PhiloAlexandria, c. 40
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
Of the other lawgivers, some set down what were held among them to be just things bare and unadorned, while others, wrapping their conceptions about with a great bulk, blinded the multitude by hiding the truth under mythical fictions. But Moses, going beyond both, the one as unconsidered and unlaboured and unphilosophical, the other as false and full of trickery, made the beginning of his laws altogether beautiful and most solemn: he neither said outright at the start what must be done or not done, nor, since it was necessary to shape beforehand the minds of those who were to use the laws, did he invent myths or assent to those composed by others. And his beginning, as I said, is most marvellous, containing a cosmogony: for the world is in harmony with the law and the law with the world, and the man who keeps the law is at once a citizen of the world, directing his actions towards the will of nature, by which the whole world too is governed.
This crux's question asked and answered before any other witness on the daf was born, and answered in a way nobody else here even considers. Rashi asks why the Torah does not begin at Exodus 12:2, since it is a book of commandments, and answers with a claim to the land. Philo asks the same question from the same premise, that this is a book of laws and does not open like one, and answers that the opening is the law's credential: the cosmogony is there so that world and law shall be shown to agree, and the man who keeps the law shall be a citizen of the world, aligning his conduct with the nature by which the world itself is run. Where Rashi's answer is political and Ambrose's and Augustine's are apologetic, Philo's is jurisprudential. The framing is also the one every Latin here repeats without knowing whose it is: other lawgivers either wrote bare statutes or dressed them in myth, and Moses did neither. Augustine's not with ornate and polished speech but with plain facts is that same contrast with the philosophy taken out of it.
The law and the world agreeIn plain speech, for the unlearned
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
But that the world composed of the ideas should be said, or supposed, to be in some place is not lawful; how it is composed we shall know by following out an image drawn from things among us. When a city is founded out of the great ambition of a king, or of some ruler who lays claim to absolute power and, being splendid in mind, adorns his good fortune the more, there comes forward at times a man trained in architecture who, having observed the good temper and good situation of the place, first draws out within himself well-nigh all the parts of the city that is to be completed: temples, gymnasia, town halls, market places, harbours, docks, alleys, the building of walls, the setting of houses and of other public buildings. Then, having received the impressions of each of these in his own soul as in wax, he carries about an intelligible city, whose images he stirs up by the memory native to him; and stamping the characters yet more firmly, like a good craftsman, looking to the model, he begins to build the city of stone and timber, making the corporeal substances like each of the incorporeal ideas. The like must be held concerning God: that when he purposed to found the great city, he first conceived its types, out of which he composed an intelligible world, and then completed the perceptible one, using that as a model. Therefore, just as the city that was fashioned beforehand within the architect had no place outside, but was stamped upon the artificer's soul, in the same way neither would the world composed of the ideas have any other place than the divine Reason, which set these in order. For what other place could there be for his powers, one that would be sufficient to receive and contain, I do not say all of them, but a single unmixed one, whichever it might be?
The parable this crux's finding turns on, in Greek, four hundred years before the midrash that states it. A king founds a city; a trained architect, seeing the site, draws the whole plan within himself and carries an intelligible city about in his soul; only then does he build in stone and timber, looking to the model. So with God: he conceived the types, composed an intelligible world out of them, and made the perceptible one to that pattern. And the conclusion is the one that matters here: as the planned city had no place outside the architect's soul, the world of the ideas has no place but the divine Reason. Bereshit Rabbah 1:1 tells the same story with the same three parts and a different plan: a king does not build of his own head but with an amon, a craftsman's plan, and the plan the Holy One looked into is the Torah. Nobody has to have borrowed anything for that to be the most interesting fact on this daf. What separates them is what each puts in the architect's hand: for Philo the Reason of God, which is not a person; for the midrash the Torah, which is a book; and for the Latin bench the Son, which is neither. Philo's own barest statement of the identification stands at section 24, where the intelligible world is said to be nothing other than the Reason of God already engaged in creating: it is not sliced here because that section is corrupt in the TEI, which breaks off into a bracketed doublet of the word noeten in place of the clause. Nothing is lost, because section 20 says it in words that are sound.
The plan in the maker's mind
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
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
He says that 'in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth', taking the beginning not, as some think, the one according to time; for there was no time before the world, but it either came into being together with it or after it. For since time is the interval of the world's motion, and there could be no motion earlier than the thing moved, but it must necessarily be constituted either later or at the same time, it is necessary that time too came to be either of the same age as the world or younger than it; and to dare to declare it older is unphilosophical. But if the beginning taken here is not the one according to time, it would be reasonable that the one according to number is signified, so that 'in the beginning he made' is equivalent to 'he made the heaven first'. For it is indeed reasonable that it should come first into being, being the best of the things that have come to be and set fast out of the purest of the substance, because it was to be the most holy house of the manifest and perceptible gods.
The whole Latin argument of this crux, stated once in Alexandria before any of them and by a man none of them read. The beginning of Gen 1:1 is not temporal, and the reason is exactly the one Augustine, Bede, Rabanus and Rupert each reach for: time is the interval of the world's motion, there can be no motion before the thing moved, so time is the world's coeval or its junior, and to make it older is unphilosophical. Then Philo does what the Latin bench does not do: having ruled out the temporal beginning, he asks what other kind of beginning there is, and answers a beginning according to number. In the beginning he made is equivalent to he made the heaven first. That is the reading Ambrose and Bruno will call primum omnium, arrived at by elimination rather than by piety. The tail of the passage is the reason it could never have travelled as it stands: the heaven is the best of things made because it was to be the most holy house of the manifest and perceptible gods, the stars. Chalcidius, who read Philo and is the one Latin here who knew him, is also the only Latin on this daf who reproduces the argument in this shape, and he too drops the gods.
First of all thingsThe world is not eternal
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
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
The incorporeal world, then, had already reached its end, established in the divine Reason; and the perceptible was being brought to completion after the model of that one. And first of its parts, the best of them all, the craftsman made the heaven, which he rightly named 'firmament', inasmuch as it is corporeal; for body is by nature solid, since it is also extended in three directions, and what other notion is there of the solid and of body than what is extended in every direction? Fittingly, then, setting the perceptible and body-formed against the intelligible and incorporeal, he called this one 'firmament'.
Anchor note: Philo is here on the word stereoma, which the Greek Genesis has at 1:6 and not at 1:1, and the witness is anchored on 1:1 under the second clause of the anchor rule. What he is doing is answering this crux's question, what is the heaven of the first verse, and he answers it by pairing the two words: the heaven of the beginning is the incorporeal one, established in the divine Reason, and the heaven the chapter goes on to call firmament is the corporeal one, named firmament for that very reason, because body is what is extended in three directions. That is the same argument from the chapter's own vocabulary that Chalcidius makes in Latin, and Chalcidius makes it having read this book: the firmament is not called heaven until the second day, so the heaven of the beginning must be something else. Remigius reaches the conclusion, the empyrean heaven, without any argument at all, and Comestor turns it into the schoolroom formula of the container and the thing contained. Philo's version is the only one on the daf that gets there from a definition of body.
'Firmament' names the heaven as bodyHeaven first
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 (?)
But it is to be understood what heaven, or what earth, Scripture is speaking of. Those who are content with a hasty understanding think that this heaven which we see, and the earth on which we are carried, are meant; whereas those who search more deeply deny that this heaven was made in the beginning, but on the second day. For in the beginning light was made, and that was called day. But this heaven afterwards, which God called the solidity. Then on the third day, the waters being removed, the dry appeared, and the name of earth was imposed on it. So that it is evident that neither this heaven known to us, nor this earth on which we are, was made from the outset, but that there are others more ancient, to be drawn in by the understanding rather than by the senses. Scripture therefore testifies that the true heaven is one thing and the solidity another; and in the same way that the earth is one thing and the dry another. What heaven, then, did God found before the rest, or what earth? Philo judges them to be incorporeal and intelligible essences, the ideas and exemplars both of this dry land and of the solidity. And finally he says that the human too was first intelligible, the archetypal exemplar of the human race, and only then made corporeal by God. Others not so: but that the prophet, knowing that there are two species of all things, one intelligible and one perceptible, called those powers which embrace and contain both natures 'heaven and earth' — heaven being the incorporeal nature, and earth that which is the substance of bodies, which the Greeks call hyle.
The oldest Latin statement of this crux on the daf, and it arrives with an apparatus nobody after him has. The question is put exactly as the twelfth century will put it — what heaven and what earth does Scripture mean? — and answered by a chronology within the chapter itself: the firmament is called heaven on the second day and the dry is called earth on the third, so the heaven and earth of the first verse cannot be the ones we see, and must be older and intelligible rather than sensible. That is Remigius's empyrean and Comestor's container-and-contained argument, six hundred years early. What is unique to Chalcidius is the sourcing. He names Philo, who does not appear anywhere else in this edition and whom the Latin bench of Gen 1 never cites: heaven and earth are the incorporeal ideas and exemplars, and the human too was intelligible before he was corporeal. Then he reports a second school — alii non ita — for whom the two names are the two species of all things, the intelligible and the perceptible, earth being the substance of bodies, quam graeci hylen uocant. The Greek word is printed in Greek type in the 1520 edition. On the other bench the same question is Beit Shammai against Beit Hillel at b. Chagigah 12a, and the same instinct is R. Akiva's, that the et of the verse must include something more than what is named.
A name for the whole creationThe empyrean heaven
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 (?)
That the beginning spoken of is not in any way temporal. For there was no time at all before the furnishing of the world, and the alternations of day and night, by which the spaces of time are measured. Then, that 'beginning' has many significations: as Solomon said that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Prov 1:7). Likewise, the beginning of wisdom is the worship of God. And no less is a just act the beginning of a good life. And also, in the proclamation of wisdom, the heavenly author says: 'The beginning of life is bread, and water, and a garment, and a house fit for covering what is shameful' (Sir 29:21). For in these there is not one signification of 'beginning' but a various and manifold one.
The argument that the Latin bench will make for eight hundred years, made once in the fourth century by a man none of them read. The beginning of Gen 1:1 is not temporal, and the reason is the one Augustine, Bede and Rabanus each reach independently: there was no time before the world was furnished, because time is measured by the alternation of day and night, which the chapter has not yet reported. Then Chalcidius does what nobody else on this daf does — he asks what the WORD can mean, and answers with a list of ordinary Latin uses drawn from Scripture: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, a just act is the beginning of a good life, bread and water are the beginning of life. That is a lexical argument, not a doctrinal one, and it clears the ground for a beginning that is neither a date nor a person. The 1520 print carries a variant here, marked with a dagger in the margin as uiae optimae for uitae bonae — the beginning of the best way rather than of a good life; the sense is not affected and the reading printed in the line is kept.
In the beginning of timeThe world is not eternal
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · 300–400 · Cordoba (?)
There is nevertheless one beginning of all things, concerning which Solomon says in the Proverbs: 'God created me the path of his progression, leaning upon which he might accomplish his divine works; and he established me before the rising of the world, and before the founding of the earth and of the deep, before the drawing of the springs and the heaping up of the mountains' (Prov 8:22–25). Plainly indicating that heaven and earth were made with divine Wisdom going before, and that this same divine Wisdom is the first beginning of the universe. From which it appears that Wisdom was indeed made by God, but not at any point in time. For there would have been no time at all in which God was without Wisdom.
The single most important page in this edition for what K1 turns out to be about, and the finding already rests on it. Chalcidius reaches the gloss both benches reach — the beginning of Gen 1:1 is Wisdom — and he reaches it from Prov 8:22, which on this daf is the rabbinic bench's verse and nobody else's: R. Hoshaya at Bereshit Rabbah 1:1 and Targum Neofiti's min qadmin be-ḥokhmah are the other witnesses to it, and the four Latins who reach wisdom all reach it from Ps 104:24 instead. He quotes Prov 8:22 at length, in a Latin unlike the Vulgate's (progressionis suae semitam for uiarum suarum), draws the conclusion in the rabbinic bench's own terms — divine Wisdom is the primordium of the universe — and then does the one thing that separates him from every Latin after him: he stops. Wisdom is made by God but not in time; it is not said to be the Son, and the name of Christ does not appear. Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Bede, Alcuin and the Gloss all take the last step. Chalcidius, who is the earliest of them and has the better verse, does not, and none of them read him.
