PhiloAlexandria, c. 40
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
And the world-making power too has for its spring the truly good. For if anyone should wish to search out the cause for the sake of which this all was fashioned, it seems to me he would not miss the mark in saying, as one of the ancients also said, that the Father and Maker is good; and for that reason he did not grudge his own most excellent nature to a substance which had nothing beautiful of itself, but was able to become all things. For of itself it was without order, without quality, without life, unlike itself, full of unevenness and of discord and of dissonance; but it admitted a turn and a change to the opposites and to the best things, to order, quality, ensoulment, likeness, sameness, the well-fitted, the concordant, all that belongs to the better idea.
The position the whole Latin bench spends eight centuries refusing, stated by a Jew in Greek before any of them, and stated without embarrassment. There is a substance; of itself it is without order, without quality, without life, unlike itself, full of unevenness and discord; and God, being good, did not grudge it his own best nature, so it took the turn to order, quality, ensoulment and likeness. Philo does not say where the substance came from, and he does not deny that God made it; what he does is decline to raise the question, which is what makes the passage so useful to read against Ambrose and Augustine, who cannot decline it. Ambrose knows the position by name as the hyle of the philosophers and refutes it; Augustine at Confessions 12 accepts a formless matter and insists in the same breath that God made it too; Chalcidius reports the Hebrews as confessing that hyle was generated, which is the concession Philo does not make. The vocabulary is one of the reasons the argument travelled: ataktos and apoios are the Greek behind the invisibilis et incomposita of the old Latin Gen 1:2, so what the Latin bench debates as a fact about the earth of the second verse, Philo has already stated as a doctrine about substance in general.
Matter first, then formedA craftsman needs a materialUnformed matter
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
First, then, the Maker made an incorporeal heaven, and an invisible earth, and the idea of air and of void; of which the one he named darkness, since air is black by nature, and the other the abyss, for the void is very deep and yawning. Then the incorporeal substance of water and of breath, and over all, seventh, of light, which again was incorporeal, an intelligible model of the sun and of all the light-bearing stars that were to be constituted throughout the heaven.
The passage Chalcidius is reporting when he tells the Latin west what Philo held, and the one place in this edition where a Latin witness and its named Greek source can be set side by side. Philo lists what was made first, and every item on the list is incorporeal: a heaven without body, an invisible earth, the idea of air and of void. Then he does something no other witness on this daf does, and identifies the terms of Gen 1:2 with items on that list: the darkness is the air, because air is black by nature, and the abyss is the void, because the void is deep and yawning. Water, breath and light follow, light seventh and last, itself incorporeal and the model of the sun and the stars. This is a reading of the first two verses as an inventory of models rather than a narrative of events, and it is why Chalcidius can say that those who search more deeply deny that this heaven was made in the beginning. On the other bench the same instinct is b. Chagigah 12a's ten things created on the first day, which is also an inventory and is also longer than the verse.
An incorporeal heaven and an invisible earthHeaven firstUnformed matter
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
Patres378–720
latin · 238–244 · Caesarea Maritima
'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' What is the beginning of all things but our Lord and 'Saviour of all' Jesus Christ, 'the firstborn of every creature'? In this Beginning, then, that is, in his Word, 'God made heaven and earth', as the Evangelist John also says at the opening of his Gospel: 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing.' He does not, then, say here any temporal beginning, but says that heaven and earth and all things that were made were made 'in the beginning', that is, in the Saviour. 'And the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.' 'The earth was invisible and unordered' before God said, 'let there be light', and before he 'divided between the light and the darkness', according to what the order of the discourse declares.
The head of the stream. Every Latin who reads in principio as the Son is downstream of this paragraph, and it states the reading in its strongest form: the beginning of all things is Christ, in principio means in the Word, and — the sentence the tradition kept — non ergo hic temporale aliquod principium dicit. John 1:1–3 is the proof, exactly as it will be in Ambrose and Augustine and the Glossa. Two things are worth noticing against what the later bench does with it. First, Origen reaches the Son without Ps 104:24 and without the word wisdom: the argument is from Col 1:15 and John, not from Solomon. Second, he runs straight on into Gen 1:2 and reads invisibilis et incomposita as a statement about what was so BEFORE the light and the division — a chronology, not a metaphysics — which is not what the Latin bench will make of the phrase. ✅ Verified at Phase 6 and now in the crux finding: Baehrens's apparatus to this page cites Chalcidius, Comm. in Tim. 276, and the passage was checked against the 1617 Meursius edition independently of Baehrens. Chalcidius reports that Origen had the non-temporal initium ab Hebraeis and grounds it on Prov 8:22 at length, reaching divine Wisdom as the primordium — the rabbinic bench's verse and the rabbinic bench's word, in a Latin commentary of Jerome's century, going nowhere. Chalcidius is now built, in three witnesses on this crux and two more on K5 and K6 — see `chalcidius-sapientia-primordium`. The blocker recorded here at Phase 6 was real but was about the wrong book: the only free text was uncorrected OCR of a 1617 print whose page images carry a ProQuest notice, and Waszink's Plato Latinus was thought to be needed. A clean public-domain print of 1520 exists and the passages were read on its page images. The Catena notice in the same apparatus (Origen reads ἐν ἀρχῇ as ἐν σοφίᾳ, τουτέστι τῷ υἱῷ) is still unverified and is deliberately not used in the finding.
In the Son
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 300–400 · Cordoba (?)
The Hebrews confess that hyle was generated; and the wisest of them, Moses, quickened not by human eloquence but, as they say, by divine inspiration, spoke thus from the outset in that book which is reckoned to be about the begetting of the world, according to the translation of the seventy wise men: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth. But the earth was invisible and unadorned.' But as Aquila says: 'The head of things God founded, heaven and earth. The earth, moreover, was empty, and nothing.' Or as Symmachus: 'From the outset God founded heaven and earth. The earth, moreover, was an idle something, confused and unordered.' But Origen asserts that he was persuaded by the Hebrews that the translation is in some degree drawn away from the true property of the words; for that there was in the exemplar: 'But the earth was in a certain stupefied wonder.' Yet all these, they say, run together into one, namely that the hyle which underlies the whole body of the universe was generated; and they interpret the words themselves thus.
