PhiloAlexandria, c. 40
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
Both the breath and the light were counted worthy of a privilege: the one he named God's, because breath is the most life-giving thing, and God is the cause of life; and of the light he says that it is surpassingly beautiful (Gen 1:4). For the intelligible is more radiant and more full of brightness than the visible by as much as the sun, I think, is than darkness, and day than night, and the mind, the leader of the whole soul, than the eyes of the body.
The question this crux is built on, asked as a question about privilege rather than about identity. Philo notices that of everything in the inventory only two things are given something extra: the breath is called God's and the light is called beautiful. Then he asks why, and the answer for the breath is functional, not personal: pneuma is named God's because breath is the most life-giving of things and God is the cause of life. That is neither the targums' wind from before the Lord nor the Latin bench's third person of the Trinity; it is a reason drawn from what breath does. Augustine at Confessions 13 asks Philo's exact question, why only the Holy Spirit was borne above the waters, and answers from the doctrine of the Trinity. The other half of the sentence belongs to K8: the light of the first day is praised because the intelligible outshines the visible as the mind outshines the eyes, which is the comparison the whole Latin argument about a spiritual light is trying to make and never states this cleanly.
Named God's because it gives lifeAn intelligible light, model of the sun
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
Patres378–720
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 · 388–389 · Thagaste
As for what is written, 'And the Spirit of God was borne above the water,' the Manichees are in the habit of carping at it thus: 'So the water was the dwelling of the Spirit of God, and it contained the Spirit of God?' They try to twist everything with a perverse mind, and are blinded by their own malice. When we say 'the sun is borne above the earth,' do we mean by this that the sun lives in the earth and that the earth contains the sun? And yet the Spirit of God was not borne above the water the way the sun is borne above the earth, but in another way, which few understand. For that Spirit was not borne above the water across the spaces of place, as the sun is borne above the earth, but by the power of his invisible loftiness. Let these people tell us how the will of a craftsman is borne above the things that are to be made.
Augustine's first answer, against the Manichees: the verb is about power, not position. The craftsman's will (voluntas fabri) is born here and becomes the Carolingian bench's stock answer.
Power, not place
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 391 · Bethlehem
'And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' For what our copies have as 'was borne,' the Hebrew has MERAHEFET, which we may render 'was brooding' or 'was warming,' in the likeness of a bird quickening her eggs with her heat. From this we understand that it is not said of the spirit of the world, as some suppose, but of the Holy Spirit, who is himself called the giver of life to all things from the beginning. And if giver of life, then consequently creator; and if creator, then God. 'Send forth,' he says, 'your Spirit, and they shall be created' (Ps 104:30).
Jerome claims the bird from the Hebrew verb itself, not from the Syrian. His bird broods and warms (incubare, confovere); Ben Zoma's hovers and does not touch. Same verb, opposite physical picture. The star thread's Latin end.
Bird brooding, warming
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 393 · Hippo Regius
'And the Spirit of God was borne above the water.' He was not borne above it as oil is above water, or water above earth, that is, as though he were contained; but, if examples are to be taken from visible things for this, as the light of the sun or moon is borne above the bodies it illuminates on earth: for it is not contained in them, but, while it is contained by the sky, it is borne above them. Likewise we must take care not to think the Spirit of God is borne above matter as though across spaces of place, but by a certain effecting and fashioning force, so that what he is borne above is effected and fashioned; as the will of a craftsman is borne above the wood, or above whatever thing is set under him to be worked, or even above the very limbs of his own body, which he moves in order to work.
The craftsman image sharpened: will over wood, will over one's own limbs. Remigius, Bruno and Hugh's 'artifex' all come from here.
The craftsman's willPower, not place
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 · c. 400 · Caesarea in Cappadocia
How, then, was this Spirit borne above the waters? I will tell you not my own account but that of a certain man, a Syrian by birth, who was as far from the wisdom of this age as he was reckoned near to true doctrine. He used to say that the Syrian tongue is the more expressive, and that because of its kinship with Hebrew it comes closer to the idiom of the Scriptures. The sense of his saying, then, is this: 'was borne above,' he says, means that the Spirit warmed and quickened the nature of the waters, in the likeness of a hen sitting on her eggs, putting a living power into the things that were being warmed. So the reason for the phrase 'was borne above' is explained thus: he was driving the nature of the waters toward being quickened. From this the point that some so insistently demand can be sufficiently proved: that the Holy Spirit does not lack generative power.