In WisdomIn the beginning of time
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
latin · c. 387 · Milan
Have men taken up so much opinion that some of them set up three principles of all things — God, and the exemplar, and matter — and asserted that these are incorruptible and uncreated and without beginning, as Plato and his disciples do; and that God made the world not as the creator of matter but as a craftsman looking to an exemplar, that is, to an idea, out of the matter which they call hyle, which is said to have given the causes of generation to all things; and thought the world itself too incorruptible, neither created nor made? Others also, as Aristotle with his followers thought fit to argue, laid down two principles, matter and form, and a third along with them, which is called operative, to which it should belong to bring about fitly what it had judged should be undertaken.
The opening sentence of the Hexaemeron, and the whole Latin bench's account of the opposition is settled in it. Plato: three principles, God and the exemplar and matter, all three incorruptible, uncreated and without beginning, with God a craftsman looking to an idea rather than the maker of the stuff — and the stuff is named, hyle. Aristotle: two principles, matter and form, with a third operative one. Every later Latin witness on this crux repeats one or both lists, usually without naming Ambrose: Remigius has the three at PL 131:53D (K1 sliced it), Hugh of St Victor has them as opifex, materia and forma, Comestor has all three philosophers with Epicurus added and hyle spelt ile. What none of them repeats is the reason Ambrose gives immediately afterwards for Moses' having written as he did — that passage is at PL 14:124B and was built for K1 as ambrose-hex-1-2, so this crux takes the doxography and leaves the answer where it stands.
God, exemplar, matterMatter was already there
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
Finally it was not in the persuasion of human wisdom, nor in the counterfeit disputations of philosophy, but in the showing of the Spirit and of power, as a witness of the divine work, that he dared to say: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Not he, so that the world should come together by a concourse of atoms […]. For a man full of prudence perceived that the divine mind alone contains the substances of things visible and invisible, their origins and their causes — not, as the philosophers dispute, that a stronger interlacing of atoms furnishes the cause of unbroken endurance: but he judged that they were weaving a spider's web who gave such minute and unsubstantial first principles to heaven and earth — principles which, as they were joined by chance, would by chance and at random be dissolved, did they not stand fast in the divine power of their governor. Nor is it without cause that they do not know the governor, who have not known God, by whom all things are ruled and governed. Let us follow him, then, who knows both the author and the governor, and let us not be led away by empty opinions.
The Latin bench's reason for the chapter, and it is a claim about the writer's standing rather than about the chapter's contents. Moses did not speak in the persuasion of human wisdom nor in philosophy's counterfeit disputations but in the showing of the Spirit and of power, and he dared to say 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' as a witness — testis — of the divine work. Everything Ambrose has said in the preceding column about Plato's three principles and the atomists is cleared away by that one word: a witness does not argue, he reports, and what he reports is what the divine mind alone contains. The spider's web is aimed at Epicurus. Note what the Latin answer does not contain: any suggestion that the chapter should not have been written, or that it is doing something the book is not otherwise for. That question is asked only on the other bench, and there it is asked first.
Moses wrote as a witnessAgainst the philosophers
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
Whence holy Moses, foreseeing by the divine Spirit that these errors of men would come, and had perhaps already begun, speaks thus at the opening of his discourse: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' (Gen 1:1) — comprehending the beginning of things, the author of the world, and the creation of matter; so that you might know that God is before the beginning of the world, or that he himself is the beginning of all things, as in the Gospel the Son of God answered those who said to him 'Who are you?': 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25); and that he himself gave a beginning to the things to be brought forth, and that he himself is the creator of the world, not an imitator of matter with some idea for his guide, out of which he would shape his works, not at his own will, but to a form set before him. Beautifully too he says 'in the beginning he made', so as to express the incomprehensible speed of the work, since he set forth the effect of the operation completed before any sign of its being begun.
Ambrose gets all three answers into one sentence and does not choose between them. 'In the beginning' comprehends at once the beginning of things, the author of the world and the creation of matter; God is before the beginning of the world, 'or he himself is the beginning of all things' — and that vel is doing the work, because it holds the temporal and the personal readings side by side without ranking them. The Son's self-naming at John 8:25 is quoted here for the first time in the Latin bench, and after Ambrose no witness on this crux argues without it: Augustine, Isidore, Bede, Rabanus, Bruno, Rupert and Isidore's ecclesial allegory all rest on the same verse. Ambrose's word throughout is initium, not principium; the Vulgate's word had not yet displaced the Old Latin he preached from.
In the SonIn the beginning of timeThe world is not eternal
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
'In the beginning,' he says. What a good order — that he should assert first the very thing they are accustomed to deny, and that they might know the world has a beginning, lest men should think the world is without a beginning. Whence David also, when he was speaking of heaven and earth and sea, said, 'You have made all things in wisdom' (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:25]). He gave the world a beginning, then, and gave the creature weakness too, lest we should believe it uncaused, uncreated, and a partaker of the divine substance. And beautifully he added 'he made', lest it be supposed there was any delay in the making; that in this way at least men might understand how incomparable a worker he is, who completed so great a work in the brief and slender moment of his operating, so that the effect of his will outran the sense of time.
The other Latin answer, and the polemical one: the beginning is the world's own, and the point of saying so is that the world is not eternal — anarchon, uncaused, a sharer in the divine substance. Remigius will make this the whole content of the verse and name Plato and Aristotle as the opponents; Ramban, from the other bench, says the same thing in the same place, that whoever thinks the world eternal 'denies the essential principle and has no Torah at all'. Note the proof text: Ps 104:24, 'you have made all things in wisdom' — the verse the Latin bench uses to get from in principio to in Sapientia, and so to the Son. The rabbinic bench gets to wisdom from Prov 8:22 and Prov 3:19 and arrives at the Torah.
The world is not eternalIn Wisdom
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 387 · Milan
This world, then, is a specimen of the divine working; because while the work is seen, the worker is put forward. For as of these arts of ours some are active, which consist in the movement of the body or the sound of the voice — the movement or the sound ceased, nothing was left over, nothing remained to those who watched or listened; others are theoretical, which exercise the vigour of the mind; others of such a kind that, the office of working having ceased, the work's own service still appears, as building and weaving, which even when the craftsman is silent show his skill.
Why creation and not something else: because a made thing goes on saying who made it after the maker has stopped speaking. Ambrose sorts the arts into three — those that leave nothing behind when the movement or the sound stops, those that exercise the mind, and those whose product keeps working when the craftsman is silent, like building and weaving — and puts the world in the third class. The argument is Rom 1:20 turned into a workshop, and it answers the crux from the side of the reader rather than the writer: Scripture begins here because this is where God can be inferred from what is in front of anyone. Set against Rashi's answer, the two benches could hardly be further apart. For Ambrose the chapter is the most natural possible opening; for R. Isaac it is the one that has to be explained away.
The work shows the worker
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latin · c. 387 · Milan
In the beginning of time, then, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning. And although from the order of the reading we could establish that the Lord first made day and night, which are the alternations of times, and on the second day made the firmament, by which he divided the water which is under heaven from the water which is above heaven — yet for the present assertion it is enough that in the beginning he made heaven, from which comes the prerogative of generation and its cause; and made earth, in which the substance of generation should be. For in these two the four elements were created, out of which are generated all these things which belong to the world. And the elements are four — air, fire, water, and earth — which are mingled with one another in all things. Indeed you will find fire in the earth too, which is often struck out of stones and iron; and in heaven, since the vault is fiery and glitters with shining stars, water can be understood to be, which is either above heaven, or is often sent down from that upper place upon the earth in a full shower.
The chapter heading Migne prints over this is the crux itself: 'that in heaven and earth the four elements were created, out of which all things are composed; of what substance heaven is, and what the position of the earth.' Ambrose's answer is that the two words are a container for the four elements — heaven supplying the prerogative and cause of generation, earth the substance of it — and he proves the mixture empirically, fire struck from flint and iron in the earth, water inferred in heaven from the rain and from the waters above. It is Abelard's reading of the verse seven hundred years early and Ramban's a century after Abelard, and none of the three cites another. Rabanus copies this paragraph verbatim at PL 107:444B, where K1 has already built it.
The four elements
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latin · c. 387 · Milan
For David said: 'In the beginning you founded the earth, Lord, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain, and all shall grow old as a garment, and as a cloak you shall change them, and they shall be changed; but you are the same, and your years shall not fail' (Ps 102:26 [Vg 101:26]). Which the Lord so confirmed in the Gospel that he said: 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away' (Matt 24:35). Those, then, accomplish nothing who thought a fifth, ethereal body had to be brought in to establish the perpetuity of heaven — since they equally see that a part of a single limb joined on unlike the rest usually brings more harm to the body. Note this at the same time, that when the prophet David named the earth in the first place (Ps 148:5) and heaven afterwards, he judged that the work of the Lord had to be declared; for when he said 'and they were made', it makes no difference which you utter first, since both were made together — and at the same time, lest even this prerogative should seem to be adjudged to heaven's divine substance, that it should be reckoned the better by the privilege of being the firstborn creature.
The Latin answer that matches the rabbinic one exactly, and it turns on the same verse. Ps 102:26 names the earth first and the heavens second — the proof R. Yehuda bar Ilai brings for Beit Hillel in Bereshit Rabbah 1:15 — and Ambrose draws from it not that the earth was made first but that the order of naming decides nothing, since both were made together; and then the reason, which is the interesting half: lest heaven be given the privilege of the firstborn. That is R. Shimon ben Yoḥai's stewpot and its lid, and it is Bereshit Rabbah's closing rule that a reversed order teaches equality of honour. Two benches, one psalm verse, the same conclusion, and no contact of any kind.
Both togetherNamed for dignity, not order
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latin · 388–390 · Thagaste
If the Manichees chose whom they deceive, we too would choose the words with which to answer them: but since they pursue both those learned in letters and the unlearned with their error, and while they promise truth try to turn men away from truth, their emptiness must be refuted not with ornate and polished speech but with plain facts. For I was pleased by the judgement of certain truly Christian men who, being themselves educated in liberal letters, when they had read our other books which we published against the Manichees, saw that they were either not understood by the less skilled, or understood with difficulty, and most kindly warned me not to abandon the common manner of speaking, if I meant to drive errors so ruinous out of the minds even of the unlearned. For this usual and simple speech the learned also understand, but that other the unlearned do not understand.
Augustine explaining, before he has expounded a syllable, why this commentary exists and why it is written the way it is — which is the one thing on the Latin bench that answers the crux in the same register as Rashi's opening. The reason is an opponent: the Manichees pursue the learned and the unlearned alike, so the reply cannot be a learned one. And the reason for the style is a piece of received advice, reported with its embarrassment intact — educated friends read his earlier anti-Manichaean books, saw that ordinary readers could not follow them, and told him kindly to stop writing like that. The chapter that follows is then a defence of Gen 1:1 against the question 'in what beginning? and what was God doing before?' — which is m. Chagigah's 'what was before', put by an opponent who has to be answered rather than by a student who has to be stopped.
Because the heretics attack itIn plain speech, for the unlearned
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latin · c. 389 · Thagaste
As to what is written, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', they ask, in what beginning; and they say: If God made heaven and earth in some beginning of time, what was he doing before he made heaven and earth? And why did it suddenly please him to make what he had never made before through eternal ages? To these we answer that God made heaven and earth in the beginning not in the beginning of time, but in Christ, since the Word was with the Father, through whom and in whom all things were made (John 1:1, 3). For our Lord Jesus Christ, when the Jews had asked him who he was, answered: 'The Beginning, because I also speak to you' (John 8:25). But even if we do believe that God made heaven and earth in the beginning of time, we ought certainly to understand that before the beginning of time there was no time. For God made the times too; and therefore before he made the times, there were no times. We cannot then say that there was some time when God had not yet made anything. For how was there a time that God had not made, since he himself is the fashioner of all times? And if time began together with heaven and earth, no time can be found in which God had not yet made heaven and earth.
Augustine's earliest answer, given under pressure. The Manichaean objection is not about grammar but about God's idleness — what was he doing before? — and Augustine takes the shortest road out: the beginning is not a time at all, it is Christ. Then, in the second half, he grants the temporal reading anyway and disarms the objection a second way, by making time itself a creature, so that there is no 'before'. Both moves survive him: the Christological one becomes the Latin commonplace, and the argument that time began with the world is what Rabanus compresses to 'time is from this world, not before the world', and Hugh of St Victor restates as 'in the first beginning of time, or rather with the beginning of time itself'.