A page that should not exist. Chalcidius is a fourth-century Latin commentator on the Timaeus, outside the Patrologia and off this edition's Latin bench, and in the middle of a Platonist argument about whether hyle was made he turns to Genesis and prints Gen 1:1–2 four times over: the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, and a reading Origen says the Hebrews gave him. Three things on this daf follow from it, and each is a first. The opening clause reports what the other bench holds and names it as theirs — Hebraei syluam generatam esse confitentur, the Hebrews confess that hyle was generated — which is the position Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 defends against the philosopher and Ramban states outright, attributed to Hebrew informants in Latin two centuries before Jerome's Hebrew Questions. Aquila's caput rerum is reshit rendered as 'head', which is the etymological reading no Latin witness on this daf reaches and which the rabbinic bench builds on; Symmachus's otiosum quid confusumque et inordinatum is a Greek rendering of tohu va-vohu that the Latin tradition later meets only as an anonymous alia translatio. And the exemplar reading Origen credits to the Hebrews, terra autem stupida quadam erat admiratione, is tohu read as astonishment — which is exactly Bereshit Rabbah 2:2's tohe u-bohe, bewildered and astonished, and Rashi's word for it. None of it reached the bench that needed it.
Matter was already thereOut of nothing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 300–400 · Cordoba (?)
'But the earth was invisible and formless' — that is, corporeal hyle, the old substance of the world, before it took on forms fashioned by the skill of God the craftsman, still then colourless and lacking every quality. And what is such is certainly held to be invisible and formless. It is called 'empty' and 'nothing' for this reason: that since it is the receiver of all qualities, it has none of its own by nature. Hyle, then, as that which receives into itself all the things that happen, is called empty, as that which can never seem able to be filled. And because it is devoid of all things, it is called nothing. But it is named 'idle' and 'undigested' by Symmachus: idle, in that of itself it avails nothing; and it is reckoned undigested in that it has the fitness to receive order from God adorning it as he sets about the world. But the signification 'stupefied, out of wonder' declares a certain force and likeness of soul, since it would be stupefied, seized by the majesty of its craftsman and author.
Tohu va-vohu given four Latin renderings in one paragraph, each explained, by the earliest Latin on this daf. Invisible and formless is hyle: the old corporeal substance of the world, colourless and without quality before the craftsman's skill gave it forms. Empty and nothing are explained by the receptacle argument in its clean Platonic form — it is called empty because it receives all qualities and has none of its own, and nothing because it is devoid of all things — which is what Augustine will grope toward in Confessions XII, calling it a nothing-something, and what the Gloss will flatten into materia informis. Symmachus's otiosa and indigesta are then glossed separately: idle because of itself it avails nothing, undigested because it has the fitness to receive order. And the reading Origen credits to the Hebrews, stupide ex admiratione, is given a psychological explanation — the earth would be stupefied, seized by the majesty of its maker. That last one is the crux's rabbinic answer arriving on the Latin bench and being taken seriously: Bereshit Rabbah 2:2 reads tohu va-vohu as tohe u-bohe, bewildered and astonished, and Rashi's word for tohu is astonishment. Alcuin, Angelomus and Hugh all know that alia translatio says inordinata, without knowing whose translation it is or that a fourth-century Latin had named him and explained the word.
The hyle is tohuUnformed matterMatter was already there
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 387 · Milan
'But the earth was invisible and unordered' (Gen 1:2). A good craftsman lays the foundation first; afterwards, the foundation laid, he distinguishes the parts of the building and adds the adornment. So, the foundation of the earth having been laid and the substance of heaven made firm — for these two are as it were the hinges of things — he wove in below: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered.' What does 'was' mean, unless it is said lest they stretch their opinion out to infinity and without a beginning, and say: See, matter, that is hyle, as the philosophers say, had no beginning even according to divine Scripture. But to those who say this you will answer that it is written: 'And Cain was a worker of the earth' (Gen 4:2). And of the man called Jubal, Scripture has: 'He was the father who showed forth the psaltery and the lyre' (Gen 4:21). And, 'There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job' (Job 1:1). Let them stop raising a question about the word, especially since Moses has said beforehand that God made the earth. It was, then, from the time it was made.
Ambrose does not argue about the pair at all; he argues about the verb standing in front of it. If the earth 'was' invisible and unordered, someone will say that the matter it was made of has no beginning, which is what the philosophers say of hyle — and the answer is grammatical and slightly impatient: Scripture says Cain 'was' a worker of the earth and Job 'was' in the land of Uz, and nobody makes them eternal. It was, from the time it was made. The image before it is the builder's: foundation first, then the parts distinguished, then the adornment, which is the order of the six days and is Basil's answer to the same question turned into a plan of work.
The world is not eternalNo seed, no living thing
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 388–389 · Thagaste
What follows in the book of Genesis, 'But the earth was invisible and unordered', the Manichaeans find fault with in this way, saying: How did God make heaven and earth in the beginning, if the earth was already invisible and unordered? So, wanting to blame the divine Scriptures before they know them, they fail to understand even the plainest things. For what could have been said more plainly than what is said here: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unordered' — that is, In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but that very earth which God made was invisible and unordered, before God set out the forms of all things in their places and seats by an ordered distinction: before he said, 'Let there be light', and 'Let there be a firmament', and 'Let the waters be gathered', and 'Let the dry land appear', and the rest, which are set forth in order in the same book in such a way that little ones can take them in? All of which hold mysteries so great that whoever has learned them either grieves over the emptiness of all the heretics, because they are men, or laughs at it, because they are proud.
