come back with na'aseh adam be-tzalmenu, and he sends them to the next verse, va-yivra and not va-yivre'u. Between the second and third exchange he states the rule the whole passage exists to illustrate: wherever you find an opening for the minim, you find the refutation beside it. Three things follow for this daf. The singular-verb argument that K1 and this crux both carry as a piece of grammar is here a polemical instrument aimed at named opponents. Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:26 are treated as one question, which is the reason this Gen 1:26 material belongs on a Gen 1:1–2 daf at all. And the disciples are not satisfied — those men you pushed off with a reed; what will you answer us? — so the midrash itself marks the grammatical answer as a debating move rather than an explanation, and gives the students a different one: that from now on the image needs a man, a woman and the Shekhinah. […] The passage continues in the printed English with two further exchanges, on Josh 22:22 and Josh 24:19, which are the same manoeuvre on other verses; they are outside the Hebrew segment as Daat prints it and are elided here.
The verb is singular, so one makerThe refutation is beside the openingBecause the heretics attack it
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
For it was taught: [This is] the case of Ptolemy the King, who gathered seventy-two elders and entered them into seventy-two houses, and he did not reveal to them for what he gathered them. He then met each of them individually and he said to them: "Write for me the Torah of Moses your teacher [in Greek]." The Holy One, Blessed Be He put counsel into the heart of each one, and all of them harmonized to one understanding. And they wrote for him: "God created in the beginning." (Genesis 1:1) "I shall make a human in image and likeness." (Genesis 1:26)
The rabbinic bench's own account of how the Greek Bible came to read as it does, and the first two items on the list are the two verses the Latin bench builds its plurality on. Ptolemy shut seventy-two elders in seventy-two houses and told each to write him the Torah of Moses; God put counsel in each one's heart and they all agreed on one understanding. And they wrote for him: 'God created in the beginning' — Elohim bara bereshit, the divine name moved to the front so that bereshit could not be read as the subject, that is, as a deity who made God — and 'I shall make a human in image and likeness', singular, for the plural na'aseh of Gen 1:26. Both changes are aimed at plurality in the opening of Genesis. Neither is in the Septuagint the Church actually inherited: its Gen 1:1 keeps the Hebrew order, en archē epoiēsen ho theos, and its Gen 1:26 keeps the plural, poiēsōmen anthrōpon. So the baraita is a tradition about a Greek Torah rather than a description of one, and the Latin reading of both verses exists in the space the described changes would have closed.
The word order had to be changedThe verb is singular, so one maker
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
Rav Yehuda said, Rav said: at the hour when the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to create the human, he created one company of ministering angels. He said to them: is it your will that we make a human in our image? They said before him: Master of the world, what are his deeds? He said to them: such and such are his deeds. They said before him: Master of the world, 'what is a mortal, that you remember him, and a human being, that you take account of him?' (Ps 8:5). He put out his little finger among them and burned them. And so with the second company. The third company said before him: Master of the world, the ones who spoke before you first — what did they achieve? The whole world is yours; whatever you wish to do in your world, do.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The angel reading in its most literal and least apologetic form: God does not merely take counsel with the ministering angels, he puts the question to them in the words of the verse — retzonkhem na'aseh adam be-tzalmenu, is it your will that we make a human in our image — and when they object he burns them, twice, until a third company learns not to answer. Two things make this the sharpest rabbinic witness here. First, the plural of the verse is taken as a real address to real hearers, which is precisely the reading Basil calls a Jewish fiction, Ambrose refuses because a servant cannot be a partner in the work, Bede excludes by a ratio, and Bruno says would produce many creators; the Latin bench's characterisation of the position is, on this page, accurate. Second, the story concedes the objection the Latin bench presses: the angels contribute nothing, are destroyed for speaking, and are told the world is not theirs. The consultation is real and the partnership is not, which is a distinction no Latin witness on this daf considers.
He took counsel with the household above
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
Rabbi Yoḥanan said: everywhere the minim blasphemed, their refutation is beside them. 'Let us make a human in our image' (Gen 1:26) — and it says, 'and God created the human in his image' (Gen 1:27). 'Come, let us go down and confound their language there' (Gen 11:7) — 'and the LORD came down to see the city and the tower' (Gen 11:5). 'For there the divine beings were revealed to him' (Gen 35:7) — 'to the God who answers me in the day of my distress' (Gen 35:3).
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The rule of R. Simlai at Bereshit Rabbah 8:9 stated as a rule and then run down a list, and the list is what matters here. Three verses where God speaks or is spoken of in the plural, each with the singular that follows it set beside it as its own answer: na'aseh adam against va-yivra, havah nerdah at Babel against va-yered YHWH, niglu elav ha-Elohim against la-El ha-oneh oti. The first two are exactly the pair Augustine takes up at De civitate Dei XVI.6 in a chapter headed what kind of speech is to be understood, by which God speaks to the angels, where Gen 1:26 is refused to the angels because of the image clause and Gen 11:7 is granted to them because there is nothing to prevent it; and they are exactly the pair the Glossa Ordinaria joins at PL 113:114D, glossing venite at Babel by faciamus hominem and answering both with their singulars. Three benches select the same two verses out of the whole Pentateuch and apply the same test to them. Nobody is reading anybody. The selection is forced by the Hebrew, and the disagreement is only about what the plural was doing there in the first place. Note the word: pakru, they blasphemed or broke loose — a harder verb than the she'elu, they asked, of the midrash's version, and the Bavli has dropped the disputation and kept the rule.