Basil, Hexaemeron II.6, delivered in Greek in 378; the Latin bench read it in Eustathius' version (c. 400). The unnamed Syrian is the source of the whole Latin 'warming' line: Ambrose, Augustine, Rupert, Abelard, Comestor all descend from this paragraph. Basil's bird is a hen (gallina); Jerome's, independently, is a generic volucris.
Bird brooding, warming
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
But before all else let us remember, as we have already said at length, that God does not work by temporal motions, as it were of his mind or body, as a man or an angel works, but by the eternal, unchangeable and stable reasons of his Word, coeternal with himself, and by a certain — if I may so put it — brooding warmth of his Holy Spirit, equally coeternal. For even what is said in Greek and in Latin of the Spirit of God, that he 'was borne above the waters,' according to the sense of the Syriac tongue, which is neighbor to Hebrew (for this is reported to have been explained by a certain learned Syrian Christian), is held to mean not 'was borne above' but rather 'was warming.' Not as swellings or wounds in the body are warmed with water, whether cold or tempered to a fitting heat; but as eggs are warmed by birds, where that heat of the mother's body in a way assists even the forming of the chicks, through a certain affection of love after its kind.
Augustine's mature answer joins his own 'power not place' to the Syrian's warming and adds the mother-bird's love. He cites the Syrian at one remove ('fertur'), almost certainly through Ambrose.
Bird brooding, warmingPower, not place
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 620 · Seville
'And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' The Spirit of God was already being borne over our dark and fluid heart, as over waters: that standing in him we might find rest, be quickened by his breath, and be washed in his wave.
Isidore does not answer the physical question at all; the waters are the heart. The allegorical reading the Glossa will carry in its margin.
Over the heart
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
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
VersionesLXX · Vulgate
greek jewish · c. 250 BCE · Alexandria
But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water.
ἐπεφέρετο ('was borne upon') is the reading every Latin 'ferebatur / superferebatur' descends from. The Greek already drops the bird: the verb is motion-over, not brooding.
Borne over
English: Brenton 1851
latin · c. 392 · Bethlehem
But the earth was empty and void, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.
Jerome's own Vulgate keeps the Old Latin/LXX 'ferebatur' even though his Hebrew Questions (same decade) insist the Hebrew means brooding. The Latin bench inherits the verb he declined to change. PL 28 prints Jerome's text without 'erant' and flags the Vulgate's addition.
Borne over
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
מפרשיםTargums · Midrash · Bavli · Rashi
rabbinic · c. 200 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was spread over the face of the deep, and a wind from before the LORD was blowing over the face of the waters.
Onkelos makes two decisions at once: ruach is a wind, not a spirit, and 'from before the LORD' keeps God at a remove; merahefet becomes menashva, 'blowing'. No bird, no hovering. Etheridge's PD English exists on Sefaria but did not return by version title; fetch from archive.org.
A wind
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
rabbinic · 100–400 · Palestine
In the beginning, with wisdom, the Word of the LORD created and perfected the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and empty, desolate of human and beast, empty of all tillage of plants and of trees; and darkness was spread over the face of the deep, and a spirit of mercy from before the LORD was blowing over the face of the waters.
'Spirit of mercy' answers the wind/spirit question in a third way: neither the weather nor the Holy Spirit but a divine disposition. Neofiti's 1:1 'with wisdom' is the K1 anchor. Hebrew licence on Sefaria is 'unknown' — the MS transcription is PD in substance; confirm before embedding.