The crux in the sharpest form anyone puts it, and it is put by an opponent: if God made the earth in the beginning, how was it already invisible and unordered? The objection assumes the pair describes something God had not yet made, and Augustine's whole answer is a single word of grammar — 'that very earth which God made was invisible and unordered', before he distinguished the forms of things. Everything the Latin bench does with this verse for the next eight hundred years is a development of that reading of the sentence. Note the lemma: Augustine's text is the Old Latin invisibilis et incomposita, from the Greek, and not Jerome's inanis et vacua, which he never quotes.
Unformed matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 400 · Hippo Regius
Again, as regards the understanding of the words that follow, out of all those true meanings one man takes this for himself when he says: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the deep' — that is, That bodily thing which God made was still the formless matter of bodily things, without order, without light. Another when he says: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the deep' — that is, This whole which was called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, out of which bodily heaven and bodily earth were to be made, with all the things in them known to the bodily senses. Another when he says: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the deep' — that is, This whole which was called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, out of which was to be made the intelligible heaven, which is elsewhere called the heaven of heaven (Ps 115:16 [Vg 113:16]); and earth, that is, every bodily nature, under which name this bodily heaven too is to be understood: that is, out of which every invisible and visible creature was to be made. Another when he says: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the deep' — Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth; rather, he says, that formlessness which he named 'earth invisible and unordered' and 'the dark deep' already was, and out of it, as he had said beforehand, God made heaven and earth, that is, the spiritual and the bodily creature. Another when he says: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the deep' — that is, A certain formlessness was already the matter out of which Scripture said beforehand that God made heaven and earth: namely the whole bodily mass of the world, divided into two greatest parts, the upper and the lower, with all the familiar and known creatures in them.
Augustine sets out five readings of this one clause, each introduced with the same formula, and does not choose. They differ over what the formlessness is the matter of — bodies only, or the whole of heaven and earth, or the intelligible heaven as well — and over whether Scripture called that formlessness 'heaven and earth' in verse 1 or only named it here. His point is that all five are true and none of them can be shown to be Moses' own, so a reader who insists on one against the others is defending himself rather than Scripture. This is the only place on either bench where the plurality of answers is itself the answer, and it is worth setting beside Bereshit Rabbah 2, which likewise prints four readings of the pair without adjudicating — though there the readings are of history and here they are of physics.
More than one true readingUnformed matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 400 · Hippo Regius
What then was it to be called, so as to be conveyed even to those slower of understanding, if not by some familiar word? And what can be found in all the parts of the world nearer to complete formlessness than earth and the deep? For they are less comely, in their lowest degree, than all the other higher things, translucent and full of light. Why then should I not accept that the formlessness of matter — which you had made without form, that from it you might make a world of form — was so conveniently intimated to men that it should be called 'earth invisible and unordered'? [Chapter V. Why formless matter seems to be so called.] So that when thought searches in it for what sense may reach, and says to itself, It is not an intelligible form like life, like justice, since it is the matter of bodies; nor is it perceptible by sense, since what may be seen and what may be felt is not in the invisible and unordered — while human thought says this to itself, let it try either to know it by not knowing, or to be ignorant of it by knowing.
The answer that takes the question away. The pair is not a description of the earth and not the name of a thing: it is the most serviceable word available for formlessness, chosen because earth and the deep are what slower minds already know as the least comely things there are. Augustine keeps it strictly as a name — formless matter is neither an intelligible form like justice nor anything the senses can reach, so the mind can only try to know it by not knowing. That is the exact opposite of the Chagigah baraita, which answers the same question by pointing at a green line and a heap of stones.
A name fitted to slow minds
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 400 · Caesarea in Cappadocia
'But the earth,' he says, 'was invisible and unordered.' How then, when both elements, that is heaven and earth, were built with equal honour, was heaven complete while the ground was still unordered? Or what cause was there at all that it should be less than finished, and should not be visible? The full ordering of the earth is its own fruitfulness — that is, the sprouting of all plants, and the abundance of trees bearing fruit and bearing none, and the colours and scents of flowers, and the other things which, brought forth a little later at the divine command, adorned the ground. Since none of these yet existed, the word of Scripture rightly called it unordered. And we shall be right to say the same of heaven as unfinished, since it had not taken up its own adornment either, having not yet been lit by the brightness of the sun and the moon, nor crowned with the choirs of the stars. So you will not seem to turn aside from the truth if you call heaven too unordered. But he called the earth invisible for two reasons: either because man, the beholder of it, had not yet come forth, or because, lying hidden under the waters that then stood over it, it could in no way be seen. For the waters had not yet been gathered into their own basins, which the Lord afterwards, when they were collected into one, named seas. A thing is invisible either because it cannot be grasped by bodily eyes, as our mind cannot, or because it can indeed be seen by nature but is hidden by the covering of some body drawn over it, as iron is that lies in the deep. It is in this sense, then, that the earth is now to be thought called invisible, inasmuch as it was covered by the surface of the waters. And then, since light was not yet established, it is no wonder if it was held invisible, when the air itself, lacking brightness, was dark.
The Greek pair expounded as a report on conditions, and every answer is a physical one. Unordered means not yet fruitful — and Basil is willing to say heaven was unordered too, since it had no sun or stars yet, which no Latin after him will say. Invisible means either that there was no one to see it, or that it was under water; and he adds a small definition of invisibility that a modern reader can use — invisible as a mind is invisible, or invisible as iron lying at the bottom of the sea. Ibn Ezra reaches the second of these in Lucca seven centuries later from the Aramaic rather than the Greek. The paragraph that follows in Eustathius (PL 53:880C), against those who take the pair to prove an unbegotten matter, is a different argument and belongs to K4.
Hidden under the watersNo seed, no living thing
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 620 · Seville
'But the earth was empty and void.' The earth, that is, of our flesh was empty and void, before it received the form of doctrine. 'And darkness was upon the face of the deep', because the blindness of our sins and the deep obscurity of ignorance covered our hearts.