The refutation is beside the openingThe verb is singular, so one makerBecause the heretics attack it
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
rabbinic · 600–800 · Palestine
At the beginning the LORD created the heavens and the earth.
A third Aramaic word for the same Hebrew one: min avvela, 'from the first'. Etheridge prints the Aramaic in transliteration inside his English ('At the beginning (min avella)'), which is why his sentence carries a gloss no other version has; the parenthesis is his.
In the beginning of time
English: J. W. Etheridge, 1862
rabbinic · 600–800 · Palestine
And the Lord said to the angels who ministered before Him, who had been created in the second day of the creation of the world, Let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl which are in the atmosphere of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every reptile creeping upon the earth.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The angel reading written into the text of Scripture itself, which is as far as the rabbinic answer to this crux can be pushed. Where the Hebrew has 'and God said, let us make', Pseudo-Jonathan has 'and the LORD said to the angels who minister before him, who were created on the second day of the creation of the world, let us make a human in our image, in our likeness'. Two additions, and the second is doing work: dating the angels to the second day forestalls the objection that they might have been co-creators, since they were made after the beginning and are therefore creatures like the rest. The Glossa Ordinaria at PL 113:114D says ad angelos dixisse intelligitur — he is understood to have said it to the angels — of the plural at Babel, and cross-refers to faciamus hominem; a Latin reader of the twelfth century and an Aramaic reader of the eighth are looking at the same plural and reaching for the same hearers. That the targum puts it in the biblical line rather than in a gloss is why Basil could say ferunt enim, quod angelis dixerit and be reporting rather than caricaturing.
He said it to the angels
English: J. W. Etheridge, 1862
rabbinic · 1075–1105 · Troyes
נעשה אדם WE WILL MAKE MAN — The meekness of the Holy One, blessed be He, they (the Rabbis) learned from here: because the man is in the likeness of the angels and they might envy him, therefore He took counsel with them (Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 18 and see Genesis Rabbah 8). And when He judges the kings He likewise consults His heavenly council, for thus we find in the case of Ahab to whom Micha said, (1 Kings 22:19) “I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand and on His left.” Has God, then, a right hand and a left hand? But it means that some stood on the right side to plead in favour of the accused and others stood on the left side to accuse; and similarly we read (Daniel 4:14), “the matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the holy ones”, — here, also, He consulted His heavenly council and asked permission of them, saying to them: “There are in the heavens beings after My likeness; if there will not be on earth also beings after My likeness, there will be envy among the beings that I have created” (Sanhedrin 38b).
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Rashi takes the angel reading as the plain sense and gives it a motive: anvetanuto shel ha-Qadosh barukh Hu, the humility of the Holy One, learned from this verse. Because the human is in the likeness of the angels and they might be envious, he took counsel with them; and this is his habit, for Micaiah saw the LORD on his throne with all the host of heaven standing to his right and his left (1 Kgs 22:19), which cannot be a right and a left but is a court, some arguing for acquittal and some for guilt, and Daniel's decree of the watchers is the same court. The word he uses for it is pamalya shel ma'alah, the household above, from the Latin familia — so that the Latin bench's senatus and the rabbinic bench's imperial household are the same borrowed picture of a court, used to opposite ends. That God natal reshut, took leave, from his own retinue is the strongest form of the reading anywhere on this daf, and Rashi will spend his second comment defending it against the obvious objection.
He took counsel with the household above
English: M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929–34
rabbinic · 1075–1105 · Troyes
נעשה אדם WE WILL MAKE MAN — Although they did not assist Him in forming him (the man) and although this use of the plural may give the heretics an occasion to rebel (i. e. to argue in favour of their own views), yet the verse does not refrain from teaching proper conduct and the virtue of humbleness, namely, that the greater should consult, and take permission from the smaller; for had it been written, “I shall make man”, we could not, then, have learned that He spoke to His judicial council but to Himself. And as a refutation of the heretics it is written immediately after this verse “And God created the man”, and it is not written “and they created” (Genesis Rabbah 8:9)
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The objection and the answer, in a hundred words, and it is the whole of this crux compressed. The objection: the angels did not help, and the plural gives the minim room to rebel. The answer is in three parts. Scripture did not refrain, because the point was to teach derekh eretz and the measure of humility, that the great should consult and take leave of the lesser. Had it written e'eseh adam, we should not have learned that he speaks with his court but only with himself — which is Ambrose's non dicit faciam, sed faciamus at Milan, the identical grammatical observation put to the identical use of ruling out a soliloquy, and to the opposite conclusion about who is being addressed. And the refutation of the minim was written beside it: va-yivra et ha-adam, and he did not write va-yivre'u, which is R. Simlai's rule and answer from Bereshit Rabbah 8:9. Rashi at Troyes about 1090 is thus doing openly what no Latin witness on this daf does: he names the risk the verse carries, weighs it against what the verse teaches, and decides that the teaching is worth the opening. Whether the minim he has in mind are the Christians of northern France is not said here and is not needed: the grammatical opening is the same one Abelard will exploit at the Paraclete forty years later.