In the SonIn the beginning of time
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latin · 388–389 · Thagaste
And therefore God is most rightly believed to have made all things out of nothing: because even if all formed things were made out of that matter, that matter itself was made out of nothing at all. For we ought not to be like those who do not believe that almighty God could make anything out of nothing, when they consider that craftsmen and workmen of any kind cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from. For wood helps the craftsman, and silver helps the silversmith, and gold the goldsmith, and earth helps the potter to be able to finish his works. If they are not helped by that matter out of which they make something, they can make nothing, since they do not themselves make the matter. For the craftsman does not make the wood, but makes something out of wood: and so all other workmen of this kind. But almighty God had no need to be helped by any thing that he had not himself made, in order to bring about what he willed. For if some thing that he had not himself made helped him towards the things he willed to make, he was not almighty: which it is sacrilege to believe.
The chapter Migne heads 'Formless matter out of nothing, and out of it all things', and the argument in it is the one this whole crux turns on. Augustine grants that everything formed was made out of the formless matter and then puts the doctrine one step further back: the matter itself was made out of nothing at all. The objection he answers is not a text but a habit of mind — people cannot believe God made anything out of nothing because they are watching craftsmen, and wood helps the carpenter, silver the silversmith, gold the goldsmith, earth the potter. It is the philosopher's sentence at Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 with the trades filled in, made in Thagaste sixty years before the Galilean compilation and independently of it; and the refutation turns on omnipotence rather than on Scripture — if anything God had not made helped him, he was not almighty. Wigbod copies this chapter to the last clause, and Angelomus rewrites it with the trades kept and the source dropped.
Out of nothingA craftsman needs a materialMatter first, then formed
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latin · 388–389 · Thagaste
But as to what is said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' — by the name of heaven and earth the whole creation is signified, which God made and founded. And these were called by the names of visible things on account of the weakness of little ones, who are less able to grasp invisible things. First, then, was made the confused and formless matter, out of which should be made all the things that are distinguished and formed — which I believe is called chaos by the Greeks. For so we read it said elsewhere too, in the praises of God: 'You who made the world out of formless matter' (Wis 11:17) — which some manuscripts have as 'out of unseen matter'.
The answer that dissolves the question. 'Heaven and earth' is not a list of two things in an order; it is a name for everything God made, put in visible words because the audience cannot yet hold invisible ones. The Bavli's ten-things list is answering the same question — what does 'heaven and earth' contain, and what else was made with them — and answers it by enumeration where Augustine answers it by generalisation. Note also the variant Augustine records at the end: some copies of Wis 11:17 read 'de materia invisa' for 'de materia informi'. His own text of Gen 1:2, 'invisibilis et incomposita', is the reason he notices.
A name for the whole creationUnformed matter
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latin · c. 392 · Bethlehem
In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Very many suppose — as is written also in the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus, and as Tertullian argues in his book against Praxeas, and as Hilary too asserts in his exposition of a certain Psalm — that the Hebrew has: 'In the Son God made heaven and earth.' That this is false, the truth of the thing itself proves. For both the Seventy Translators and Symmachus and Theodotion rendered 'in the beginning'; and in the Hebrew it is written BRESITH, which Aquila translates 'in the head', and not BABEN, which is rendered 'in the son'. It can therefore be taken of Christ rather according to the sense than according to the translation of the word: he who, both at the very forehead of Genesis, which is the head of all the books, and also at the beginning of John the Evangelist, is shown to be the founder of heaven and earth. Whence also in the Psalter he says of himself: 'In the head of the book it is written of me' (Ps 40:8 [Vg 39:9]) — that is, in the beginning of Genesis. And in the Gospel: 'All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing' (John 1:3). But this too is to be known, that among the Hebrews this book is called BRESITH: they have the custom of giving volumes their names from their opening words.
The pivot of the Latin side of this crux, and it goes against the Latin side. Jerome names three authorities who had said the Hebrew reads 'in the Son' — the lost Altercation of Jason and Papiscus, Tertullian, Hilary — and refutes them from the languages: the three Greek versions all have 'in the beginning', the Hebrew word is bresith, which Aquila renders ἐν κεφαλαίῳ, 'in the head', and the Hebrew for 'in the son' would be ba-ben, which is not what is written. Then the concession that is quoted for the next seven hundred years while the refutation is not: it may still be taken of Christ 'according to the sense rather than the translation of the word', because Genesis and John begin alike. Aquila's in capitulo is rendered 'in the head' here to keep Jerome's pun working — capitulum is what lets him bind bresith to caput librorum and to Ps 40:8's in capite libri. Wigbod reproduces this passage almost entire and drops the refutation.
In the SonIt is the book's name
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latin · c. 393 · Hippo Regius
And since many heretics have been accustomed to drag the exposition of the divine Scriptures to their own opinion, which is beside the faith of catholic teaching, before the treatment of this book the catholic faith must briefly be set out. It is this: that God the Father almighty made and established the whole creation through his only-begotten Son, that is, his Wisdom and Power, consubstantial with him and coeternal, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, himself also consubstantial and coeternal. That this Trinity, then, is called one God, and that he made and created all things that are, in so far as they are, catholic teaching bids us believe; so that every creature, whether intellectual or corporeal — or, as it may be more briefly said in the words of the divine Scriptures, whether invisible or visible — is made not of God's nature but by God out of nothing: and that there is nothing in it belonging to the Trinity, except that the Trinity founded it and it was founded. Wherefore it is not lawful to say or believe that the whole creation is either consubstantial with God or coeternal.
Augustine states, before he has expounded a word of Genesis, what the exposition will have to come out to, and gives the reason: many heretics drag the divine Scriptures to their own opinion. So the Trinity is the rule under which the first chapter will be read, not a conclusion drawn from it — which is worth having on the daf, because every other Latin witness here proceeds as though the three persons were found in the words. The content of the rule is exactly what a reader of Gen 1:1–2 needs: the Father made everything through the Son who is his Wisdom, in the unity of the Spirit; the three are one God; and nothing in the creature belongs to the Trinity except that the Trinity made it. That last clause is aimed at the Manichees and does on the Latin bench what R. Yitzḥak's 'no creature can say that two authorities created the world' does on the rabbinic: it forecloses a dualism.
The rule of faith comes first
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latin · c. 393 · Hippo Regius
This, then, that is written, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', may be asked about: whether it is to be taken only according to history, or whether it also signifies something figuratively, and how it agrees with the Gospel, and for what cause this book was begun so. According to history it is asked what 'In the beginning' is — that is, whether in the beginning of time, or in the beginning which is the very Wisdom of God, since the Son of God also called himself the beginning, when it was said to him, 'Who are you?', and he said, 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25). For there is a Beginning without a beginning, and there is a Beginning with another beginning. The Beginning without a beginning is the Father alone, and therefore we believe all things to be from one beginning; but the Son is a Beginning in such a way as to be from the Father. The first intellectual creature itself can also be called a beginning to those things of which it is the head, which God made. For since a head may rightly be called a beginning, in that gradation the Apostle nevertheless did not call the woman the head of anything. For he called the man the head of the woman, and Christ the head of the man, and God the head of Christ (1 Cor 11:3): so is the creature bound beneath the Creator.
The unfinished commentary is where Augustine works out what 'beginning' can mean before he decides what it means here, and the distinction he coins is exact: a Beginning without a beginning (the Father) and a Beginning that has another beginning (the Son, who is from the Father). Then a third possibility that no one else on this crux takes up: the first intellectual creature is a beginning to the things it heads, so 'in the beginning' might name the angelic creation. Bereshit Rabbah 1:4's list of six things that preceded the world is doing something formally similar — populating the beginning with a created thing — and reaches the Torah and the Throne of Glory instead.
In the SonIn the beginning of timeThe first creature is a beginning
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latin · 397–401 · Hippo Regius
In this Beginning, God, you made heaven and earth: in your Word, in your Son, in your Strength, in your Wisdom, in your Truth, speaking in a wondrous way and in a wondrous way making. Who shall grasp it? who shall tell it?
Two sentences, and the crux's Latin answer at its highest pitch: the Beginning is named five times over — Word, Son, Strength, Wisdom, Truth — and the naming is prayer, not argument. This is also the clearest place to see how close the two benches come without touching. 'In your Wisdom you made heaven and earth' is, as a sentence, what Targum Neofiti prints as the text of Genesis 1:1, and what Prov 3:19 says in the mouth of R. Banai at Bereshit Rabbah 1:4. Augustine is confessing to the second person of the Trinity; Neofiti is translating a Hebrew word; R. Banai means the Torah.
In the SonIn Wisdom
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latin · 397–401 · Hippo Regius
And whence had it any being at all, unless it were from you, from whom are all things in whatever measure they are? Yet the further from you the more unlike — and not by places. And so you, Lord, who are not one thing at one time and another otherwise, but the selfsame and the selfsame and the selfsame, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty (Isa 6:3): in the Beginning which is from you, in your Wisdom which was born of your substance, you made something, and made it out of nothing. For you made heaven and earth; not out of yourself, for then it would be equal to your Only-begotten and thereby to you, and it would in no way be just that what was not out of you should be equal to you. And there was nothing else besides you out of which you might make them, God, one Trinity and threefold Unity: and therefore you made heaven and earth out of nothing, a great something and a small something; since you are almighty and good, to make all things good, a great heaven and a small earth. You were, and there was nothing else out of which you made heaven and earth, two somethings: one near to you, the other near to nothing; one than which you alone were higher, the other than which nothing was lower.
The doctrine argued as a dilemma with two horns and no third. Whatever is, is from God; but heaven and earth are not made out of God, for what is out of God is the Only-begotten and equal to him; and there was nothing else besides God out of which to make them; therefore they were made out of nothing. Then the phrase that the rest of Book XII turns on: two somethings, one near to God and one near to nothing — the heaven of heaven and the formless matter — one than which God alone is higher, one than which nothing is lower. Augustine will not say that the matter is nothing, and he will not say that it is something in its own right; prope nihil is a position built to be unavailable to both objections at once. Bereshit Rabbah 1:5 stands at the same place and does not have the phrase, and so has to say the thing plainly and apologise for it.
Out of nothingMatter first, then formed
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latin · 397–401 · Hippo Regius
Behold, the Trinity appears to me in a riddle, which you are, my God; since you, Father, in the Beginning of our wisdom — which is your Wisdom, born of you, equal to you and coeternal, that is, in your Son — made heaven and earth. And we have said many things about the heaven of heaven, and about the earth invisible and unordered, and about the darksome deep, according to the wandering falls of a spiritual formlessness, unless it were turned to him from whom it had whatever life it had, and by illumination were made a beautiful life, and were the heaven of that heaven which was afterwards made between water and water. And I already held the Father in the name of God, who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Beginning, in whom he made these things; and believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings — and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters. Behold the Trinity, my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, creator of all creation.
The three-term reading in its classical form, and it is autobiography rather than exegesis: the Father in the name of God, the Son in the name of the Beginning, and then — 'believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings, and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters.' The order of the sentence is the order of the search. He held two of the three from the first verse, he already believed the third, and he went looking for it in the text; and the chapter heading the editors gave it says what he does not, that the Trinity which is God is understood from the first words of Genesis. Augustine himself calls it a riddle, in aenigmate. This is the passage that Bede, the Glossa, Bruno, Honorius and Abelard are all repeating, and none of them keeps the word riddle.
Father, Beginning, SpiritThe rule of faith comes first
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latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
If, then, that Scripture is to be searched in both ways, let us ask how it was said, apart from the allegorical signification, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth': whether in the beginning of time; or because they were made first of all; or in the beginning which is the Word of God, the only-begotten Son.
The crux stated as a crux, by the man who made it one. Three readings, set out in a single sentence at the head of the literal commentary and deliberately not decided: in the beginning of time, first of all things, or in the Word. Everything else on the Latin bench is an attempt at one of these three, and Peter Comestor's twelfth-century settlement — read the phrase twice, once for the Son and once for time — is a refusal to choose between the first and the third. The one possibility Augustine does not list is the one Rashi will make the plain sense: that bereshit is a construct and the sentence is subordinate. Latin cannot raise it.
In the beginning of timeFirst of all thingsIn the Son
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latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
And why is it said thus, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', and not said, 'In the beginning God said, Let heaven and earth be made; and heaven and earth were made', as it is told of the light, 'God said, Let there be light; and light was made'? Was it that first, under the name of heaven and earth, what God made had to be taken in universally and commended; and then to be gone through in its parts — how he made it — when at each thing it is said, 'God said', that is, because through his Word he made whatever he made?