Two sentences that found a lineage. Isidore is not asking what the earth was; he says at the head of the work that he is setting down how the Church's teachers take these things spiritually, and the earth is the flesh of the reader before it has taken the form of doctrine. Wigbod copies it verbatim, Rabanus copies it verbatim (PL 107:467A), Remigius has it at PL 131:55D, and Bruno of Segni turns the same move on the Church rather than the soul. It is the one Latin reading of the pair that does not ask a question about the world at all — and it is, in its structure, what Bereshit Rabbah 2:3 does with the generations.
The earth of our flesh
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 720 · Jarrow
'But the earth was empty and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep.' For why did he say these things of the earth, passing heaven by, unless because he wanted nothing of the sort understood of heaven? For that is the heaven above, which, set apart from all the turning state of this world, remains always at rest [in the glory of the divine foreknowledge]. As for our heaven, in which are set the lights necessary to this age, Scripture declares in what follows both how and when it was made. That heaven above, then, which is unreachable by the sight of all mortals, was not created empty and void as the earth was, which in its first creation brought forth nothing of green shoots or of living creatures — because, of course, as soon as it was created it was filled with its own inhabitants, that is, with the most blessed ranks of the angels; and that these were founded in the beginning together with heaven and earth, and at once referred their own founding, and that of the whole first creation, to the praise of the Creator, the Founder himself bears witness, who speaking to his holy servant Job says: 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?' (Job 38:4), and a little after: 'When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy' (Job 38:7).
Bede answers the crux by asking what the verse does not say. The pair is predicated of the earth and withheld from heaven, and that silence is information: the upper heaven was not empty, because it was filled with its inhabitants as soon as it was made, and Job 38:7 supplies the angels singing at the founding. It is the argument Abelard will make four hundred years later from the adversative conjunction, and the Glossa carries it in the margin at the head of verse 2. The Corpus Corporum text reads 'divinae gloria praescientiae' where Angelomus and the Glossa both have 'divinae praesentiae'; the English brackets the phrase. [CHECK the PL plate.]
Said of earth, not of heavenNo seed, no living thing
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
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
Verse 2. « But the earth was empty, » etc. [n: (BEDE, Hexaemeron, vol. II.)] He shows which heaven, and of what kind, was made in the beginning together with the earth. For he adds this of the earth, which he did not want understood of heaven. For that upper heaven, which is set apart from the turning of the world, as soon as it was created was filled with the holy angels — whom the Lord bears witness were founded in the beginning together with heaven and earth, saying in Job 38: « Where were you when the morning stars praised me, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? » He calls the same angels morning stars and sons of God. For of the heaven in which the lights are set, he says afterwards how and when it was made.
The gloss that stands at the head of verse 2 in the margin, labelled BEDA and compressing his paragraph to five sentences, keeping Job 38:7 and the two heavens. The second gloss on this lemma — Walahfrid's 'useless, unfruitful, and unordered', which is Remigius verbatim — is already on the site inside the K7 witness glossa-1-2-ruach, where Wilson's edition appended it; it is not sliced again here. A third gloss, again from Bede, follows on 'and there was darkness' and ends by naming earth and water as the unformed matter: that belongs to K4. English here is a fresh draft, superseded when Wilson's Glossa edition reaches this lemma.
Said of earth, not of heaven
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by 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)
“The earth was emptiness and disorder, and darkness was upon the face of the depths, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water” (Genesis 1:2). “The earth was emptiness and disorder [tohu vavohu]” – Rabbi Berekhya began: “Even a boy is recognized through his deeds” (Proverbs 20:11) – Rabbi Berekhya said: While the plant was still immature, it produced thorns. This is what the prophet would one day prophesy in its regard: “I have seen the land, and behold, it is emptiness and disorder” (Jeremiah 4:23).
The opening of the section, and it settles in one move what the whole rabbinic side of this crux will do with the pair: it reads it through Jeremiah. R. Berekhya begins from Prov 20:11, 'even a boy is known by his deeds' — while the plant was still unripe it put out thorns — and lands on Jer 4:23, 'I have seen the land, and behold, it is tohu va-vohu.' The prophet used the phrase of a land under judgement; so the phrase in Gen 1:2 can be read as a verdict rather than a description, and the four readings that follow in 2:2–2:5 all take that licence. Nothing on the Latin bench cites Jer 4:23 at all.
The verse tells history
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Abahu and Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon, Rabbi Abahu said: This is analogous to a king who purchased two slaves for himself, both of them with one bill of sale and with one sum. He decreed for one of them that he should be supported from the royal treasury, and for the other that he would have to toil to eat. That one sat, bewildered and astonished [toheh uvoheh]. He said: ‘Both of us were purchased with one bill of sale and one sum, yet this one is supported from the royal treasury, and I, if I do not toil, I do not eat?’ So, too, the earth sat bewildered and astonished. It said: ‘The celestial beings and the terrestrial beings were created simultaneously. The celestial beings are sustained from the radiance of the Divine Presence; as for the terrestrial beings, if they do not toil they do not eat.’ Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon said: It is analogous to a king who purchased two maidservants, both of them with one bill of sale and with one sum. He decreed for one of them that she should not depart from the palace, and for the other he decreed banishment. That maidservant sat bewildered and astonished [toha uvoha]. She said: ‘Both of us were purchased with one bill of sale and one sum, and this one does not go out and depart from the palace, but for me he decrees banishment?’ So, too, the earth sat bewildered and astonished [toha uvoha]. It said: ‘The celestial beings and the terrestrial beings were created simultaneously. The celestial beings live forever and the terrestrial beings die.’ That is why “the earth was emptiness and disorder [tohu vavohu].” Rabbi Tanḥuma said: It is analogous to the son of a king, who was sleeping in his cradle, and his wet nurse was bewildered and astonished [toha uvoha], as she knew that she would ultimately receive her punishment on his account. So, the earth foresaw that it was destined to receive its punishment on account of man, as it is stated: “Cursed is the ground on your account” (Genesis 3:17). That is why “the earth was emptiness and disorder [tohu vavohu].”