Spirit of mercy
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
“And the spirit of God was hovering” – this is the spirit of the messianic king, as it says: “The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him” (Isaiah 11:2). By what merit will it [the Messianic kingdom] come? “Hovering over the surface of the water” – by the merit of repentance, that is likened to water, as it is stated: “Pour out your heart like water [before the face of the Lord]” (Lamentations 2:19). Rabbi Ḥagai said in the name of Rabbi Pedat: A covenant is made with the water, that even when the weather is hot, the wind blows over it. It happened once that Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma was sitting, entranced in thought. Rabbi Yehoshua passed and greeted him once, twice, but he did not answer him. The third time, he answered him with a start. He said to him: ‘Ben Zoma, where were your thoughts?’ He said to him: ‘I have been contemplating.’ He said to him: ‘As the heavens and the earth are my witnesses, I shall not move from here until you inform me where your thoughts were.’ He said to him: ‘I was looking at the act of Creation, and [I saw that] between the upper waters and the lower waters there were only two or three fingerbreadths. “The spirit of the Lord was blowing” is not written, but rather, “was hovering” – like a bird that flaps its wings, they touch [the nest] but do not quite touch.’ Rabbi Yehoshua turned and said to his disciples: Ben Zoma is gone. Not even a few days passed with ben Zoma still in the world.
Two answers in one section. Resh Lakish: the ruach is the spirit of the King Messiah (Isa 11:2), brought by repentance-as-water. Then the Ben Zoma story: 'blowing' is not written but 'hovering' — like a bird beating its wings, touching and not touching. Note the bird is an unspecified 'of' and the claim is touching-and-not-touching; the Bavli's version has a dove and no touching at all.
Spirit of the MessiahDove hovering, not touching
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
Our rabbis taught: It once happened that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Ḥananya was standing on a step on the Temple Mount, and Ben Zoma saw him and did not rise before him. He said to him: From where and to where, Ben Zoma? He said to him: I was gazing between the upper waters and the lower waters, and between the one and the other there are only three fingerbreadths, as it is said, 'and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters' (Gen 1:2) — like a dove that hovers over her young and does not touch them. Rabbi Yehoshua said to his disciples: Ben Zoma is still outside. — Now, 'the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters': when was that? On the first day. But the dividing was on the second day, as it is written, 'and let it divide water from water' (Gen 1:6). And how much [lies between them]? Rav Aḥa bar Yaakov said: a hair's breadth. The rabbis say: like the gap between the planks of a bridge. Mar Zutra, or some say Rav Ashi, said: like two cloaks spread one over the other; and some say, like two cups tipped one upon the other.
The Bavli's Ben Zoma reads merahefet as a physical fact about distance: hovering measures the gap between upper and lower waters. The anonymous continuation then argues the gap into a hair's breadth. Steinsaltz/Davidson English is CC BY-NC and is NOT embedded; this is a fresh draft against the Wikisource Aramaic.
Dove hovering, not touching
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
rabbinic · 600–800 · Palestine
And the earth was vacancy and desolation, solitary of the sons of men, and void of every animal; and darkness was upon the face of the abyss, and the Spirit of mercies from before the Lord breathed upon the face of the waters.
Same 'spirit of mercies' as Neofiti; the verb menatva ('breathed / blew') keeps the Onkelos line. Etheridge embedded verbatim (PD).
Spirit of mercy
English: J. W. Etheridge, 1862
rabbinic · 1080–1105 · Troyes
ורוח אלהים מרחפת AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD WAS HOVERING — The throne of Divine Glory was standing in space, hovering over the face of the waters by the breath of the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, and by His command, even as a dove hovers over its nest. In old French acoveter.
Rashi's dove over the nest is the Bavli's dove (Chagigah 15a), not Bereshit Rabbah's unspecified bird. The Old French gloss acoveter means 'to cover, to brood' — which is exactly Jerome's incubabat. Rashi and Jerome, seven centuries apart, gloss the same Hebrew verb with the same vernacular sense from opposite sides. The Throne of Glory standing in the air is from a different source [CHECK: PdRE / Midrash Konen].
Dove hovering, not touchingThrone of Glory
English: Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34
ScholaeCarolingian and twelfth-century Latin, 790–1170
latin · c. 790 · Aachen
Disciple: Explain how the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. — JEROME. Master: For what our copies have as 'was borne,' the Hebrew has merephet, which we may render 'was brooding' or 'was warming,' in the likeness of a bird quickening her eggs with her heat. From this we understand that it is not said of the spirit of the world, as some suppose, but of the Holy Spirit, who is himself called the giver of life to all things from the beginning.