A question about the shape of the sentence, and the answer settles what 'heaven and earth' is doing in it: the phrase is a heading. Scripture takes the whole in at one stroke and commends it, and only then goes through the parts with 'God said' at each — which is why v. 1 has no 'let there be' in it. Augustine offers a second answer immediately after (that formless matter cannot be addressed with 'let it be made', since it does not yet imitate the Word), which belongs to K4. This paragraph is the one the Carolingians take: Angelomus compresses it into two lines, and it stands at the head of the Glossa's VERS. 1 in the margin, which K1 has already sliced whole.
The whole first, then the partsA name for the whole creation
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latin · 413–427 · Hippo Regius
For when it is said thus, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', so that the Father is understood to have made in the Son — as the Psalm bears witness, where it reads, 'How magnified are your works, O Lord! you have made all things in wisdom' (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:24]) — most fittingly a little after the Holy Spirit also is mentioned. For when it had been said what kind of earth God first made, or what mass and matter he had called by the name of heaven and earth for the construction of the world to come, by subjoining and adding, 'But the earth was invisible and unordered, and darkness was over the abyss', at once, that the mention of the Trinity might be completed, 'And the Spirit,' he says, 'of God was borne above the water' (Gen 1:1–3).
The mature statement of the same reading, and the one that shows the machinery: 'in the beginning' means 'in the Son' because Ps 104:24 says all things were made in wisdom, and Wisdom is the Son. That is an inference through a proof text, not a philological claim, and Jerome had already ruled out the philological claim. The witness is here rather than under K3 because the argument turns on what in principio names; the Trinitarian reading of the whole opening belongs with elohim-and-trinity.
In the SonIn Wisdom
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latin · c. 630 · Seville
'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' The Beginning is Christ, as he himself answered in the Gospel to the Jews when they questioned him: 'I am the Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25). In this beginning, therefore, God made heaven — that is, the spiritual, who meditate on and seek heavenly things; and in him he made the carnal also, who have not yet laid aside the earthly man.
What the Christological reading becomes once it is settled: not an argument but a premise, and one that immediately turns ecclesial. Isidore states 'the Beginning is Christ' flatly, with John 8:25 and no discussion, and then reads heaven and earth as two kinds of Christian, the spiritual and the carnal. The Glossa's Mystice paragraph on this verse does the same thing in the same words four centuries later. Isidore's Quaestiones announce at the head that the historical sense has been read and the spiritual is what they are for, so the absence of argument is a genre, not a lapse.
In the Son
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latin · 717–725 · Jarrow
Divine Scripture, in intimating the creation of the world, aptly shows in its very first word the eternity and omnipotence of God the creator. For him whom it declares to have created the world in the beginning of times, it thereby designates as having existed eternally before times. And him whom it relates to have created heaven and earth at the very outset of the founding, it declares to be omnipotent in so great a speed of operation, for whom to have willed is to have done. For when human frailty makes anything — when, for instance, we build a house — at the beginning of the work we prepare the material, and after that beginning we dig deep, then we lay stones in the foundation, then we set up the walls with courses of stone rising, and so little by little we come to the completion of the work proposed. But God, whose hand is omnipotent to accomplish his work, needed no delay of times, because it is written: 'Whatever he willed, he did' (Ps 115:3 [Vg 113B:3]). Whence it is well pleasing that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, so that it may be plainly understood that both were made by God at once, although both cannot be said at once by a man. And then the prophet says: 'In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth' (Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26]); but here the Lord is related to have created heaven and earth in the beginning; whence it is plainly gathered that the making of both elements was completed together, and this with such swiftness of divine power that not even the first moment of the world's birth had been passed. It can also be understood, not improbably, that God made heaven and earth in the beginning in his Only-begotten Son, who answered the Jews when they asked what they should believe him to be: 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25).
Bede takes Augustine's three readings and orders them: the temporal one first and at length, the Christological one last and hedged — 'not improbably'. In between comes the argument the whole Carolingian line will repeat, that in principio proves the two were made at once, since a man cannot say two words at once but God can do two things at once, and Ps 102:25's 'in the beginning you founded the earth' names the earth where Genesis names heaven first. This paragraph is the single most-copied piece of Latin on the crux: Rabanus reproduces it almost entire, the Glossa cuts it into three marginal glosses, and Remigius takes over its empyrean heaven word for word.
In the beginning of timeIn the SonThe world is not eternal
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VersionesLXX · Vulgate
greek jewish · c. 250 BCE · Alexandria
In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.
ἐν ἀρχῇ without an article and without a governing noun: the Greek turns a Hebrew word that may be construct into an adverbial phrase, and in doing so closes off the reading Rashi and Ibn Ezra will call the plain sense. Note also ἐποίησεν, 'made', where the Vulgate will write creavit: the Latin bench's whole argument that creare means to make from nothing has no purchase on the Greek. Every Latin witness here quotes fecit or creavit according to which Latin text is in front of him, and the variation is evidence, not noise.
In the beginning of time
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Bereshit / in principio · heaven and earth · out of nothing? · Elohim / Deus … Spiritus
latin · c. 392 · Bethlehem
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Jerome translates in principio and not in Filio, and in the Hebrew Questions he says in so many words why: the reading 'in the Son' is false as a translation, however true as a sense. But he also writes creavit where the Old Latin his own contemporaries quote has fecit — Augustine, Ambrose, Bede and the Glossa all argue from fecit — so the Latin bench spends seven centuries reasoning about a verse in two versions at once.
In the beginning of time
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Bereshit / in principio · heaven and earth · out of nothing? · Elohim / Deus … Spiritus
Glossa ordinariaLaon, c. 1120
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
Verse 1. 'In the beginning he created,' etc. He does not say: In the beginning God says, Let heaven and earth be made. But he said, 'Let there be light, and light was made' — because under the name of heaven and earth was to be comprehended universally whatever God made, and then it was to be set out in parts how he made it. Whence there follows: 'God said, Let it be' — that is, he made it through his Word. Or, because when formless matter, spiritual or bodily, was first coming to be, it was not to be said 'God said, Let it be'; for it was unfitting that 'let it be' should be said by God, since imperfection does not imitate the form of the Word except when a creature is perfected by the turning of its kind to the Creator; so that when it is said 'God said, Let it be', we may understand him to be calling the creature's imperfection back to himself. When therefore it is said 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', mention is made of the Son, because he is the Beginning; but when it is said 'God said, Let it be', mention is made that he is the Word. By 'beginning' he notes the origin of the creature existing from him; by 'Word', the perfecting of the creature called back from him to himself, that it may be formed by imitating the unchangeable form of the Word. […] 'In the beginning,' etc. (BEDE, Hexaemeron I, vol. II, col. 13.) Scripture, in intimating the creation of the world, shows in its first word the eternity and omnipotence of God: for him whom it declares to have created the world in the beginning of times, it signifies to have existed eternally before times. […] 'In the beginning,' etc. Heaven — not the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, the fiery or intellectual heaven, so called not from burning but from splendour, which was at once filled with angels. […] (ALCUIN, on Genesis, vol. I.) 'In the beginning.' In the Son, by whose becoming man it became plain who were the heavenly and who the earthly. Heaven, the spiritual creature, perfect and blessed from its outset. Earth, bodily matter, still imperfect. […] Mystically. 'In the beginning God created heaven' — namely those who bore the image of the heavenly. 'And earth', that is, those who afterwards, by growing proud, bore the earth, that is, the image of the earthly man, and made themselves deformed. 'But the earth was empty', because it had laid aside its good form. 'And void', of the fruit of good work. 'And there were darknesses', namely the privation of the true light; 'over the face of the abyss', namely the hearts of the proud.
The margin as a settlement rather than an argument. Five glosses stand on this verse: an unattributed Augustinian one distinguishing Beginning from Word (the Son is called the Beginning where origin is meant and the Word where perfecting is meant); three from Bede, on eternity, on the simultaneity of heaven and earth, and on the empyrean heaven; and then Alcuin's, which is one word — Filio. That is the whole apparatus a twelfth-century reader met: Jerome's refutation is nowhere on the page, and the reading he had called false stands unargued in the margin under a great name. Elisions marked […] are Bede's house-building simile, his Ps 102 argument, the seven heavens list with Jerome's three, and the Sapientia 11 gloss on unformed matter, all of which are on the making rather than on the word 'beginning'. Wilson's edition of the Glossa (migne.app/glossa) supersedes this draft when its English reaches Gen 1:1.
In the SonIn the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
מפרשיםTargums · Midrash · Bavli · Rashi
rabbinic · 100–300 · Palestine
In the beginning the LORD created the heavens and the earth.
be-qadmin, a plain adverb of time and nothing else: no construct, no wisdom, no first thing. Onkelos hears the verse as the Greek does. Etheridge's Onkelos did not return from Sefaria by version title (see notes/SOURCES-FINDINGS.md) and the Metsudah English is CC BY-NC, so the English is a fresh draft.
In the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
Bereshit / in principio · heaven and earth · out of nothing? · Elohim / Deus … Spiritus
rabbinic · redaction 200–220 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
One does not expound the forbidden sexual relations before three, nor the work of creation before two, nor the Chariot before one — unless he was wise and understood of his own knowledge. Whoever looks at four things, it were fitting for him that he had not come into the world: what is above, what is below, what is before, and what is after. And whoever has no care for the honour of his Maker, it were fitting for him that he had not come into the world.
The rule the whole rabbinic bench on this site is working under, and it is not a comment on Gen 1:1 but a restriction on commenting. The work of creation may not be expounded before two, and the Chariot not before one, unless he is wise and understands of his own knowledge — a rule about audience size, so that what is said cannot become public teaching. Then the four things: what is above, what is below, what is before, what is after; and whoever looks at them, it were fitting he had not come into the world. Those four are what Bereshit Rabbah 1:10 reads out of the closed sides of the letter bet, and they are, item for item, the questions the Manichees put to Augustine and that he answers at length in the first chapters of De Genesi contra Manichaeos. ⚠ Anchor note: this is a witness by PLAN.md §5's specification for K2, not by the general anchor rule; see the file docstring. The Sefaria English here is the William Davidson Edition, which is not licensed for this site, so the English is a fresh draft from the Hebrew.
It may not be expoundedFor the honour of the Maker
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
rabbinic · 100–400 · Palestine
In the beginning and in great wisdom, God created and finished the heavens and the earth.
The single most consequential word on this crux: Neofiti does not translate bereshit, it interprets it — min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, 'from the first, in wisdom' — and then adds a second verb, shakhlel, 'and finished'. A Palestinian targumist and the Latin fathers reach the same gloss on the same word, 'in Wisdom', and then part company entirely over what Wisdom is: for Bereshit Rabbah it is the Torah, for Augustine and Bede it is the Son. Neither side knows the other is there. The CC0 English prints 'in great wisdom'; there is no word for 'great' in the Aramaic, and the reading בחוכמתא recorded in the manuscript's own margin is simply the emphatic state. Note that this witness and K7's targ-neof-1-2 are two slices of one Sefaria segment: the whole of Gen 1:1–5 comes back as a single block.
In Wisdom
English: Sefaria Community Translation
Bereshit / in principio · heaven and earth · out of nothing? · Elohim / Deus … Spiritus
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Hoshaya the Great began: “I was with Him as an amon, a delight day after day…” (Proverbs 8:30) – amon means a child’s caretaker, amon means covered, amon means hidden, and some say amon means greatness. Amon means a child’s caretaker, as it says: “As a caretaker [omen] carries a nursing child” (Numbers 11:12). Amon means covered, as it says: “Those covered [ha’emunim] in scarlet…” (Lamentations 4:5). Amon means hidden, as it says: “He was omen Hadassa” (Esther 2:7). Amon means great, as it says: “Are you better than No Amon [which sits in the rivers]?” (Nahum 3:8), which we translate in Targum as: Are you better than the great city of Alexandria, which is located among the rivers? Another matter, amon means artisan [uman]. The Torah is saying: ‘I was the tool of craft of the Holy One blessed be He.’ The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds a palace he does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather based on the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather, he has [plans on] sheets and tablets by which to ascertain how he should build its rooms, how he should build its doors. So too, the Holy One blessed be He looked in the Torah and created the world. The Torah says: “Bereshit God created” (Genesis 1:1), and reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: “The Lord made me at the beginning of [reshit] His way” (Proverbs 8:22).