The etymology Rashi will give as lexicography is here still a parable, and the parable is about grievance. A king buys two slaves with one bill of sale and one price and decrees that one shall be fed from the treasury and the other must work to eat; the second sits toheh u-voheh — bewildered and astonished — saying, we were bought together, why him and not me? So the earth sat toheh u-voheh: the celestials and the terrestrials were created together, the celestials are fed on the radiance of the Presence and we must toil. R. Yehuda bar Simon tells it again with two maidservants, one kept in the palace and one banished, and the earth's complaint becomes mortality: they live for ever and we die. The pair is not a state of matter here but a state of mind, and it belongs to the earth, who is a person with a case to make.
Astonishment
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon interpreted the verses regarding the generations. “The earth was emptiness and disorder” – this is Adam the first man, who became oblivion and nothingness. “And disorder” – this is Cain, who sought to restore the world to emptiness and disorder. “And darkness” – this is the generation of Enosh, based on the verse: “Their actions are in the dark and they say: Who sees us and who knows of us?” (Isaiah 29:15). “Upon the face of the depths” – this is the generation of the Flood, as it is stated: “On that day all the wellsprings of the great depths were breached” (Genesis 7:11). “And the spirit [ruaḥ] of God was hovering over the surface of the water” – based on the verse: “God passed a wind [ruaḥ] over the earth” (Genesis 8:1). The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘Until when will the world conduct itself in darkness? Let some light come.’ “God said: Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) – this is Abraham. That is what is written [regarding Abraham]: “Who roused [he’ir] righteousness from the east?” (Isaiah 41:2). Do not read it as he’ir, but rather, he’ir. “God called the light, Day, and the darkness, He called Night. It was evening and it was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). “God called the light, Day” – this is Jacob. “And the darkness, He called Night” – this is Esau. “It was evening” – this is Esau; “and it was morning” – this is Jacob. “It was evening” – the evening of Esau; “and it was morning” – the morning of Jacob. “One day” – as it is stated: “There will be one day, it will be known to the Lord, that is not day and not night…” (Zechariah 14:7). Alternatively, “one day” – which the Holy One blessed be He provided him. Which is that? It is Yom Kippur.
The verse read straight through as a history of the generations: tohu is Adam, who came to nothing; va-vohu is Cain, who sought to return the world to tohu va-vohu; the darkness is the generation of Enosh; the face of the deep is the generation of the Flood; the spirit of God is the wind God made pass over the earth (Gen 8:1); and 'let there be light' is Abraham. Then day and night are Jacob and Esau. The move is exactly Bruno of Segni's in the twelfth century — the verse as a periodization running from the first man to the last redemption — and neither could have known the other; the difference is whose history it is. Note that Resh Lakish's reading of the same verse as the four kingdoms follows immediately in 2:4, which is built as a K7 witness for the Messiah's spirit; its first half belongs here too (see notes/cross-crux.md).
The verse tells history
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
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)
It was taught in a Baraita, Chaos is a green line encompassing all the world, and from it darkness springs, as it is said, (Psalms 18:12) "He made darkness His hiding place round about Him." Desolation, these are smooth stones sunk in the deep, from which waters come forth, as it is said, (Isaiah 34:11) "and He shall stretch upon it the line of chaos and the stones of desolation."
Two sentences, and they answer the crux's second question in the way no Latin does: the pair names two things, and you could point at them. Tohu is a green line that encircles the whole world and darkness comes out of it (Ps 18:12); bohu are the slimy stones sunk in the deep from which the waters come out — and the proof is Isa 34:11, 'he shall stretch over it the line of tohu and the stones of bohu', read as an inventory rather than as a curse. The baraita stands in the list of the ten things created on the first day (segments 4–5 here, which are K5's text), so tohu and bohu are creatures with a day of creation. Ibn Ezra knows this tradition from Sefer Yetzirah and sets it aside; Ramban knows it and keeps the proof-text while turning the line into a builder's measuring cord.
A green line and slimy stones
English: Sefaria Community Translation
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
תהו ובהו DESOLATE AND VOID — The word תהו signifies astonishment and amazement, for a person would have been astonished and amazed at its emptiness. תהו is estordison in old French. בהו VOID — The word signifies emptiness and empty space.
Three lines that turn the parable of BR 2:2 into a lexicon. Tohu is a word for astonishment and desolation, because a person would be astonished and appalled at the bohu in it — the emptiness is the thing seen and the astonishment is what seeing it does. Then the la'az: tohu is estordison in Old French, from estordir, to stun or daze, the word for the swimming in the head after a blow; Rashi gives the reader the sensation rather than the definition. Bohu he glosses reikut ve-tzadu, emptiness and waste — which are the two Aramaic words Onkelos used for the whole pair, in the other order. The Latins who answer this crux describe what was missing from the earth; Rashi describes what looking at it would do to you.
AstonishmentNo seed, no living thing
English: Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
“Void” (tohu) – The Ga’on [Rav Sa’adiah] said that [this word] is from “deep” (tehom), but that is not possible, since the mem of tehom is a root letter, like the mem of hadom. Now in Sefer Yetzira: “tohu - this [refers to] the green line”, and bohu - this [refers to] MEFULAM stones”. What’s correct is as the Aramaic translator has said, and likewise with “the howling, desolate tohu Deuteronomy 32:10, and likewise, “after tohu” Samuel I 12:21 – without substance. “And confused” – "The brother of", and the vav in place of the hey, like the vav in [the word] vayishtachu (“and he bowed”) Genesis 18:2, “and they pastured amongst he reeds (achu)” Genesis 41:2. The meaning is [as follows:] The creation of the firmament and the dry land was not in a area to be settled, since it was covered with water, and thus G-d placed its generative power to be beneath the water.