The refutation is beside the openingThe verb is singular, so one makerHe took counsel with the household above
English: M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929–34
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
“E-lohim” – After we have found [the word] e-loah, we know that E-lohim is its plural form, and the root [of this] is in the nature of language. For every language has a formal form. The way of expressing formality in non-Hebrew languages is by the lesser using the plural in the presence of the greater. In Arabic the way of formal expression is for the greater to speak, as royalty, in the plural. In the Holy Tongue, the way is to refer to the greater in the plural. Like “master” (adonim), “owner” b’alim as they said, “a harsh master” (b’alim) Isaiah 19:4, “his master (b’alim) shall take”. Likewise the word “upon him” (alav), “to him” (elav), “until him” (adav). For this reason does Scripture state “He created” and not “they created”.
The grammarian's answer, and it is comparative philology two hundred years before anyone calls it that. Having found eloah, we know that Elohim is its plural, and the root of the usage is in the nature of language itself: every language has a way of showing honour. In the vernacular tongues the lesser addresses the greater in the plural; in Arabic the greater — a king — speaks of himself in the plural; in the Holy Tongue the way is to speak of the greater in the plural, as with adonim, 'master', and be'alim, 'owner', which take plural forms for a single person (Isa 19:4, Exod 22:10). And therefore: Scripture says bara and not bare'u. That last clause is word for word what Abelard asks at the Paraclete twenty years earlier — unde dictum est Eloim creavit, non creaverunt? — and the two men give opposite answers to it, neither having heard of the other.
A plural of honourThe verb is singular, so one maker
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
And he said [further] that the word na’aseh, though it is in plural, is the manner of royal speak [i.e., the plural of majesty]. Similarly, “we shall give nitnah to you also this one” Genesis 29:27. “We say before the king” Daniel 2:36, “perhaps I will be able and we will smite him” Numbers 22:6. But these witnesses are false witnesses, for nitnah is [actually] the nif’al verb construction, and similarly “the city is given” nitnah Jeremiah 32:24, and the vav converts it to the future tense, like is the rule with all past-tense verbs, meaning “she will be given to you”. And “we shall smite him” – he [Balak] and his camp, or it could be the infinitive of the verb, like “clease nakeh, I shall not clease you” Jeremiah 46:28. And even though we do find “they were not smitten” Exodus 9:32, [nevertheless], only that verb construction (pu'al) lacks an infinitive form – and R. Moshe of Spain erred in his book [on this matter]. And the word “we shall say (before the king)” Daniel 2:37 is Aramaic, and [further], how could Daniel speak hautily with Nebuchadnezzar, who was the king of kings? Now I shall explain: Know that all of the work of creation was created for the honor of man at the command of Hashem. The plants – the earth and the water brought them forth, and all the living souls [i.e., the animals]. And afterwards, Hashem said to the angels, “let US make man” – WE will busy ourselves with him, not the water and the earth.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The finding of this session, and it is a correction to what the daf would otherwise say about Ibn Ezra. At Gen 1:1 he explains the plural Elohim as the honorific plural — every language honours the great with a plural, as adonim and be'alim are plural for one master, and as a king in Arabic speaks of himself in the plural (see `ibn-ezra-1-1-elohim`). Here, on the plural verb, he is offered the same explanation by Saadia Gaon — na'aseh is the manner of royal speech, with Gen 29:27, Dan 2:36 and Num 22:6 for proofs — and he demolishes it: ve-elleh ha-edim edei sheker hem, and these witnesses are false witnesses. Each proof text is parsed away, nitnah as a nifal and not a first person plural, nakkeh bo as Balak and his camp or else an infinitive; R. Moshe ha-Kohen is told he erred in his book; and Daniel could not have used a plural of grandeur to the king of kings. Then his own answer: God said to the angels, let us make a human — we shall occupy ourselves with him, and not the water and the earth, which had brought forth the plants and the animals. So the grammarian who takes the plural noun to be empty takes the plural verb to be full, and full in the way the Latin bench most objects to. The two positions are not inconsistent — a plural of honour is a fact about nouns, and na'aseh has a real subject — but only a reader who has both pages can see that Ibn Ezra's answer to this crux is the angel reading.
Not a plural of majestyHe said it to the angels
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
AND ‘ELOKIM’ (G-D) SAID. The word Elokim means “the Master of all forces,” for the root of the word is e-il, meaning force, and the word Elokim is a composite consisting of the words e-il heim, as if the word e-il is in a construct state, and heim, [literally] “they,” alludes to all other forces. Thus Elokim means “the Force of all forces.” A secret will yet be disclosed in connection with this.
Ramban takes the plural seriously and makes it mean something other than persons. The word is a compound: its root is el, which is force, and it is put together as el hem, as though el were in the construct and hem, 'they', pointed to all the other forces — so that Elohim is the force of all forces, the master of them all. Then the sentence that stops the paragraph: 'a secret will yet be disclosed in connection with this', which is his standard signal that a kabbalistic doctrine lies underneath and will not be printed. So on the one bench a plural noun points to a plurality within God that may not be spoken, and on the other, at almost the same date, it points to three persons that may be preached. Neither Ibn Ezra's honorific plural nor Abelard's three persons is what Ramban means, and his answer is the only one of the three that treats the plurality as real and as not a plurality of creators.