The opening of the whole midrash, and the rabbinic answer to this crux in its classic form. R. Hoshaya reads Proverbs 8:30, 'I was with him as an amon', through four homonyms and then a fifth: amon is uman, artisan. The Torah speaks: I was the tool of the craft of the Holy One. A king does not build a palace out of his own head but from an architect's sheets and tablets; so the Holy One looked into the Torah and created the world. And then the philological hinge on which everything turns — 'reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: The Lord made me reshit of his way' (Prov 8:22). Bereshit therefore means 'by means of the beginning', that is, by the Torah. On the Latin side Augustine, Bede, Bruno and Rupert prove that in principio means 'in Wisdom' from Ps 104:24 [Vg 103], 'you made all things in wisdom'; here the proof text is Prov 8:22 and the Wisdom is the Torah. The two benches share a chapter of Proverbs and a conclusion, and disagree about what the Wisdom is.
The beginning is the TorahIn Wisdom
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yona said in the name of Rabbi Levi: Why was the world created with the letter beit? It is because just as the beit is closed on all [three of] its sides but open in its front, so, you do not have permission to ask: What is below, what is above, what was before, and what is after, but only from the day when the world created and onward. Bar Kapara said: “For ask now of the early days that were before you, from the day [that God created man upon the earth]” (Deuteronomy 4:32) – from the day they were created, you may inquire, but you may not inquire what was before that. “From one end of the heavens to the other end” (Deuteronomy 4:32), you may inquire and investigate, but what is beyond that you may not investigate. Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi expounded regarding the act of Creation together with bar Kapara: Why was the world created with the letter beit? It is to inform you that there are two worlds, this world and the World to Come. Another matter, why with a beit? Because it alludes to an expression of blessing [berakha]. And why not with an alef? Because it alludes to an expression of curse [arira]. Another matter, why not with an alef? It is to avoid giving recourse to the heretics to say: How can the world endure, as it was created with an expression of curse? Rather, the Holy One blessed be He said: ‘Behold, I will create it with an expression of blessing, and there is hope that perhaps it will endure.’ Another matter, why with a beit? It is because just as the beit has two protrusions, one above it and one below and behind it, if one says to the beit: ‘Who created you?’ It points with its upper protrusion, saying: ‘That One who is above created me.’ ‘And what is His name?’ It points with its rear protrusion and says: ‘The Lord [Adonai] is His name.’ Rabbi Elazar bar Ḥanina said in the name of Rabbi Aḥa: For twenty-six generations the alef complained before the throne of the Holy One blessed be He. It said before Him: ‘Master of the universe, I am the first of the letters, but You did not create Your world with me.’ The Holy One blessed be He said to it: ‘The world and all its contents were created only for the sake of the Torah, as it is stated: “The Lord founded the earth with wisdom…” (Proverbs 3:19). Tomorrow, I will be coming to give the Torah at Sinai, and I will open it at its beginning only with you, as it is stated: “I [anokhi] am the Lord your God”’ (Exodus 20:2). Rabbi Hoshaya says: Why is it called alef? It is because He consented concerning a thousand, as it is stated: “The word that He commanded for one thousand [elef] generations” (Psalms 105:8).
The ban on the four questions derived from the shape of the first letter of the verse, which is as close to the crux as a comment can get. R. Yona in the name of R. Levi: why was the world created with a bet? Because just as the bet is closed on its three sides and open at the front, so you have no permission to ask what is below, what is above, what was before and what is after — but only from the day the world was created and onward. Bar Kappara gets the same fence out of Deut 4:32: from the day they were created you may enquire, but not before that; from one end of the heavens to the other you may investigate, but not beyond. The rest of the section is a sequence of further answers — two worlds, this and the world to come; bet for berakhah rather than alef for arirah, so that the heretics should not be able to say the world was made with a curse — and each of them is a reason for the letter that is also a reason for where the book starts. This is m. Chagigah 2:1's four forbidden matters, made into an exegesis of a single consonant.
It may not be expoundedThe bet is closed behindBet for blessing, not alef for curse
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yudan said in the name of Akilas: To this One it is fitting to call God. The ordinary way of the world is that a flesh-and-blood king is praised in his province though he has not yet built any public baths in it and has not yet built private baths in it. First he proclaims his name and then presents his works. The Unique One of the world, however, first acted and then He was praised. Shimon ben Azai says: “Your humility has made me great” (II Samuel 22:36) – a flesh-and-blood [king] mentions his name first and then his title of praise: So-and-so Augustoli, So-and-so Pro titulo. But the Holy One blessed be He is not so; instead, after creating the needs of his world, only then does He mention His name: “In the beginning…created [bereshit bara]” and then “God [Elohim].”
Why the divine name comes third in the sentence, answered from court protocol and in Greek loanwords. R. Yudan in the name of Akilas — Aquila the proselyte, the translator — says: to this one it is fitting to call God. A flesh-and-blood king is acclaimed in a province before he has built it a public bath or a private one; he proclaims his name first and produces his works afterwards. The Unique One of the world acted first and was praised afterwards. Ben Azzai gets the same from 2 Sam 22:36, 'your humility has made me great': mortals put the name first and the titles after — So-and-so Augustalis, So-and-so pro titulo — but the Holy One, after creating the needs of his world, only then mentions his name: bereshit bara, and after that Elohim. The interest for this crux is that the rabbinic bench has a positive account of the Hebrew word order that the Greek elders were obliged to destroy, and its terms are the honorifics of the Roman provincial administration.
God is named after his works
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yishmael asked Rabbi Akiva, saying to him: ‘Because you studied under Naḥum of Gam Zo for twenty-two years, [who taught:] The words akh and rak are restrictive expressions, et and gam are inclusive expressions, [I ask you:] What is the meaning of the et that is written here [twice]?’ He said to him: ‘Had it been stated: “In the beginning God created heavens and earth [bereshit bara elohim shamayim vaaretz]” – we might have said that the heavens and the earth are deities.’ He [Rabbi Yishmael] said to him: “For it is not an empty matter for you [mikem]” (Deuteronomy 32:47) – if it is empty, it is because of you [mikem], because you do not know how to expound, because you do not exert yourself in its regard. “As it [the Torah] is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47) – when is it your life? It is when you exert yourself in its regard. Rather [the explanation is]: “et hashamayim” – to include the sun, the moon, and the constellations; “ve’et haaretz” – to include trees, vegetation, and the Garden of Eden.
The question of what 'heaven and earth' contains, asked as a question about a particle. R. Yishmael puts it to R. Akiva, who served Naḥum of Gam Zo twenty-two years and learned from him that akh and rak restrict while et and gam include: what, then, are the two ets doing here? Akiva's first answer is theological — without them we might have said that the heavens and the earth are deities — and R. Yishmael slaps it down with Deut 32:47, if the Torah is empty it is empty because of you, because you do not exert yourself in it. Then the real answer, and it is an inventory: et ha-shamayim brings in the sun, the moon and the constellations; ve-et ha-aretz brings in the trees, the plants and the Garden of Eden. Augustine asks the identical question in Latin — what is signified by the name of heaven and earth — and answers that the two words are a name for the whole creation, given in visible terms for the sake of little ones. Ramban quotes this passage by name eight hundred years later and treats it as settling the matter.
The particle includesA name for the whole creation
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, Beit Shammai say: The heavens were created first and the earth was created thereafter. Beit Hillel says: The earth was created first and the heavens thereafter. These cite a reason for their position and those cite a reason for their position. According to the opinion of Beit Shammai, who say that the heavens were created first and the earth thereafter, it is analogous to a king who had a throne made, and once that was made he had its footstool made. So, the Holy One blessed be He said: “The heavens are My throne and the earth is My footstool…” (Isaiah 66:1). According to the opinion of Beit Hillel, who say that the earth was created first and the heavens thereafter, it is analogous to a king who built a palace; first he built the lower sections and then he built the upper sections, so, “on the day that the Lord God made earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4). Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai said: This verse, too, supports Beit Hillel: “You laid the foundations of earth in times past” (Psalms 102:26), and then, “the heavens are the work of Your hands” (Psalms 102:26). Rabbi Ḥanin said: From the same place where Scripture supports Beit Shammai, from there, Beit Hillel refute them: “The earth was” (Genesis 1:2) – it already was. Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of the Sages: In terms of Creation, the heavens were first, but in terms of completion, the earth was first. Rabbi Tanḥuma said: I will say the source; in terms of Creation, the heavens were first, as it is stated: “In the beginning, God created [the heavens].” In terms of completion, the earth was first, as it is stated: “On the day that the Lord God made earth and the heavens.” Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai said: I am surprised how it is that the fathers of the world, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, disagreed regarding the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is, rather, as I say, that both of them were created [at the same time,] like a stewpot and its lid, as it is stated: “[My hand also laid the foundation of the earth and My right hand measured the heavens]; I appointed them; they arise together” (Isaiah 48:13). Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon said: If it is in accordance with the opinion of my father, why is it that at times the earth is mentioned before the heavens and at times the heavens are mentioned before the earth? Rather, it teaches that both of them are equal in importance to one another. In every place Abraham is mentioned before Isaac and Jacob, but in one place it says: “I will remember My covenant with Jacob, [and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham]” (Leviticus 26:42). This teaches that the three of them are equal in importance to one another. In every place Moses is mentioned before Aaron, but in one place it says: “It is Aaron and Moses” (Exodus 6:26). This teaches that both of them are equal in importance to one another. In every place Joshua is mentioned before Caleb, but in one place it says: “Except for Caleb son of Yefuneh the Kenizite and Joshua son of Nun” (Numbers 14:30, Numbers 32:12). This teaches that both of them are equal in importance to one another. In every place turtledoves are mentioned before young pigeons, but in one place it says: “And a young pigeon or a turtledove as a sin offering” (Leviticus 12:6). This tells you that both of them are equal in importance to one another. In every place, honor of the father is mentioned before the mother, but in one place it says: “Each of you shall fear his mother and his father” (Leviticus 19:3). This tells you that both of them are equal in importance to one another. However, the Sages said: The father takes precedence over the mother, because both he [a son] and his mother are obligated to honor his father. In every place the creation of the heavens is mentioned before the earth, but in one place it says: “On the day that the Lord God made earth and the heavens.” This tells you that both of them are equal in importance to one another.
The crux in its classical rabbinic form, with five answers and a refusal. Beit Shammai: the heavens first, because a king has his throne made and then its footstool (Isa 66:1). Beit Hillel: the earth first, because a king building a palace builds the lower parts first, and because Gen 2:4 says 'earth and heavens'. R. Yehuda bar Ilai adds Ps 102:26, 'you laid the foundations of the earth in times past, and the heavens are the work of your hands'. R. Ḥanin turns Beit Shammai's own proof against them: 'the earth WAS' — it already was. R. Yoḥanan in the sages' name splits the question: in creation heaven was first, in completion the earth. Then R. Shimon ben Yoḥai says he is astonished that the fathers of the world should have disputed it at all, since both were created together like a stewpot and its lid (Isa 48:13, 'I call to them, they stand up together'). The section closes with a rule for reading Scripture's word order generally: where the sequence is reversed in one place, that teaches that the two are equal — turtledoves and pigeons, father and mother, heaven and earth. That rule is what Ambrose reaches independently in Milan.
Heaven firstEarth firstBoth togetherNamed for dignity, not order
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin began in the name of Rabbi Levi: “The power of His deeds He told to His people, to give them the inheritance of nations” (Psalms 111:6). What is the reason that the Holy One blessed be He revealed what was created on the first day and what was created on the second day? It is due to the idolaters, so they could not rebuke Israel and say to them: ‘You are a nation of robbers.’ Israel responds to them and says to them: ‘And you, is it [your own land] not in your hands by robbery? Is it not so that: “Kaftorim, who emerged from Kaftor, destroyed them [the Avites], and settled in their place”? (Deuteronomy 2:23). The world and all its contents belong to the Holy One blessed be He. When He wished He gave it to you, and when He wished He took it from you and gave it to us.’ That is what is written: “[The power of His deeds He told to His people,] to give them the inheritance of nations…” – He told them [the history of] all the generations.
Rashi's answer four hundred years before Rashi, and with the objection left out. R. Yehoshua of Sikhnin in the name of R. Levi opens on Ps 111:6 and asks the question directly: what is the reason that the Holy One revealed what was created on the first day and what on the second? Because of the idolaters, so that they should not be able to rebuke Israel and say, you are a nation of robbers. And Israel answers — is your own land not in your hands by robbery? did not the Kaftorim destroy the Avvim and settle in their place (Deut 2:23)? The world and all in it belongs to the Holy One; when he wished he gave it to you, and when he wished he took it from you and gave it to us. Every element of Rashi's comment is here except R. Isaac's opening move, that the book should have started at Exod 12:2 — which is the part that makes it a question about the shape of Scripture rather than about a controversy over land.