A grammarian clearing the ground. Saadia Gaon had derived tohu from tehom, the deep; Ibn Ezra refuses it, because the mem of tehom is a root letter, as in hadom. Then he names Sefer Yetzirah's green line and slimy stones — the baraita of b. Chagigah 12a in its other home — and sets it aside in four words: 'what is correct is as the Aramaic translator said', that is, Onkelos' tzadya ve-reikanya, waste and empty; and he proves it from 'the howling waste of tohu' (Deut 32:10) and 'after tohu' (1 Sam 12:21), where the word means without substance. Bohu is 'the brother of' tohu, its vav standing for a hey. His own answer is then physical and is Basil's: at the creation of the firmament and the dry land there was no settled place on the earth, because it was covered with water. The community translation embedded here leaves mefulamot untranslated and renders bohu as 'and confused'; it is CC0 and is kept as it stands.
Hidden under the watersNo seed, no living thing
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
This substance, which the Greeks called hyly, is called in the sacred language tohu, the word being derived from the expression of the Sages: “betohei (when the wicked bethinks himself) of his doings in the past.” If a person wants to decide a name for it [this primordial matter], he may bethink himself, change his mind and call it by another name since it has taken on no form to which the name should be attached. The form which this substance finally takes on is called in the sacred language bohu, which is a composite word made up of the two words bo hu (in it there is [substance]). This may be compared to the verse, Thou art not able ‘asohu’ (to perform it), in which case the word asohu is missing a vav and an aleph [and is a composite of the two words] aso hu. It is this which Scripture says, And he shall stretch over it the line of ‘tohu’ (confusion) and the stones of ‘bohu.’ [The tohu in Hebrew or hyly in Greek] is the line by which the craftsman delineates the plan of his structure and that which he hopes to make. This is derived from the expression, Kavei (Hope) unto G-d. The stones are forms in the building. Similarly it is written, They are accounted by Him as nought and ‘tohu,’ as tohu comes after nothingness and there is nothing yet in it. So the Rabbis have also said in Sefer Yetzirah: “He created substance from tohu, and made that which was nothing something.” They have furthermore said in the Midrash of Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah: “Rabbi Berachyah said: ‘What is the meaning of the verse, And the earth was ‘tohu’ (without form) ‘vavohu’ (and void)? What is the meaning of the word “was?” It had already been tohu. And what is tohu? It is a thing which astonishes people. It was then turned into bohu. And what is bohu? It is a thing which has substance, as it is written, [bohu is a composite of the two words] ‘bo hu’ (in it there is substance)
The one witness on either bench that makes the pair a matched technical vocabulary. The primary matter, which the Greeks call hyle, is called in the holy tongue tohu — the word derived from the rabbinic betohe, of a man who bethinks himself of what he has done, because if a man came to fix a name to this matter he would think again and call it something else, having no form to fasten a name on. The form that the matter puts on is called bohu, a compound word, bo hu, 'in it there is'. Then Isa 34:11 read as a workshop: the line of tohu is the cord by which the craftsman marks out the plan of his building, the stones of bohu are the forms in it — the same verse the Chagigah baraita read as a green line round the world and stones in the deep. He closes with Sefer Yetzirah and with the Bahir's R. Berekhya, who defines tohu as 'a thing which astonishes people' — Rashi's etymology, now describing a substance rather than a viewer. Chavel's English shows on Sefaria as CC BY, which is surprising for a 1971 Shilo text: licence key chavel-ramban is marked for checking before publication. The paragraph that precedes this one — creation from absolute nothing, and the hyle as the only thing created — belongs to K4 and is not sliced here.
Matter and its formAstonishment
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
ScholaeCarolingian and twelfth-century Latin, 790–1170
latin · c. 790 · Aachen
D. 'But the earth was empty and void' (Gen 1:2). Why empty and void? M. That is, because it was not divided off from the sea; void, he says, because it was not surrounded by shores, nor adorned with its own furnishings, that is, with trees and animals. Likewise spiritually: the earth, namely, of our flesh was empty and void, before it received the form of doctrine.
The crux asked as a schoolroom question — Cur inanis et vacua? — and answered twice, once about coastlines and once about the soul; the second answer is Isidore word for word. What makes this witness matter is not the answer but where it stands. Five columns earlier, at PL 96:1111B, the same compilation prints Augustine's Manichaean paragraph on the same verse under the Old Latin lemma, terra invisibilis et incomposita, and at 1114C it prints Augustine again on the same words. Here it reads the Vulgate's lemma and asks a different question of it. Wigbod does not notice, and neither does the reader: the two Latin texts of Gen 1:2 sit in one book without a seam.
No seed, no living thingThe earth of our flesh
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 796 · Tours
Question 30. What is: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered' (ibid., from the Septuagint version)? — Answer. Invisible because of darkness; unordered because of shapelessness.
The whole crux compressed into eight words for the schoolroom, and the most interesting thing about it is the parenthesis: 'ex vers. LXX'. Alcuin knows he is expounding a lemma that is not in the Bible his pupils carry, and says so. He splits the pair between the two answers the Latin bench will keep — invisible has to do with light, unordered with form — and gives no reason for either. Angelomus takes this answer over word for word two generations later and puts it inside a discussion of Jerome's text, where it becomes a gloss on 'the other translation'.
Hidden under the watersUnformed matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 850 · Luxeuil
There follows, verse 2: 'But the earth was empty and void.' Since he said above, 'God created heaven and earth', why is it said, 'But the earth was empty and void'? — unless because that formless matter, which is called by the name of earth, was empty and void. Empty, that is, unordered and not yet gathered into its own kinds. Void, because it was free of any fruits to be brought forth. Whence another translation says: 'unseen and unordered'. Unseen because of darkness, unordered because of shapelessness, since it was still wholly covered by the deep, that is, by the measureless depth of the waters. Whence, by what he says — 'But the earth was empty and void' — it can be understood what kind of heaven it was that he had made first: namely that, set apart from all the turning state of this world, it remains always at rest in the divine presence.