The force of all forces
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
The correct explanation of na’aseh (let us make) [which is in the plural form when it should have been in the singular] is as follows: It has been shown to you that G-d created something from nothing only on the first day, and afterwards He formed and made things from those created elements. Thus when He gave the waters the power of bringing forth a living soul, the command concerning them was Let the waters swarm. The command concerning cattle was Let the earth bring forth. But in the case of man He said, Let us make, that is, I and the aforementioned earth, let us make man, the earth to bring forth the body from its elements as it did with cattle and beasts, as it is written, And the Eternal G-d formed man of the dust of the ground, and He, blessed be He, to give the spirit from His mouth, the Supreme One, as it is written, And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And He said, In our image, and after our likeness, as man will then be similar to both. In the capacity of his body, he will be similar to the earth from which he was taken, and in spirit he will be similar to the higher beings, because it [the spirit] is not a body and will not die. In the second verse, He says, In the image of G-d He created him, in order to relate the distinction by which man is distinguished from the rest of created beings. The explanation of this verse I have found ascribed to Rabbi Joseph the Kimchite, and is the most acceptable of all interpretations that have been advanced concerning it.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. A fourth answer, and the only one on either bench that keeps the plural literal and puts a creature in it without putting an angel in it. Ramban argues from the order of the chapter: God created something from nothing on the first day only, and afterwards formed and made from what he had created, so that the waters were told to swarm and the earth to bring forth. At the human the formula changes because the two agents are named together — ani ve-ha-aretz ha-nizkeret na'aseh adam, I and the aforementioned earth, let us make a human — the earth to bring forth the body from its elements as it did for the beasts, and the Holy One to give the spirit, as Gen 2:7 then says twice over. Be-tzalmenu ki-dmutenu follows exactly: the human will resemble both, his body the earth he was taken from and his spirit the beings above. He credits the reading to R. Yosef Kimḥi and calls it the most acceptable of all that have been thought about the verse — a phrase that quietly sets aside Rashi's angels, which he does not name here. Ramban's answer at Gen 1:1 was that Elohim is el hem, the force of all the forces, with a secret not disclosed; his answer here needs no secret at all, and no plurality in God whatever.
I and the earth
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
ScholaeCarolingian and twelfth-century Latin, 790–1170
latin · c. 790 · Tours
M[aster]. Let us say that in a Beginning coeternal with himself God made heaven and earth — in the only-begotten Son, who is the Wisdom of the Father, of whom the Apostle says: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).
The Carolingian dialogue's answer to the question its pupil has just asked — in what beginning, the beginning of time, or a beginning that was the start of the creature? — and it refuses the alternative by making the Beginning a person: one coeternal with God himself, the only-begotten Son who is the Father's Wisdom, with 1 Cor 1:24 for the identification. What the schoolroom form makes visible is how short the step is. The pupil asked a question about time; the master answered with a doctrine of the second person, and neither notices that the question has been changed.
The Beginning is the SonFather, Beginning, Spirit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 790 · Tours
D. This first we say briefly, that it is not to be taken as a matter of indifference that in the other works it is said, God said, let it be; but here, God said, let us make. M. To intimate, if I may so put it, a plurality of persons, on account of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — yet he at once warned that the unity of the deity is to be understood, saying: and God made the human to his own image.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Augustine's sentence from De Genesi ad litteram III.19 cut in half and given to two speakers, D and M, so that the observation becomes a pupil's and the doctrine a master's. Nothing is added and one thing is lost: Augustine wrote ad imaginem Dei, and had a paragraph of argument about why it is not ad imaginem Filii; Wigbod writes ad imaginem suam, which makes the point unarguable and unexaminable at once. The compilation is also where the attribution slips — the excerpt is headed AMBROSIUS, de creatione hominis, and the words are Augustine's. That is the ordinary condition of the Carolingian florilegia and is why the Latin bench of the ninth century can be read for what it circulated rather than for what it thought.
'Let us make' is the Trinity
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 796 · Tours
Question 36. Why is it said of the human alone: let us make a human (Gen 1:26); whereas of the other creatures we read: God said? — Answer. So that, since a rational creature was being founded, it might be seen to be made with counsel, and so that its nobility might be shown. Question 37. Why did he say it in the plural number: let us make? — Answer. So that one working of three persons might be shown.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The whole crux reduced to two questions and twenty-eight words of answer, which is what the Interrogationes are for, and worth having on the daf precisely because it shows what the Carolingian school thought a pupil needed. Two distinct answers are given and neither cancels the other: the consultative form marks the dignity of the rational creature, and the plural number shows one working of three persons. Note that the first of these is the only thing Alcuin says about the change of formula, and it is not a Trinitarian point at all — it is an argument about the honour of the thing made, which is Bereshit Rabbah 8:8's argument for why the plural was worth the risk (Moses is told to write it anyway, so that the great should learn to consult the small) with the moral swapped from humility to nobility. Four questions later, at Inter. 40, Alcuin returns to it and gives the Augustinian pairing — cur iterum dixit: Creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam, cum antea dixisset: ad imaginem nostram? … ut utrumque, et pluralitas personarum, et unitas substantiae insinuaretur — but that is a distinct argument and is not merged into this slice. ⛔ Alcuin does not answer a lemma grep on this crux's Latin words: the Interrogationes are organised as questions and the lemma sits in the question, not in a running exposition.