A Carolingian question-and-answer catena that labels its sources. Jerome quoted verbatim under his name at col. 1116C; Augustine's sun-over-earth (Gnm I.5) quoted at col. 1112D. The first witness that shows the two Latin lines (Hebrew bird, power-not-place) sitting side by side as authorities.
Bird brooding, warmingPower, not place
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 796 · Tours
Question 29. What is 'The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters'? — Answer: Not by wandering over them, but by power and a ruler's command, to form and quicken the formless matter which in this place is signified by the name of water.
Augustine compressed to one sentence for the schoolroom. Note 'Spiritus Domini' (Old Latin) not 'Spiritus Dei' (Vulgate) — the Vetus Latina lingers in Alcuin's lemma.
Power, not place
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 822 · Fulda
'And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' It is not to be supposed childishly that the creator Spirit, of whom it is written 'The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole earth' (Wis 1:7), was borne above the things to be created by position in place. Rather it is to be understood that by divine power he excelled the creatures, holding in his own power when he would illumine the abyss of waters, when he would part them into one place so that the dry land might appear, when and how he would dispose the other creatures at his nod — in the likeness, that is, of a craftsman, whose will is accustomed to be borne above the things that are to be made.
Augustine's craftsman in Rabanus' own words at col. 446D; then at 447C he copies Bede's Trinity sentence verbatim. Rabanus is the bridge by which both lines reach the Glossa.
The craftsman's willThe Trinity named
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 850 · Luxeuil
But he was borne not by place but by power, ruling and sustaining that formless matter, as the will of a craftsman is borne above the things to be made. Hence another translation well says 'was lying upon,' or 'was warming,' in the likeness of a bird quickening her eggs with her heat, so that it may be plainly understood of the Holy Spirit and not of the spirit of this world, as the heretics thought.
Angelomus splices the two Latin lines into one sentence: Augustine's 'not by place but by power' and Jerome's bird, the latter presented as 'another translation' and unnamed. Jerome's 'nonnulli' (some suppose) has hardened into 'haeretici'.
Power, not placeBird brooding, warming
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 900 · Auxerre
'The Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' As the mind or wisdom of some craftsman is borne above the work he is going to make, so that he may make it as he wills, so too the Holy Spirit was borne above, fore-ordaining and as it were arranging what, and in what manner, he willed to make.
Augustine's craftsman, now with 'wisdom' — the Spirit as the plan before the work. Remigius also gives a moral reading at col. 55D (the fluid hearts of men).
The craftsman's will
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1100 · Segni
But the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, because, like a good craftsman, he was even then arranging to make this so manifold variety of creatures that we see. So we too, for example, when about to build a house, looking over the timber with eye and mind, assign some pieces to beams, some to columns, and others to other uses.
The craftsman becomes a house-builder sorting timber. The digitization reads 'Dei. vero' — the PL plate should be checked for the stop.
The craftsman's will
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 · c. 1130 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
'And the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters.' The Hebrew has 'was fluttering over the face of the waters.' One translation has 'was warming the waters,' another 'was borne over the waters,' as does the present one we have in hand, which first comes to us to be expounded. […] Another translation, as we said, also has 'and the Spirit of the Lord was warming the waters,' after the manner of a bird that sits upon an egg to warm and quicken it; whence we rightly call the Holy Spirit the giver of life. And that confused mass is well compared to an egg not yet quickened or formed, in which, as in an egg containing four things in itself, the four elements are comprised…
The one Latin witness who reports the Hebrew as 'fluttering' (volitabat) — which is what merahefet means in Deut 32:11 and what Ben Zoma and Rashi hear — rather than Jerome's 'brooding'. He keeps 'warming' only as 'a certain translation'. Where did Abelard get volitabat? Not from Jerome. A Jewish informant is possible [CHECK]. The excerpt spans cols 735B–735D; the middle is elided in the English.
FlutteringBird brooding, warming
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · Paris
'And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' He calls 'the Spirit of God' his intention, who like a craftsman presided over the work to be formed; 'the waters' he calls that mist, on account of its mobility; and so he names the same thing now 'abyss' for its depth, now 'darkness' for the absence of light, now 'waters' for its mobility.
The most physical Latin reading: the waters are a mist of mixed elements, the Spirit is God's intention. Hugh's Adnotationes are the literal school; his De sacramentis treats the same verse theologically. The TEI reads 'praecerat' for 'praeerat'.