A ninth-century compiler doing, in one paragraph, what this crux exists to show. He asks the Vulgate's question, answers it with Augustine's unformed matter, then reaches for the other version — 'unseen and unordered' — and glosses it with Alcuin's eight words from Interrogatio 30, unattributed; then he turns to Bede's argument that the phrase is withheld from heaven, and copies Bede's sentence about the heaven set apart from the turning of this world. Three sources and two Latin translations, spliced without a join. His 'invisa' for 'invisibilis' is his own or his exemplar's.
Unformed matterHidden under the watersSaid of earth, not of heaven
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 900 · Auxerre
Verse 2. 'But the earth was empty and void.' That is, useless, unfruitful, and unordered. For all the elements were mingled and confused, and this whole space of air which is from the earth up to heaven was full of waters — which, however, were not of the same quality as they now are, but thin, after the manner of clouds, a quality which those waters above the heavens still keep.
Three adjectives that outlived their author. 'Useless, unfruitful, and unordered' is the gloss the Glossa Ordinaria prints on this lemma under the siglum STRAB., word for word and with the sentence about the mingled elements and the thin waters after it; from the Glossa it reaches Comestor, who keeps 'useless and unfruitful' and drops 'unordered'. The last clause is worth noticing on its own: the waters above the firmament still have the quality the primordial waters had, so that a reader can look up and see what verse 2 was talking about.
No seed, no living thingHidden under the waters
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1100 · Segni
Still, however, the earth was empty and void, still unfruitful, and the Church was without children — she whom the prophet also, comforting her for her barrenness and promising fruitfulness, addressed: « Rejoice, barren one, who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who do not travail, for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband » (Isa 54:1; Gal 4:27). But why empty and void? Because darkness was still upon the face of the deep. For no one understood the Scriptures, deep as they are and wrapped in the darkness of ignorance — which, that they may be understood, « deep calls unto deep » (Ps 42:7 [Vg 41:8]). But Christ took away this darkness when he opened the apostles' understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. For if the Jews understood them, they would take refuge in the Church; but because, as the Apostle says, « to this day, while Moses is read, a veil is placed over their hearts » (2 Cor 3:15), they are not able to understand them. But when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then, the veil taken away, Israel shall be saved (Rom 11:25). For our earth shall no longer be called empty and void, inhabited by the fullness of so many sons.
Isidore's allegory moved off the individual soul and onto history: the empty earth is the Church before she had children, the darkness on the deep is the unread Scripture, and the emptiness ends not at the third day but at the end — when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and Israel is saved, the earth will no longer be called empty and void. Structurally this is Bereshit Rabbah 2:3, which reads the same clause as the generations from Adam to Abraham and ends with the morning of Jacob; and it is Resh Lakish's four kingdoms in 2:4, which ends with the spirit of the Messiah. Three readings of one clause as a periodization of sacred history, with the same shape and opposite contents, and no possible contact. Bruno's Corpus Corporum text carries a stray '3' before 'ad Ecclesiam confugerent', which is dropped here as a printer's mark.
The verse tells historyThe earth of our flesh
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1114 · Liège
For the rest, according to what has already been said, the earth was empty and void, because the Creator had not yet separated it as dry land from the waters, had not yet made it firm, had not yet clothed it with the mantle of the stars of this heaven, had not yet furnished it with so many kinds of creatures. And so, if you consider the letter carefully, the earth was not created in the beginning with the visible appearance of its own which it now shows, but was empty — empty, that is, of every shoot which is now rooted in it — and void, namely of all the living things which now move in it.
'If you consider the letter carefully' — and the letter, considered carefully, yields a list of what was not there yet: dry land, firmness, stars, kinds. Rupert then splits the pair the way the twelfth century regularly splits it, empty of shoots and void of animals, which is Abelard's division (fruit and inhabitant) and Hugh's in the Adnotationes (seeds and shoots) with the terms moved about. None of the three cites another, and the distribution of the two terms differs each time: what they share is the conviction that the pair is a pair, and that each word must be given its own privation.
No seed, no living thing
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
'But the earth was empty and void.' Since this treatise looks especially to the creation of man, who was to be formed from the earth and to live on the earth — in which the prophet, as we have said, intending to draw man to the worship of God, turned his pen to earthly works, passing over the creation of the heavenly and higher nature, that is the angelic; lest perhaps, if he examined it and displayed its excellence to the praise of its Creator, he should draw man less to the love of God, seeing another nature preferred to himself. And so, having said first that the earth in its creation stood empty and void, he declares by the works of the later days how the divine working afterwards saw to its emptiness and its voidness. He calls the earth empty of fruit, which it had not yet brought forth; void of an inhabitant, not only of man but of every kind of living thing whatever, since as yet no dwelling, whether of land or of water, held any living things — both of which, as we have said, he takes in under the word 'earth'. And so he calls 'earth', according to what has been set out, this lower region of the world consisting of the heavy elements. And it is to be noted that when he says 'but the earth was empty and void', he hints, from that adversative conjunction set beside it, that heaven is not to be so understood — since the angels are understood to have been created either before heaven itself or together with heaven, and are called, as it were, the dwellers in heaven; so that although the prophet does not pursue their creation, he yet touches it in passing, lest anything should seem missing from his account of the divine works.
Abelard gets Bede's conclusion out of a single word. 'Terra AUTEM erat inanis et vacua': the adversative conjunction implies a contrast, so what is said of the earth is being denied of heaven, and heaven is not empty because the angels are its inhabitants — whose creation Moses passes over on purpose, lest man, drawn to the worship of God, should see another nature preferred to himself. That last reason is Abelard's own and belongs to no one else on this crux. The division of the pair — empty of fruit, void of an inhabitant — matches Rupert's and Hugh's without citing either.