'Let us make' is the TrinityThe consultative form marks the creature's standing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 890 · Auxerre
Allegorically, in what is said, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, by the name of 'beginning' we may not inappropriately understand the Son of God, as he himself said of himself to the Jews: I am the beginning, who also speak to you (John 8:25). For God the Father is a beginning, but not from a beginning, since he was not made or created by the Father but begotten; through which Beginning God the Father created heaven and earth, that is, the heavenly and the earthly. For by 'heaven' are signified the heavenly, or those leading a heavenly life; by 'earth', those gaping after earthly business. Both of these were created through the Beginning, because when Jesus Christ was born it became plain who were heavenly and who were earthly.
A distinction made in passing that nobody else on this daf bothers with: the Father too is a beginning — but not from a beginning, since he is not made or created but begotten. Remigius has noticed that if 'in the beginning' names the Son because the Son is a principium, the word will also fit the Father, and he heads it off with the credal formula. The rest is the standard identification with John 8:25 and then the ecclesial reading, in which heaven and earth are the heavenly-minded and the earthly-minded and the division became visible only at the Incarnation. Set beside R. Yudan's 'to this one it is fitting to call God', the two benches are doing the same thing with the same clause — asking what may properly be predicated of the creator, and answering out of the word order.
The Beginning is the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 890 · Auxerre
Verse 26. Let us make a human to our image and likeness. Whereas he made the rest by commanding, God — as though about to make the greatest thing, and one to be preferred to all that he had made — says, as though by a kind of council: let us make. And although some say that this is to be referred to the angels, it is better referred to the holy Trinity.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Three sentences, and the middle one is the most useful thing on the Latin half of this daf. Quasi quodam concilio dicit: Faciamus — as though by a kind of council he says, let us make — is Bereshit Rabbah 8:3's be-mi nimlakh, with whom did he take counsel, in a Latin word; and the third sentence records, without naming anyone, that some say it is to be referred to the angels. That is the rabbinic bench's own primary answer, reported at Auxerre about 890 as a live opinion among Latin readers and rejected only comparatively — melius tamen, it is better referred to the Trinity, not: it is impossible. Remigius is the one Latin witness here who neither refutes the angel reading nor accepts it, and the mildness is the evidence: by the end of the ninth century the reading is in the schools as an option, and nobody on this daf says where it came from.
'Let us make' is the TrinityThe consultative form marks the creature's standingHe said it to the angels
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 1078–1100 · Segni
It is God, then, who speaks. Was it to the angels? God forbid! For man was not created by angels; otherwise there would be not one but many creators, whereas God alone is the Creator of all. For thus it is written: The Creator of all, terrible and strong (2 Macc 1:24). And again: You have made all things in wisdom (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:24]). If therefore it is true, as cannot be denied, that God alone created all things, whom was he inviting to the making of man when he said, Let us make man? Let us hear, then, what is said at the head of this book: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. You have therefore God, that is, the Father; you have also a beginning, that is, the Son — for so he himself says: I am the beginning, who also speak to you (John 8:25). But what follows? And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. You have therefore the Holy Spirit also. And that not the Father alone created heaven, but the Son and the Holy Spirit together with him, let the psalmist say: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth (Ps 33:6 [Vg 32:6]). Now the whole Trinity, that is, God and his Word and his Spirit, is one God; and it is he who says, Let us make man — not seeking help outside himself, but disposing all things within himself with his Son and the Holy Spirit.
The one Latin witness on this crux who states the negative half of the question, and he states it in the rabbinic bench's own terms. Whom was God inviting when he said 'let us make man'? Not the angels — for man was not created by angels, and otherwise there would be not one creator but many. That is R. Yitzḥak's 'no creature can say that two authorities created the world', with the angels in the place of the second authority and with the same horror of it. Having refused the answer, Bruno goes back to the head of the book for the right one, and lays the triad out in three short moves: you have God, that is the Father; you have a beginning, that is the Son; and what follows? — the Spirit of God borne over the waters, so you have the Holy Spirit too. Nothing in the argument is his own except its shape, which is a schoolman's: the wrong answer refuted first, from a premise both benches share.
Father, Beginning, SpiritNot spoken to the angels
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1114 · Liège
For next follows the forming or adorning of that same creature, and it receives from the attention of the Spirit of God as great a bettering and as great a supplying of its poverty as, in its own small measure, an egg is bettered in that it is quickened by a bird's warmth and brings forth a chick. And what do we think this spirit is, but the goodness and love of God — a love not of feelings but substantial; love, I say, and life, and living power abiding in the Son and the Father, or proceeding from both, consubstantial with Father and Son.
Rupert has the egg but not the Syrian: the image arrives already naturalized. His 'love' is Confessions XIII.9 turned Trinitarian. Not found by the plan's search; surfaced by grepping the TEI for the bird vocabulary.