Title to the land
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
“In the beginning, God created” – six items preceded the creation of the world; some of them were [actually] created, and some of them God contemplated creating, [though He did not actually do so]. The Torah and the Throne of Glory were created. Torah, from where is it derived? As it is stated: “The Lord made me at the beginning of His way” (Proverbs 8:22). The Throne of Glory, from where is it derived? “Your throne stands firm from earliest time, [You are from eternity]” (Psalms 93:2). The patriarchs, Israel, the Temple, and the name of the messianic king – God contemplated creating them [before the world, but did not]. The patriarchs, from where is it derived? “Like grapes in the wilderness [I found Israel, like a first fruit on the fig tree, at its beginning [bereshitah] I saw your fathers]” (Hosea 9:10). Israel, from where is it derived? “Remember Your congregation, that You acquired from old times” (Psalms 74:2). The Temple, from where is it derived? “Throne of glory, exalted from the beginning, [is the place of our Temple]” (Jeremiah 17:12). The name of the messianic king, from where is it derived? “May his name endure forever. His name is praised before the sun” (Psalms 72:17). Rabbi Ahava ben Rabbi Ze’eira said: Repentance as well, as it is stated: “Before the birth of mountains” (Psalms 90:2), and at that same time, “You bring man down until he is crushed, [and then You say: Return, sons of man]” (Psalms 90:3). But I do not know which of them was first – did the Torah precede the Throne of Glory, or did the Throne of Glory precede the Torah? Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: The Torah preceded the Throne of Glory, as it is stated: “The Lord made me at the beginning of His way, [before His undertakings of old times]” (Proverbs 8:22) – before that in whose regard it is written: “Your throne stands firm from earliest time” (Psalms 93:2). Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Yirmeya said in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rabbi Yitzḥak: The contemplation about [creating] Israel preceded all other things. This is analogous to a king who married a noblewoman, but did not have a son from her. Once the king was found passing in the marketplace. He said: ‘Take this ink and inkwell for my son.’ Everyone was saying: ‘He has no son and yet he says: Take this ink and inkwell for my son?’ Then they said: ‘The king is a great astrologer, had it not been that he is destined to beget a son from her, he would not have said: Take this ink and inkwell for my son.’ So, too, had it not been that the Holy One blessed be He foresaw that after twenty-six generations Israel was destined to receive the Torah, He would not have written in the Torah: “Command the children of Israel”; “speak to the children of Israel.” Rabbi Banai said: The world and its contents were created only due to the merit of the Torah, as it is stated: “The Lord founded the earth with wisdom [beḥochma]” (Proverbs 3:19). Rabbi Berekhya said: It was due to the merit of Moses, as it is stated: “He saw the first [reshit] for himself, [as there the portion of the lawgiver is hidden]” (Deuteronomy 33:21). Rav Huna said in the name of Rav Matana: The world was created for the sake of three things: For the sake of ḥalla, for the sake of tithes, and for the sake of first fruits. What is the source? “In the beginning, [bereshit] God created,” and reshit is nothing other than ḥalla, as it is stated: “The first of [reshit] your kneading basket” (Numbers 15:20). Reshit is nothing other than tithes, as it says: “The first [reshit] of your grain” (Deuteronomy 18:4). And reshit is nothing other than first fruits, as it is stated: “The choicest of [reshit] the first fruits of your land…” (Exodus 23:19).
If the world has a reshit, what stands in it? Six things precede the creation: the Torah and the Throne of Glory were actually made, while the patriarchs, Israel, the Temple and the name of the Messiah were contemplated. Every one is proved from a verse containing reshit or a synonym, and the Torah's proof is again Prov 8:22. Then the question the section cannot leave alone — which came first, the Torah or the Throne — and R. Abba bar Kahana rules for the Torah. Two other answers close it out: R. Banai, that the world was created only for the merit of the Torah, quoting Prov 3:19, 'the Lord founded the earth be-ḥokhmah, with wisdom' — the very phrase Targum Neofiti puts into Genesis 1:1 itself; and Rav Huna in the name of Rav Matana, that reshit is ḥalla, tithes and first fruits, which turns the first word of Scripture into a warrant for the priestly dues.
Six things preceded the worldThe beginning is the TorahFor the sake of IsraelIn Wisdom
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rav Huna began in the name of bar Kapara: “May they be silenced [te’alamna], those lying lips [that speak harsh words against the righteous one with arrogance and contempt]” (Psalms 31:19) – may they be bound up, may they become mute, may they be silenced. May they become mute – as it says: “Who gives a mouth to a person, or who renders one mute [ilem] or deaf, or sighted or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11). And [may they be bound up,] as it says: “Behold, we were binding [me’alemim] sheaves in the field and behold, my sheaf arose” (Genesis 37:7). May they be silenced – that is its plain sense. “That speak…against the Righteous One” (Psalms 31:19) – [this refers to] Him of eternal life. “Harsh words [atak]” (Psalms 31:19) – matters that He concealed [shehe’etik] from His creations. “With arrogance” (Psalms 31:19) – this is an expression of bewilderment: [Do they do this] in order to boast arrogantly: I am expounding the act of Creation? “And contempt” (Psalms 31:19) – this [too] is an expression of bewilderment: Is it in order to show contempt for My honor? As Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina said: Anyone who attains honor through the degradation of another person has no portion in the World to Come; how much more so is this so regarding the honor of the Omnipresent. What is written following this? “How great is the goodness You have in store for those who fear You” (Psalms 31:20) – for those who fear You, but not for those who demean the [awesome] fear of You. They will not be included in: “How great is the goodness.”
A curse on the expositors, at the head of the commentary that expounds it. Rav Huna in the name of Bar Kappara takes Ps 31:19, 'may they be silenced, those lying lips that speak against the righteous one with arrogance and contempt', and reads every word of it against people doing what Bereshit Rabbah is doing: may they be bound, may they be made mute, may they be silenced; 'against the Righteous One' means him of eternal life; 'harsh words' means matters he concealed from his creatures; 'with arrogance' — is it in order to boast, I am expounding the work of creation? 'and contempt' — is it in order to show contempt for my honour? And R. Yose bar Ḥanina's rule follows: anyone who attains honour through another's degradation has no portion in the world to come, and how much more so where the honour is the Omnipresent's. The section that says this is section five of a commentary that runs to a hundred sections on this book. Slice note: K4 built the palace parable that follows as `br-1-5b`; this is the half before it.
It may not be expoundedFor the honour of the Maker
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds his palace in [a location that had been] a place of sewers, a place of refuse, and a malodorous place, anyone who comes and says: ‘This palace was built in a place of sewers, a place of refuse, and a malodorous place,’ is this not an insult? So, too, anyone who comes and says: ‘This world was created from emptiness and disorder,’ is this not an insult? This is a rhetorical question. Rav Huna said in the name of bar Kapara: Were the matter not written explicitly it would not have been possible to say it: “In the beginning, God created” (Genesis 1:1) – from what? “The earth was emptiness and disorder” (Genesis 1:2).
The rabbinic bench saying the thing the Latin bench spends four centuries denying, and saying it with its eyes shut. The parable first: a king builds his palace over sewers, a refuse heap and a stinking place, and whoever comes and says 'this palace is built over sewers' has insulted him — so too whoever says 'this world was created out of emptiness and disorder' has insulted the King. Then Rav Huna in the name of bar Kappara, and the formula is the formula for saying what may not be said: were the matter not written explicitly it would not be possible to say it — 'In the beginning God created' — from what? 'The earth was emptiness and disorder.' The verse is read as an answer to the question the verse raises, and the answer is that the material was there. Four sections later the same work will make Rabban Gamliel refuse exactly that inference to a philosopher's face. Neither section knows the other is there; the first half of BR 1:5, which forbids expounding what is before the world at all, belongs to K2.
The world was made out of tohu va-vohuMatter first, then formed
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yitzḥak began: “The beginning of Your word is truth…” (Psalms 119:160) – Rabbi Yitzḥak said: Right from the beginning of the creation of the world [it can be seen that] “the beginning of Your word is truth” – “in the beginning, God created.” “But My Lord God is truth” (Jeremiah 10:10), “All Your righteous laws are eternal” (Psalms 119:160) – as each and every edict that You decree upon Your creations, they accept the judgment upon themselves and receive it faithfully, and no person can come and say that two authorities created the world: “God [Elohim] spoke [vaydaberu]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God spoke [vaydaber];” “God [Elohim] said [vayomeru]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God said [vayomer]”; “In the beginning God created [bare’u]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God created [bara].”
The rabbinic answer to this crux, and it is a grammatical argument made three times over. R. Yitzḥak reads Ps 119:160, 'the beginning of your word is truth', of the opening of Genesis: from the beginning of the creation of the world the head of your word is truth, 'in the beginning God created', and the Lord God is truth (Jer 10:10). Then the point: no creature can come and say that two authorities created the world — vaydaberu Elohim is not written here but vaydaber Elohim; vayomeru Elohim is not written here but vayomer Elohim; bereshit bare'u Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim. Three verbs, all singular, against a noun that is plural in form. The observation is exactly Abelard's at the Paraclete seven hundred years later and Ibn Ezra's at Lucca, and the three of them draw three different conclusions from it. Note what the argument is aimed at: not idolatry in general but shtei reshuyot, two authorities — the dualism the same midrash elsewhere calls minut — and the verse is being used as a proof text against it.
The verb is singular, so one maker
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said in the name of Rabbi Levi: A builder requires six items: Water, dirt, wood, stones, reeds, and iron. If you say that he is wealthy and does not need reeds [to build with], he still needs to use them as a measuring rod, as it is stated: “A linen thread and a measuring rod” (Ezekiel 40:3). So, too, the Torah employed these six expressions of precedence: “Of old [kedem]…from earliest time [me’az], from ancient times [meolam]…from the beginning [merosh], from before [mikadmei]…” (Proverbs 8:22–23) – which counts as two, in the section of “the Lord made me” (Proverbs 8:22).
A small section that shows the machinery. A builder needs six materials, down to the reed he measures with; so the Torah used six words of precedence in Proverbs 8:22–23 — of old, from earliest time, from ancient times, from the beginning, from before, counted as two. The point is that Prov 8 is not a proof text the midrash reaches for occasionally but the passage it treats as Genesis 1:1's own commentary. Ambrose, Augustine and Bede reach for the same chapter of Proverbs by way of the Septuagint's ἔκτισέν με, 'the Lord created me', and spend the fourth century arguing about whether it makes the Son a creature. Neither bench mentions the other's use.
The beginning is the Torah
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
A certain philosopher once asked Rabban Gamliel, saying to him: ‘Your God is a great artist, however he found many excellent raw materials that helped him: Emptiness, disorder, darkness, wind, water, and depths.’ He said to him: ‘May the spirit of that man depart from him; regarding all of them, creation is written.’ Emptiness and disorder, as it is stated: “Who makes peace and creates evil” (Isaiah 45:7). Darkness, “who forms light [and creates darkness]” (Isaiah 45:7); water, “Praise Him, heavens on heavens, and the water [above the heavens]” (Psalms 148:4). Why? “For He commanded and they were created” (Psalms 148:5). Wind, “For behold, He forms mountains and creates wind” (Amos 4:13); depths, “when there were no depths, I generated” (Proverbs 8:24).
Six lines, and they contain the whole crux. A philosopher tells Rabban Gamliel: your God was a great artist, but he found good materials to help him — emptiness, disorder, darkness, wind, water, the deeps. The answer is not an argument but a concordance: may that man's spirit depart, of every one of them creation is written. Tohu and bohu from Isaiah 45:7, 'who makes peace and creates evil'; darkness from the same verse; water from Psalm 148:4–5, 'for he commanded and they were created'; wind from Amos 4:13, 'he forms mountains and creates wind'; the deeps from Proverbs 8:24, 'when there were no deeps I was brought forth'. The list is exactly the list of BR 1:5's embarrassment, and the objection is exactly Augustine's fabri and Basil's smith and carpenter — the craftsman who cannot work without a material. The rabbinic bench meets it once, in a chreia, and answers by producing a verse for each item; the Latin bench meets it as a philosophical position and answers with a doctrine of omnipotence. Neither method would satisfy the other.