The craftsman's will
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
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 · c. 1170 · Paris
The Hebrew has, for 'was borne above,' 'was brooding,' or in the Syriac tongue 'was warming,' as a bird her eggs. In this, too, the whole beginning of the world being born is noted, together with its governance. Plato misunderstood this passage, thinking it was said of the world-soul. But it is said of the Holy Spirit creating, of whom we read, 'Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created' (Ps 104:30).
The textbook of the schools fuses Jerome's Hebrew and Basil's Syriac into one sentence and adds a new opponent: Plato's world-soul, i.e. William of Conches and the Chartres reading of the Spirit as anima mundi. The bird has become a proof against philosophers.
Bird brooding, warming
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1322–1332 · Paris
And the spirit etc. the waters, that is, over that heap and commixture of the elements spoken of above; and it is called by the name of waters because, as has been said, the water itself covered the earth and was mixed with the other two elements in the way described. And the spirit of God is taken here as the will, which was borne over that heap of the elements, as the will of the craftsman is borne over the material he means to form and to furnish.
The craftsman analogy at the end of its life, and shortened to a clause. Augustine put it as a question about how a will can be borne over anything; Rabanus made it a simile, like a craftsman whose will is borne above the things to be made; Remigius and Bruno each restated it. Lyra states it as a gloss, without argument and without naming anyone, because by 1330 it is simply what the words mean: spiritus Dei, id est voluntas. What he adds is the object. The other Latins have the craftsman's will over his work; Lyra has it over a specific physical thing he has just described, the heap and commixture of the elements with the water lying over the earth, and the two verbs are formare et ornare, which are the two halves of the chapter as the schools divided it, the work of distinction and the work of ornament. The Spirit is not hovering over water on this page. It is a will directed at a job of work whose stages the commentary has already named.
The craftsman's willPower, not place
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
see every crux on this verse →
Rashi's Old French acoveter and Jerome's incubabat are the same word for the same Hebrew, with no contact. Abelard is the one Latin who reports the Hebrew as 'fluttering' (volitabat), on the rabbinic side of the verb. The verb is the whole crux. Merahefet occurs once more in the Bible, of an eagle over its nest at Deut 32:11, and the Seventy flattened it to epephereto, was borne upon — a verb of motion over a surface with no bird in it — and Jerome, who knew better and said so in the Hebrew Questions, left ferebatur standing in the Vulgate anyway. So the Latin bench inherited a verb its own best philologist had already corrected, and spent eight centuries putting the bird back. It came back as two different birds. Basil's unnamed Syrian has the Spirit warm the waters like a hen sitting on eggs, and that hen travels through Ambrose, Augustine, Rupert and Comestor until by Honorius vel aquas fovebat is offered as a bare variant with no Syrian and no bird attached; Jerome's is the same picture claimed from the Hebrew verb itself, incubabat, brooding. On the other bench Ben Zoma's dove hovers over her young and does not touch, and the Bavli turns the not-touching into a measurement, the gap between the upper and the lower waters argued down to a hair's breadth. Same verb, opposite physics: the Latin bird warms by contact and the rabbinic bird is defined by keeping its distance, and Rashi, taking the dove from Chagigah rather than the unspecified bird of Bereshit Rabbah, glosses it in Old French with the Latin bench's own word. The other Latin line has no bird at all. Augustine, against the Manichees, rules that ferebatur is about power and not place, and gives the image that carries the ruling, as the will of a craftsman is borne above the wood; Rabanus makes it a simile, Remigius gives the craftsman wisdom, Bruno makes him a house-builder sorting timber, and by Lyra it has shrunk to a gloss, spiritus Dei, id est voluntas, that no longer needs to say whose image it is. What neither bench does is ask the question Philo asked first: not what the spirit is but why the verse gives it something extra. Of everything in the inventory only the breath is called God's, and Philo's reason is functional, because breath is the most life-giving of things and God is the cause of life. Augustine at Confessions 13 asks the identical question, why only the Holy Spirit is said to be borne above, and answers from the Trinity and from the weight of love. Onkelos had answered it by removing it, a wind from before the Lord; Neofiti by a third route neither bench took, a spirit of mercy.