Bird brooding, warmingLove, gift, weight
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
He says: let us make a human to our image and likeness. He changed his voice — he who until now had said of each single thing: let it be, and it was made; let the earth bring forth, let the waters bring forth, and it was made. But now, as though he had sat down wearied from the circuit of earth and heaven and sea, and while catching his breath it had come into his mind that one thing was still lacking which it would be fitting or needful to make: let us make, he says, a human to our image and likeness. Lord, says the prophet, let your ancient counsel be made true. Or does the counsel seem to you a small one, to have been signified by these few little sayings of the holy Trinity? A plainly great counsel was held in that counsel of Wisdom, in that — not so much a senate as a venerable soliloquy — of such persons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, concerning us sinners.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Rupert states the philological observation more plainly than anyone else on the Latin bench — mutavit vocem suam, he changed his voice — and then does something no one else does: he names the two things the change of voice could mean and rejects one of them. The counsel is non tam senatu quam soliloquio, not so much a senate as a soliloquy. That is the disagreement of Bereshit Rabbah 8:3 settled in four words, and settled the other way from where it starts. There R. Yehoshua in R. Levi's name says God took counsel with the work of heaven and earth, and the parable is of a king with two sanqlitin — Greek synklētikoi, senators — while R. Ami says be-libbo nimlakh, he took counsel with his own heart. Rupert, who has never heard of either, uses the Roman word for the first and the Augustinian word for the second, and chooses the second. Abelard chooses it too, twenty years later, and gives it a source: a man consulting his own reason makes two of himself, as in Boethius and in Augustine's Soliloquies. The image of God pausing for breath is Rupert's own and is not in the tradition.
'Let us make' is the TrinityA soliloquy, not a senate
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
Because these are the works of the creating Trinity, holy Scripture rightly triples its testimony everywhere. For there are three sayings, or rather one and the same thing said three times. God said, whose saying is doing. And so it was done, and the earth brought forth. And the first is according to the evening, that is, the secret of the Word of God, in which was life; whatever is according to the morning, that is, by the substantial bringing forth of things; and another was done according to this same morning, and a third according to the continuing day of the creature persevering in whatever manner. You will find this in all the works of the six days: God said, Let there be luminaries, and it was so, and God made two great luminaries. Again: Let the waters bring forth creeping things, and God created the great sea-creatures, and God blessed them, and so on. But in the creation of the light, God said: Let there be light, and light was made, and he divided the light and the darkness. Everywhere three words of testimony agree, because everywhere, at evening and at morning and through the whole day, the creating Trinity works. And this is the original cause of the holy and just law by which the same writer laid down that no judicial case needs more than three witnesses.
Rupert's whole design for the Hexaemeron in one paragraph, and it is the boldest thing said on this crux: the threefold formula that runs through the six days — God said, and it was so, and God made — is itself the trace of the Trinity, because the creating Trinity is at work everywhere, and Moses laid down the law of three witnesses for the same reason he wrote the chapter this way. Augustine had entertained precisely this reading at De Genesi ad litteram II and rejected it, on the ground that it would make the Son appear to act under orders and the Spirit merely to approve. Rupert takes it up anyway and generalises it past the point where Augustine's objection can be raised, by making the three words a testimony rather than a distribution of labour — and then, having done so, ties it to the law of evidence, which is a claim about how Scripture was written rather than about what happened.
The threefold formula of the six days
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · Paris
Let us make a human to our image and likeness. First he said: in the beginning God created heaven and earth. Then he said: let there be light; here, thirdly, he adds: let us make a human, etc. In this three advances may be named. First the work, then the informing word, thirdly the counsel — by this, that he here adds: let us make a human, etc. Nor does he bring in counsel because he could not equally well make both great things and small; but in order to show the dignity of the human that was created, and to make us careful not to disdain to take counsel both from equals and from lesser people — since he himself so speaks to the angels, by whose ministry perhaps the human body was formed. Or, what is better, let us take it that it was the counsel of the Trinity, and that by the plural word there is a distinction of persons; and by this, that he adds in the singular, to our image and likeness, a unity of essence.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The one place on the Latin bench where the angel reading is not merely reported but taught, and taught as a moral. Hugh gives the change of formula a shape — work, informing word, counsel, three advances across Gen 1:1, 1:3 and 1:26 — and then draws from the third the lesson that we should not disdain to take counsel from equals and from lesser people, since he himself so speaks to the angels. He goes further than any rabbinic witness on this daf dares to: quorum ministerio forsitan formatum est corpus hominis, by whose ministry perhaps the human body was formed, which is the thing Basil calls a Jewish fiction and Bruno says would make many creators. Only then comes vel quod melius est, or what is better — the counsel of the Trinity. So the school of St Victor about 1130 holds both readings, prefers the second, and gets from the first exactly the moral Bereshit Rabbah 8:8 gets: that the great should consult the small, and that the Creator did it first. Hugh's ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram is called singular in the last clause; he means the singular of Gen 1:27, and the sentence is loose in the printed text.
He said it to the angels'Let us make' is the TrinityThe consultative form marks the creature's standing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 1133 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
It is to be noted that in this very opening of Genesis the prophet carefully expressed the foundation of our faith concerning the unity of God and the Trinity. For when he said 'the Spirit of the Lord', he plainly distinguished at once both the person of the Holy Spirit and that of the Father, from whom that Spirit principally proceeds, as blessed Augustine records. But in that he added 'God said', he openly expressed God's own saying, that is, his Word, which is the Son, together with the Father himself. For no one of sound head can be so foolish as to reckon this saying corporeal, since the Godhead is not corporeal, nor has it to speak in a bodily way, nor was there yet anyone present to whom it would have had to speak bodily. Now where we say 'God created', for what is 'God' the Hebrew has Eloim, which shows a plurality of divine persons. For El is singular, which is interpreted 'God'; but Eloim is plural, by which we understand the diversity of the persons, of which each one is God. But why is it said 'Eloim created' and not 'they created'? — namely, so that a singular verb should be referred to a plural noun; in order that it might be intimated that in those three persons not three creators but one only is to be understood. When therefore he said 'Eloim created', in which he taught that the divine persons work equally together, he assuredly laid down beforehand that the works of the Trinity are undivided. And when afterwards, as we have said, he distinguished the persons of the Father and the Spirit and the Word, he determined wherein that Trinity consists.