Matter was already thereOf every one of them, creation is writtenA craftsman needs a material
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
R. Yishmael asked R. Akiva, while they were walking on the road. He said to him, You are one who served Nachum Ish Gamzu for twenty-two years, who expounded the meaning of all the particles "et" in the Torah. What was his exposition of "the heaven and earth" - "et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz"? He said to him, If it had said "shamayim va'aretz," I would have said, "Shamayim" is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now that the words are "et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz," "shamayim" means the heaven, literally, and aretz means the earth, literally.
The same encounter as Bereshit Rabbah 1:14 — R. Yishmael asking R. Akiva what Naḥum of Gam Zo made of the two ets — and the answer has changed. Here Akiva says that without the particles he would have taken shamayim to be a name of the Holy One, blessed be He; now that the text reads et ha-shamayim ve-et ha-aretz, heaven means heaven literally and earth means earth literally. In the Palestinian version the danger is that the heavens and the earth would be taken for deities and Akiva is rebuked for the answer; here the danger is narrower, that one word would be a divine name, and the answer stands unchallenged. Both are a Jewish witness to the same anxiety the Latin bench meets at Megillah 9a and in the Greek word order (K3). And note what neither version does: it never occurs to either that the et might include the angels.
The particle includes
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
Our Rabbis have taught, The house of Shammai say, The heavens were created first, and afterwards the earth was created, as it is said, (Genesis 1:1) "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." But the house of Hillel say, The earth was created first, and afterwards the heavens, as it is said, (Genesis 2:4) "In the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven." The house of Hillel said to the house of Shammai, According to you, [does] a person builds an upper story, and afterwards builds the house? [The heavens are called an upper story,] as it is said, (Amos 9:6) "He builds his upper story in the heavens and sets its foundation on the earth." The house of Shammai said to the house of Hillel, According to you, [does] a person makes a footstool and afterwards makes a throne? [The heavens are called a throne,] as it is said, (Isaiah 66:1) "So says the Lord, The heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool." But the sages say, This and that were created at once, as it is said, (Isaiah 48:13) "My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they all stand up together." And the other [opinions of Shammai and Hillel], what is "together"? That they cannot be separated the one from the other [once created]. The verses contradicts each other! Resh Lakish said, When they were created, He created the heavens, and afterwards created the earth, but when He stretched them out, He stretched out the earth, and afterwards stretched out the heavens.
The Babylonian redaction of the same dispute, and it argues where Bereshit Rabbah illustrates. Beit Hillel now put the objection as a question — on your view does a man build the upper storey and then the house? (Amos 9:6) — and Beit Shammai answer in kind: on your view does a man make a footstool and then a throne? (Isa 66:1). The sages say both at once, from Isa 48:13, and the Bavli will not leave it there: if 'together' only means that once made they cannot be parted, the two proof-texts still contradict each other, and Resh Lakish settles it with a distinction the Palestinian version does not have — when they were created, heaven was created first; when they were stretched out, the earth was stretched out first. It is the same move Hugh of St Victor makes in Paris six hundred years later with 'not order but dignity', and R. Yoḥanan's 'in creation first, in completion first' in Bereshit Rabbah: the sequence of the words is not the sequence of the acts.
Heaven firstEarth firstBoth togetherCreated in one order, stretched in the other
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
What is heaven? R. Yose bar Chanina said, That there is water. It was taught in a Mishnah, fire and water. Teaching that the Holy One, blessed be He, brought them and mingled them one with the other, and made from them the firmament.
The crux's second half asked in three words — mai shamayim, what is heaven — and answered from the name itself. R. Yose bar Ḥanina: sham mayim, 'there is water'. A mishnaic tradition: fire and water, which the Holy One brought and mingled with each other, and out of them made the firmament. It is an answer of exactly the kind the Latin bench never gives, because the Latin word yields nothing: caelum can be etymologised (Isidore tries chaos, others caelare, 'to engrave', for the stars) but it cannot be made to spell out what heaven is made of. Where the Bavli reads the substance out of the noun, Remigius and the Glossa have to import a substance — the empyrean, fiery not by heat but by brightness — from elsewhere.
Sham mayim — 'there is water'
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
For it was taught: [This is] the case of Ptolemy the King, who gathered seventy-two elders and entered them into seventy-two houses, and he did not reveal to them for what he gathered them. He then met each of them individually and he said to them: "Write for me the Torah of Moses your teacher [in Greek]." The Holy One, Blessed Be He put counsel into the heart of each one, and all of them harmonized to one understanding. And they wrote for him: "God created in the beginning." (Genesis 1:1) "I shall make a human in image and likeness." (Genesis 1:26)
The rabbinic bench's own account of how the Greek Bible came to read as it does, and the first two items on the list are the two verses the Latin bench builds its plurality on. Ptolemy shut seventy-two elders in seventy-two houses and told each to write him the Torah of Moses; God put counsel in each one's heart and they all agreed on one understanding. And they wrote for him: 'God created in the beginning' — Elohim bara bereshit, the divine name moved to the front so that bereshit could not be read as the subject, that is, as a deity who made God — and 'I shall make a human in image and likeness', singular, for the plural na'aseh of Gen 1:26. Both changes are aimed at plurality in the opening of Genesis. Neither is in the Septuagint the Church actually inherited: its Gen 1:1 keeps the Hebrew order, en archē epoiēsen ho theos, and its Gen 1:26 keeps the plural, poiēsōmen anthrōpon. So the baraita is a tradition about a Greek Torah rather than a description of one, and the Latin reading of both verses exists in the space the described changes would have closed.
The word order had to be changedThe verb is singular, so one maker
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · 600–800 · Palestine
At the beginning the LORD created the heavens and the earth.
A third Aramaic word for the same Hebrew one: min avvela, 'from the first'. Etheridge prints the Aramaic in transliteration inside his English ('At the beginning (min avella)'), which is why his sentence carries a gloss no other version has; the parenthesis is his.
In the beginning of time
English: J. W. Etheridge, 1862
Bereshit / in principio · heaven and earth · out of nothing? · Elohim / Deus … Spiritus
rabbinic · 750–850 · Palestine
Whence was the earth created? He took of the snow (or ice) which was beneath His Throne of Glory and threw it upon the waters, and the waters became congealed so that the dust of the earth was formed, as it is said, “He saith to the snow, Be thou earth” (Job 37:6).
A cosmogony on the rabbinic bench in which the question 'from what?' has an answer, and the answer is a substance. Heaven from the light of his garment (the preceding section, built at K8 as pdre-3-6); earth from the snow under the Throne of Glory, thrown on the waters and congealed, with Job 37:6 for proof — 'he says to the snow, be earth'. Nothing here is made out of nothing, and nothing here is embarrassed about it: the materials are simply divine ones, taken from what is already God's. The Latin bench has no answer of this shape at all, and could not have: once matter is the thing at issue, a material that belongs to God is still a material, and Basil's objection would fall on it as heavily as on Plato's hyle. The two benches are not disagreeing here; only one of them has heard the question.
From the light and the snow
English: Gerald Friedlander, 1916
rabbinic · 1075–1105 · Troyes
בראשית IN THE BEGINNING — Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah which is the Law book of Israel should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2) “This month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment given to Israel. What is the reason, then, that it commences with the account of the Creation? Because of the thought expressed in the text (Psalms 111:6) “He declared to His people the strength of His works (i.e. He gave an account of the work of Creation), in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations.” For should the peoples of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers, because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan”, Israel may reply to them, “All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased. When He willed He gave it to them, and when He willed He took it from them and gave it to us” (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 187)
The most famous opening sentence in the history of Jewish Bible commentary, and it is an objection to the book it is opening. R. Isaac said: the Torah, which is Israel's law book, ought to have begun at 'this month shall be to you the first of the months' (Exod 12:2), the first commandment given to Israel. Why then does it begin with the creation? Because of Ps 111:6, 'he declared to his people the power of his works, in order to give them the inheritance of the nations' — so that when the peoples of the world say to Israel, you are robbers, for you seized the lands of the seven nations, Israel may answer: the whole earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; he made it and gave it to whom he pleased, and when he willed he took it from them and gave it to us. The chapter, on this account, is not there for its own sake at all. It is title to land, and Rashi puts it at the head of a commentary that will be read for nine hundred years.
It should have begun at Exodus 12:2Title to the land
English: Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34
rabbinic · 1080–1105 · Troyes
בראשית ברא IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED — This verse calls aloud for explanation in the manner that our Rabbis explained it: God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) way”, and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) increase’’. If, however, you wish to explain it in its plain sense, explain it thus: At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light”. The text does not intend to point out the order of the acts of Creation — to state that these (heaven and earth) were created first; for if it intended to point this out, it should have written 'בראשונה ברא את השמים וגו “At first God created etc.” And for this reason: Because, wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. E. g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. A similar grammatical construction (of a noun in construct followed by a verb) is: (Hosea 1:2) תחלת דבר ה' בהושע, which is as much as to say, “At the beginning of God’s speaking through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea.” Should you, however, insist that it does actually intend to point out that these (heaven and earth) were created first, and that the meaning is, “At the beginning of everything He created these, admitting therefore that the word בראשית is in the construct state and explaining the omission of a word signifying “everything” by saying that you have texts which are elliptical, omitting a word, as for example (Job 3:10) “Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb” where it does not explicitly explain who it was that closed the womb; and (Isaiah 8:4) “He shall take away the spoil of Samaria” without explaining who shall take it away; and (Amos 6:12) “Doth he plough with oxen," and it does not explicitly state, “Doth a man plough with oxen”; (Isaiah 46:10) “Declaring from the beginning the end,” and it does not explicitly state, “Declaring from the beginning of a thing the end of a thing’ — if it is so (that you assert that this verse intends to point out that heaven and earth were created first), you should be astonished at yourself, because as a matter of fact the waters were created before heaven and earth, for, lo, it is written, (v. 2) “The Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters,” and Scripture had not yet disclosed when the creation of the waters took place — consequently you must learn from this that the creation of the waters preceded that of the earth. And a further proof that the heavens and earth were not the first thing created is that the heavens were created from fire (אש) and water (מים), from which it follows that fire and water were in existence before the heavens. Therefore you must admit that the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation.
Rashi gives both answers and marks which is which. First the received one: the verse cries out to be expounded, and our rabbis expounded it — for the sake of the Torah, called reshit of his way (Prov 8:22), and for the sake of Israel, called reshit of his increase (Jer 2:3). Then, and this is the sentence that changes the history of the verse, 'if you wish to explain it in its plain sense' — reshit is everywhere in Scripture a construct, as in 'in the reshit of the reign of Jehoiakim', so read bereshit bara as though it were bereshit bero, at the beginning of God's creating; the verse is a subordinate clause and the main verb is 'God said, Let there be light.' The chapter is therefore not teaching the order of creation at all, and Rashi proves it from the water, which is already there in verse 2 and whose making is never narrated. Nothing on the Latin bench does this: the Vulgate's in principio is not a construct and cannot be read as one.
The beginning is the TorahFor the sake of Israel'When God began to create'
English: Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
Our sages have said that the [letter] bet was added, like the bet in barishonah (“in the beginning”) Bereshit 13:4, for you find “at the beginning (rishonah) they travelled” Bamidbar 2:9. But were that the meaning, the bet would have been vocalized with a kamatz gadol. And there are those who say that [the word] bereshit always [appears in] attached [form], where the meaning is “at the beginning of the evening, or the night, or the darkness”. But behold, they forgot “he saw a beginning reishit for himself” Devarim 33:21. And there are those who say that the bet is a subject without meaning. Their reason is that it is unthinkable that there is no beginning to the heavens and the earth. Therefore, it said “bereshit. But according to my opinion, it is indeed an attached form, like “At the beginning (bereshit) of the rule of Yehoyakim” Yirmiyahu 26:1. Now don’t wonder how can it be attached to a past tense verb [instead of a noun], for behold, thus: “At the beginning (techilat) spoke Hashem with Hoshea, and Hashem said to Hoshea” Hoshea 1:2, “The city (kiryat) where David camped” Yishayahu 29:1. The meaning [of this usage] will be explained for you in the second verse.
The crux conducted purely as grammar, with the theology left out. Ibn Ezra sets down three opinions and refutes each from a counter-example: that the bet is otiose (then it would carry a long qamats); that bereshit is always construct and means 'at the beginning of the evening, or the night' (they forgot Deut 33:21, 'he saw a reshit for himself', where it is absolute); that the bet carries no sense at all and was written only so that no one should think heaven and earth had no beginning. His own view is Rashi's — a construct, like 'in the reshit of the reign of Jehoiakim' — and he answers in advance the objection that a construct cannot govern a finite verb by citing Hos 1:2 and Isa 29:1. Then he stops: 'the meaning will be explained for you at the second verse.' The Latin bench never argues at this level about in principio, because in Latin there is nothing to argue about.