No seed, no living thingSaid of earth, not of heaven
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · Paris
'But the earth was empty and void.' Empty of seeds; void of shoots; or empty on account of its hollowness; void, because in so great a hollowness of the earth there was nothing but air and mist.
The school formula at its shortest, and it gives two distributions rather than one: empty of seeds and void of shoots — or else empty because the earth was hollow and void because there was nothing in the hollow but air and mist. The second is a physical picture, and it is the one Hugh's own Adnotationes go on to develop in the sentences on the mist, the deep and the waters that are built as the K7 witness hugh-adnot-gen-1-2, immediately after this.
No seed, no living thing
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 · 1130–1137 · Paris
'But the earth was empty and void' (Gen 1) — or, as another translation has it, « unordered » — 'and darkness was upon the face of the deep' (ibid.). For by 'heaven and earth' I think there is signified in this place that matter of all things heavenly and earthly, out of which were afterwards made, one after another, in form, the things which had first been created in it together in their essence. For there 'earth' was the element of earth itself, and 'heaven' was that mobile and light confusion of the remaining three, which was carried suspended around the earth lying in the middle; and in these two was contained the matter of all bodies, heavenly or earthly, that were to be formed.
The first plain statement on the Latin bench that there is another translation of this clause. Hugh quotes the Vulgate's lemma, gives the Old Latin word in the same breath, and then goes on to Augustine's reading — heaven and earth name the matter of everything, in which all things were made together in essence before they were made one after another in form. He does not say which text is better, or where the other comes from; he simply will not let a reader think there is only one. Alcuin had named the Septuagint three hundred years earlier and then expounded the Greek lemma as if it were the Bible; Hugh names the variant while expounding the Vulgate. Wigbod printed both, five columns apart, and said nothing.
Unformed matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1170 · Paris
'But the earth was empty and void' (Gen 1) — that is, the world-machine was still useless, and unfruitful, and void of its adornment. 'And darkness was upon the face of the deep.' The same machine which he had called earth he calls the deep, on account of its confusion and darkness. Whence the Greek called it chaos.
The gloss arrives at the Paris schools in its final form: Remigius' three adjectives, minus one, applied not to the earth but to the machina mundialis, the world considered as a piece of apparatus not yet fit for use. Comestor then identifies the deep with what the Greeks call chaos, which is the classical name the earlier bench avoids — Abelard, in the sentences that follow the slice built here (PL 178:734D), had said that 'certain of the philosophers or poets called this confusion chaos' and kept his distance; Comestor states it as a fact of vocabulary. From here it goes into the Historia's readership, which is everyone.
No seed, no living thingUnformed matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1322–1332 · Paris
Empty, that is, invisible, because it was covered on every side with waters. And void, because it was not yet furnished with plants and herbs. There follows. And darkness etc. of the abyss, that is, over the face of the elements. For abyssus is so called from a, which means 'without', and byssus, which is a kind of the whitest linen; whence abyssus is as it were 'without whiteness or brightness', because a white colour has the most of light in it.
The two halves of the pair given two different physical causes, in the tersest form this crux ever reaches. Inanis is invisibilis and the reason is optical -- the earth was covered on every side with water, so there was nothing to see; vacua is unfurnished, and the reason is botanical -- no plants or herbs yet. That is Bede's and Remigius's distinction with the theology taken out and a mechanism put in. Then the etymology, which is the reason to print this passage: abyssus from a, without, and byssus, the whitest of linens, so that the abyss is what is without whiteness, because white is the colour that holds the most light. Isidore is the source of the etymological habit and not of this etymology; what Lyra does with it is make the darkness of Gen 1:2 a statement about a colour rather than about a privation, which is the Latin bench's usual answer, or about the wicked, which is the rabbinic bench's. He goes on to give abyssus a second sense, the confusion and commixture of everything below the sphere of the moon, and to date the elements' accidental properties to the third day.
Hidden under the watersNo seed, no living thing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
see every crux on this verse →
The Latin bench is not reading one verse but two. Augustine, Ambrose, Basil-in-Latin and Alcuin expound 'invisibilis et incomposita', the Old Latin of the Septuagint's ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, and answer a question about visibility and order; Jerome's 'inanis et vacua' asks instead what the earth lacked, and its heirs answer with seeds, shoots and living things. Wigbod prints both, five columns apart, without noticing; Angelomus splices them in one paragraph; Hugh of St Victor is the first to tell a reader plainly that there is another translation. Jerome himself never glosses the pair he made — the Hebrew Questions go straight from 'in principio' to 'Spiritus Dei ferebatur', and the phrase that shaped the Latin Middle Ages on this verse is left without a note by the man who wrote it. The Latin bench's second text has a head it did not know about, and the other bench's hardest word has an etymology. Philo describes the substance before God gave it form as ataktos, apoios, apsychos — without order, without quality, without life — a philosophical account of matter as such, written before the Greek Bible's aoratos kai akataskeuastos had any history of interpretation; when Basil reads that Greek clause and refutes the unbegotten matter behind it, the doctrine he is refuting is Philo's and he does not name him. Chalcidius, the one Latin who had read Philo, prints Symmachus's rendering of the pair, otiosum quid confusumque et inordinatum, and glosses tohu as stupor — terra autem stupida quadam erat admiratione — which is Bereshit Rabbah's toheh u-voheh and Rashi's astonishment, given a psychological reading on a Latin page seven hundred years before Rashi. Lyra, who read Rashi and does not take that reading here, gives the pair two physical causes, invisible because covered on every side with water and empty because not yet furnished with plants, and derives the darkness of the verse from the name of the deep: a-byssus, without whiteness, because white is the colour that holds the most light. Asked what the words mean, the rabbinic bench points at a green line encircling the world and the Latin bench takes a Greek loanword apart. Each answers with the language it happens to be reading in.