The star witness of this crux, and the only place on the Latin bench where the Hebrew word is brought to Gen 1:1 at all. Abelard knows that El is singular and Eloim plural, and he asks the exact question the midrash asks — why 'Eloim created' and not 'they created'? — and answers it by the concord: a singular verb referred to a plural noun, so that in those three persons one creator is understood and not three. From which he draws the technical doctrine, opera Trinitatis indivisa. Where he got the grammar is unknown: Jerome's note that the Hebrew word is common in number sits at Gen 6:2 and is about the sons of God, and no Latin before Abelard brings it forward to the first verse. What he does not have is the rest of the Hebrew: he reads the plural as a plurality of persons, which is the one thing the rabbinic bench never lets it mean, and Ibn Ezra will refute the reading twenty years later without ever having heard of him. Note also the first half of the passage, where the Trinity is got out of the sequence of the verses rather than the noun — Spirit and Father from 'the Spirit of the Lord', Word and Father from 'God said' — which is Augustine's method and needs no Hebrew at all.
Eloim is plural: three personsThe verb is singular, so one makerFather, Beginning, Spirit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1133 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
The excellence of this creation he plainly intimates, when, speaking as though out of a kind of counsel, he says: let us make. But why is it said in the plural — let us make a human to our image — if there is no plurality at all in God, who alone is afterwards recorded to have created the human to his own image in these words: and God created the human to his own image, to the image of God he created him? Let the Jews say, if they can, or else confess with us that in the one essence of the Divinity there is a plurality of persons rather than of things. Considering this carefully, the prophet says in the plural, in order to make a distinction of persons: let us make; and in order to assign the unity of God he added in the singular: and God created the human, etc. So, then, as someone speaking with himself sets up himself and his own reason as though they were two when he consults it — as Boethius does in the book *On the Consolation of Philosophy*, or Augustine in the book of *Soliloquies* — so God the Father, as though inviting both Wisdom and Goodness, that is the Son and the Holy Spirit, to the creation of the human, says: let us make him such and so great, that he may be our image or likeness.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The same man who is this crux's star witness on Eloim at Gen 1:1, asking the same question at the other verse, and the two pages should be read together: at 1:1 the evidence is a Hebrew noun that is plural in form beside a singular verb, and here it is a Latin verb that is plural in form beside a singular verb three lines later. Both times the argument runs the same way — the plural gives the persons, the singular gives the one creator — and both times it is addressed to Jews by name: dicant Judaei si possunt. What is new here is the analogy, and it is the most interesting thing on the Latin bench for this daf. A man who consults his own reason 'sets up himself and his reason as though they were two', as Boethius does in the Consolation and Augustine in the Soliloquies. That is R. Ami's answer at Bereshit Rabbah 8:3, be-libbo nimlakh — he took counsel with his heart — used to prove the opposite conclusion: for R. Ami the inward counsel shows that no second party was involved, for Abelard it shows how a real plurality can speak in one mouth. Rupert had reached the same figure sixteen years earlier and called it a soliloquy without naming the book.
Eloim is plural: three persons'Let us make' is the TrinityA soliloquy, not a senateThe verb is singular, so one maker
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 1140 · Regensburg
'And the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters,' or 'was warming the waters,' that is, was giving life to all that was to be brought forth from the waters. And note the Trinity: to God the Father is ascribed the creation of the world, to the Son the disposing of things, to the Holy Spirit the quickening, or adorning, of all.
By 1140 'vel aquas fovebat' is offered as a bare variant reading, no Syrian, no bird: the image has become a lemma.
Bird brooding, warmingThe Trinity named
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1169–1173 · Paris
But Moses prophesied God alone to be eternal, and the world created without pre-existing matter. And it was created in the beginning, that is, in the Son; and 'in the beginning' is to be repeated thus: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, in the beginning, namely, of time. For the world and time are coeval. And as God alone is eternal, so the world is everlasting, that is, always eternal, eternal in a temporal way; the angels too are everlasting. Or: in the beginning of all creatures he created heaven and earth, that is, he made these primordial creatures, and made them at once.
The settlement, stated as a rule of reading: iterandum est in principio — say the phrase twice. Once it means in the Son, once it means at the beginning of time, and Comestor then adds Bruno's third sense as an alternative, in the beginning of all creatures. Augustine had listed the three as questions; the handbook that taught Europe the Bible for three hundred years prints all three as the answer and instructs the reader to take the words over again for each. Note the distinction Comestor needs and that the English must keep: God alone is aeternus, the world and the angels are sempiternus, everlasting — 'eternal in a temporal way'. The preceding columns, where he sets Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus against Moses, are not sliced here; that doxography is Remigius' material and belongs with K4.
Say the phrase twiceIn the SonIn the beginning of timeFirst of all things
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1169–1173 · Paris
Then it is added concerning the creation of the human thus: let us make a human, etc. (Gen 1). And the Father speaks to the Son and the Holy Spirit. Or it is as it were the common voice of the three persons, 'let us make', and 'our': and the human was made to the image of God, as regards the soul.
⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. The handbook settling it, and the interest is in what it settles and what it leaves standing. Comestor gives two readings without ranking them: the Father speaks to the Son and the Holy Spirit — which is Ambrose's and Basil's answer, refused by Augustine on the ground that ad imaginem nostram would then have to be tuam or meam — or the plural is the common voice of the three, which is Augustine's. He does not notice that the first is the one Augustine wrote two books to exclude, and neither reading is argued for. The angels are not mentioned at all: between Hugh at St Victor about 1130, who teaches the angel reading as a moral and grants the angels a possible ministry in forming the body, and the Historia scholastica about 1170, which is the book every priest in Latin Europe will be examined on, the option has simply dropped out of the syllabus.
The Father speaks to the Son'Let us make' is the Trinity
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
see every crux on this verse →
One grammatical fact, three benches, three incompatible conclusions — and it is the same fact each time. Bereshit Rabbah 1:7 observes that the plural-looking Elohim takes singular verbs throughout: vaydaberu is not written but vaydaber, vayomeru is not written but vayomer, bare'u is not written but bara — and concludes that no creature can say that two authorities created the world. Abelard, at the Paraclete about 1133, asks the identical question in Latin — unde dictum est Eloim creavit, non creaverunt? — and answers that a singular verb is referred to a plural noun so that in those three persons one creator should be understood and not three, from which he derives the technical doctrine that the works of the Trinity are undivided. Ibn Ezra, at Lucca about 1155, closes the same argument with the same clause — 'and for this reason Scripture says bara and not bare'u' — having first shown that the plural is simply how the Holy Tongue speaks of the great, as adonim and be'alim are plural for one master and as a king in Arabic speaks of himself in the plural. And Ramban, a century later with Ibn Ezra in front of him, refuses to let the plural be empty at all: the word is a compound, el hem, the force and all the other forces, and 'a secret will yet be disclosed in connection with this'. Nobody is answering anybody. Three of the four could not have read each other, and the fourth is reading only within his own bench.
What makes Abelard's page the strangest thing on this daf is that the Latin bench had the information for six hundred years and never used it here. Jerome knew that the Hebrew word is common in number and said so — verbum Hebraicum ELOIM communis est numeri, et Deus quippe et dii similiter appellantur — but he says it at Genesis 6:2, about the sons of God, and Rabanus copies him there verbatim, and neither brings it forward to the first verse. Every other Latin witness on this crux gets its Trinity from the sequence of the sentences rather than from any Hebrew word: the Father in the name of God, the Son in the name of the Beginning, the Spirit borne over the waters. That is Augustine's triad, and he calls it a riddle — ecce apparet mihi in aenigmate Trinitas — and states the order of his own search plainly, that he already held two of the three and believed the third and went looking for it in the holy sayings. Bede, Bruno, Honorius and the Glossa repeat the triad and none of them repeats the word riddle. In the unfinished commentary Augustine is franker still: he sets out the catholic faith before expounding a syllable, because many heretics drag the Scriptures to their own opinion.
The rabbinic bench, meanwhile, preserves a memory of the whole problem as a translation problem. Megillah 9a's baraita has seventy-two elders shut in seventy-two houses writing the Torah for Ptolemy, and the first two things on the list of what they changed are the two verses the Latin bench builds on: they wrote 'God created in the beginning', moving the divine name to the front so that bereshit could not be read as a subject, and they wrote 'I shall make a human', singular, for the 'let us make' of Gen 1:26. Both changes remove a plurality from the opening of Genesis. Neither is in the Septuagint the Church actually inherited, whose first verse keeps the Hebrew order and whose Gen 1:26 keeps the plural. So the Latin reading of both verses stands in exactly the space the elders are said to have closed — and Bruno of Segni, refuting it at Segni about 1090, refuses the plurality in the rabbinic bench's own words: was he speaking to the angels? God forbid, for otherwise there would be not one creator but many.
At Gen 1:1 nobody is answering anybody. One verse over, at Faciamus hominem, they are, and the daf now carries the evidence. Basil reports the rabbinic reading by name — ferunt enim, quod angelis dixerit: Faciamus hominem — and it is what Targum Pseudo-Jonathan prints in the biblical line itself; he refutes it with Fecit Deus hominem: non fecerunt, which is R. Simlai's own proof at Bereshit Rabbah 8:9 turned around. Bereshit Rabbah 8:8 has Moses stop while writing the verse to ask why God is giving the minim an opening, and is told to write it and let whoever wants to err, err. So on this verse each bench knows what the other does with the words and says so, which is not true of the first verse at all. The deeper contact is the one neither side could have arranged. R. Yoḥanan at b. Sanhedrin 38b lists the plural verses with their singular refutations beside them, and the first two are Gen 1:26 answered by Gen 1:27 and Gen 11:7 answered by Gen 11:5; Augustine's De civitate Dei XVI.6, in a chapter headed de locutione qua Deus Angelis loquitur, takes the same two verses in the same order and applies the same test, refusing the angels at the first because of the image clause and granting them at the second because nothing forbids it; and the Glossa Ordinaria joins the same pair at PL 113:114D. Three benches choose the same two verses out of the Pentateuch by the same criterion and test them the same way, and none of them has read another. The pairing is not borrowed. It is what the Hebrew does to anyone who reads it carefully, and the disagreement that remains is only about what the plural was doing there — a court of angels, a plurality of persons, the earth beside its maker, or nothing at all.