'When God began to create'
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
“E-lohim” – After we have found [the word] e-loah, we know that E-lohim is its plural form, and the root [of this] is in the nature of language. For every language has a formal form. The way of expressing formality in non-Hebrew languages is by the lesser using the plural in the presence of the greater. In Arabic the way of formal expression is for the greater to speak, as royalty, in the plural. In the Holy Tongue, the way is to refer to the greater in the plural. Like “master” (adonim), “owner” b’alim as they said, “a harsh master” (b’alim) Isaiah 19:4, “his master (b’alim) shall take”. Likewise the word “upon him” (alav), “to him” (elav), “until him” (adav). For this reason does Scripture state “He created” and not “they created”.
The grammarian's answer, and it is comparative philology two hundred years before anyone calls it that. Having found eloah, we know that Elohim is its plural, and the root of the usage is in the nature of language itself: every language has a way of showing honour. In the vernacular tongues the lesser addresses the greater in the plural; in Arabic the greater — a king — speaks of himself in the plural; in the Holy Tongue the way is to speak of the greater in the plural, as with adonim, 'master', and be'alim, 'owner', which take plural forms for a single person (Isa 19:4, Exod 22:10). And therefore: Scripture says bara and not bare'u. That last clause is word for word what Abelard asks at the Paraclete twenty years earlier — unde dictum est Eloim creavit, non creaverunt? — and the two men give opposite answers to it, neither having heard of the other.
A plural of honourThe verb is singular, so one maker
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
Now don’t be surprised by the vav of veha’aretz (“and the earth’), for its meaning is like the feh in Arabic and like “and a mist” v’ed would rise up from the earth” Genesis 2:6, for Moshe did not speak about the World to Come, which is the world of the angels, but rather of this transitory world. And those who explain that the heavens in the first verse are really the heavenly heavens, what will they do [here] with the earth? Behold, complete proofs, for reasonable people, that there is only earth. Now it is expounded that there were seven earths is [actually] that the earth is divided into seven and the Temple was in the center of the settled region, for it was distant from the center of the earth.
A grammarian refusing the whole allegorical apparatus, and the argument is a symmetry argument. Moses, he says, did not speak of the world to come, which is the world of the angels, but of this world of coming-to-be and passing-away; and to those who explain that the heavens of the first verse are really the heavens of the heavens he puts one question — then what will you do with the earth? If shamayim in v. 1 is the intelligible heaven, aretz beside it must be something other than the ground, and no one is willing to say so. That is precisely the position of Remigius, the Glossa and Comestor, who take the heaven of v. 1 to be the empyrean and are then obliged to make the earth beside it into prime matter or the four elements. Ibn Ezra also disposes of the seven earths: there is one earth, divided into seven settled regions, with the Temple at the centre of the settlement and not at the centre of the globe.
One earth, and no heaven of heavens here
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · c. 1155 · Lucca
Most commentators have said that creation means bringing forth something from nothing, and thus: “But if Hashem will created a creation” [referring to something never seen before] Bamidbar 16:30. But they have forgotten “And G-d created the crocodiles” Bereshit 1:21, as well as three times in the same verse: “G-d created man in His image…” Bereshit 1:27; “and Who creates darkness” Isaiah 45:7 – which is the opposite of light, which is something. Now here is the precise grammar of the word barat - it has two meanings. One is as stated. The other: “He did not revive them with bread” Samuel II 12:17. In this second one, aleph is in place of hey, for similar to it is “And the whole people came to revive David” – this is in the hif’il verb construction. If it were with an aleph, it would be like “To revive you from the beginning of every grain-gift of Yisrael” Samuel I 2:29. We also find [the same root] in the pi’el verb construction: “You will clear for yourselves there” Joshua 17:15. It’s not like “choose for yourselves a man” Samuel I 17:8, rather like “And He BARAed them” Ezekiel 23:47. And its meaning is to cut, to place a divided border – and the enlightened will understand.
The crux settled by lexicography, against the whole weight of the doctrine. Most commentators, Ibn Ezra says, have held that bara means bringing forth something from nothing, and they cite Numbers 16:30, 'if the Lord create a creation'. But they have forgotten 'and God created the great sea-creatures' (Gen 1:21), and the three occurrences in one verse at Gen 1:27, 'God created man in his image' — and 'who creates darkness' (Isa 45:7), which is the privation of light, and light is something. The verb has two senses, and the second, from 2 Samuel 12:17, is to cut, to set a bounded edge; and the enlightened will understand. Three verses, and two of them are the two Rupert of Deutz answers in Liège forty years earlier — Gen 1:21 and Gen 1:27, in that order — to save the doctrine that Ibn Ezra is dismantling. Note also which verse Ibn Ezra does not need to reach for: Isaiah 45:7 is Rabban Gamliel's first proof text at BR 1:9, brought there to show that tohu and darkness were created; here 'who creates darkness' is brought to show that the verb does not mean what the doctrine requires.
'Created' does not mean from nothing
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
IN THE BEGINNING. Rashi wrote: “If you wish to explain it [the word bereshith] in accordance with its plain meaning, explain it thus: at the beginning of the creation of the heaven and earth, and the earth was formless and void and there was darkness, the Holy One, blessed be He, said, Let there be light.” If so, the whole text leads into the creation of light. Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra explained it in an identical way. However, he established that the letter vav in the word veha’aretz (and the earth) does not şerve [as a connecting letter as it normally does and which would mean “and,” but it serves rather as the word “when.”] There are many such examples in Scripture. The meaning then according to Rabbi Abraham would be: at the beginning of the creation of heaven and dry land, there was no habitable place on earth; rather, it was unformed and void and covered with water, and G-d said, Let there be light. According to Abraham ibn Ezra’s opinion, only light was created on the first day. The difficulty which Rabbi Shlomo [Rashi] had which led him to the above interpretation is, as he said: For if Scripture intended to teach the order in which the acts of creation took place, it should have written barishonah [instead of bereshith], since wherever the word reshith occurs in Scripture it is in the construct state. But there is the verse, Declaring the end ‘mereshith’ [from the beginning]. And if one will connect it with the missing word davar [thing — thus making the verse read: “Declaring the end of a thing from the beginning of a thing”—] here too it could be connected to a missing word. There is also the verse, And he chose ‘reshith’ (a first part) for himself. [Here again the word reshith is not used in the construct state.] And Rashi raised other objections.
Two centuries after Rashi, the plain-sense reading is refuted from inside the tradition that produced it. Ramban reports Rashi's construct-state argument and Ibn Ezra's version of it — with Ibn Ezra's refinement that the vav of ve-ha'aretz means 'when', so that only light was made on the first day — and then breaks the grammatical premise with two counter-examples: Isa 46:10, 'declaring the end mereshit', and Deut 33:21, 'and he chose reshit for himself', where reshit stands absolute. The Hebrew slice here begins at Ibn Ezra's name and is shorter than the English, which opens at Rashi; the two are aligned on the same argument, not sentence for sentence. 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. Ramban's own answer, that bara names creation from absolute nothing and that the primary matter is what the Greeks call hyle, belongs to K4 and is not sliced here.
'When God began to create'The world is not eternal
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
AND ‘ELOKIM’ (G-D) SAID. The word Elokim means “the Master of all forces,” for the root of the word is e-il, meaning force, and the word Elokim is a composite consisting of the words e-il heim, as if the word e-il is in a construct state, and heim, [literally] “they,” alludes to all other forces. Thus Elokim means “the Force of all forces.” A secret will yet be disclosed in connection with this.
Ramban takes the plural seriously and makes it mean something other than persons. The word is a compound: its root is el, which is force, and it is put together as el hem, as though el were in the construct and hem, 'they', pointed to all the other forces — so that Elohim is the force of all forces, the master of them all. Then the sentence that stops the paragraph: 'a secret will yet be disclosed in connection with this', which is his standard signal that a kabbalistic doctrine lies underneath and will not be printed. So on the one bench a plural noun points to a plurality within God that may not be spoken, and on the other, at almost the same date, it points to three persons that may be preached. Neither Ibn Ezra's honorific plural nor Abelard's three persons is what Ramban means, and his answer is the only one of the three that treats the plurality as real and as not a plurality of creators.
The force of all forces
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
And the earth, includes all the four elements, [not merely the land] as in the verse, And the heaven and the earth were finished, which includes the entire lower sphere, and in Praise the Eternal from the earth, ye sea-monsters, and all deeps, and as in many other verses. Now with this creation, which was like a very small point having no substance, everything in the heavens and on the earth was created. The word eth —[eth hashamayim ve’eth ha’aretz] — is like “the essence of a thing.” The Sages have always set it forth as serving to include, since it is derived from the expression, The morning ‘atha’ (cometh), and also the night. And so did our Rabbis say: “‘Eth hashamayim (the heavens)’ — eth includes the sun, moon, stars and constellations. ‘Ve’eth ha’aretz (and the earth)’ — ve’eth includes the trees, herbs, and the Garden of Eden.” These include all created things which are corporeal.
Ramban gives the Latin schools' answer and the midrash's answer in the same paragraph, and does not notice that they are two. 'The earth' takes in all four elements — as in 'the heavens and the earth were finished', which covers the whole lower sphere, and 'praise the Lord from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps' — which is Abelard's reading of the verse to the letter, and Ambrose's before him. Then the particle: et is like 'the essence of a thing', and the Sages have always expounded it as including, so that et ha-shamayim brings in the sun, moon, stars and constellations and ve-et ha-aretz the trees, herbs and the Garden of Eden. He names Bereshit Rabbah for it. The two answers pull opposite ways — one makes the two words a physics of elements, the other an inventory of furniture — and the sentence that joins them is 'these include all created things which are corporeal'. Chavel's English shows on Sefaria as CC BY; licence key chavel-ramban is marked for checking before publication.
The four elementsThe particle includesA name for the whole creation
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
rabbinic · 1263–1270 · Girona
Now listen to the correct and clear explanation of the verse in its simplicity. The Holy One, blessed be He, created all things from absolute non-existence. Now we have no expression in the sacred language for bringing forth something from nothing other than the word bara (created). Everything that exists under the sun or above was not made from non-existence at the outset. Instead He brought forth from total and absolute nothing a very thin substance devoid of corporeality but having a power of potency, fit to assume form and to proceed from potentiality into reality. This was the primary matter created by G-d; it is called by the Greeks hyly (matter). After the hyly, He did not create anything, but He formed and made things with it, and from this hyly He brought everything into existence and clothed the forms and put them into a finished condition. Know that the heavens and all that is in them consist of one substance, and the earth and everything that is in it consist of one substance. The Holy One, blessed be He, created these two substances from nothing; they alone were created, and everything else was constructed from them.
The rabbinic bench's fullest statement of creation out of nothing, and it is built on the Latin schools' distinction without naming them. The Holy One created all things from absolute non-existence; and there is no expression in the sacred tongue for bringing forth something from nothing except the word bara. Then the qualification that makes the doctrine survive the objection: nothing under the sun or above it was made from non-existence at the outset — what was brought forth from the utter nothing was a very thin substance, without corporeality, having a power of potency, fit to receive form and to pass from potentiality into act; the primary matter, which the Greeks call hyly. After the hyly he created nothing, but formed and made. Two substances only were created, one for the heavens and one for the earth, and everything else was constructed from them. That is Hugh of St Victor's chapter one — God not only made all things out of matter but created the matter of all things out of nothing — reached in Girona a century and a half later with the Greek word intact and no Latin in sight. And the first sentence is aimed at a named man: R. Abraham is Ibn Ezra, quoted and answered a few lines above, who had denied precisely that bara carries the sense Ramban here says it alone carries. Chavel's English shows on Sefaria as CC BY; licence key chavel-ramban is marked for checking before publication.
Out of nothingThe hyle is tohuMatter first, then formed
English: Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76
ScholaeCarolingian and twelfth-century Latin, 790–1170
latin · c. 790 · Aachen
D. Whence did Genesis take this name? — M. For the Seventy Translators, Symmachus and Theodotion rendered 'in the beginning', and in the Hebrew it is written Bresith, which Aquila translates 'in the head'. And therefore it can be taken of Christ according to the sense rather than according to the translation of the word: he who, both at the very forehead of Genesis, which is the head of all the books, and at the beginning of John the Evangelist, is shown to be the founder of heaven and earth. Whence also in the Psalter he says of himself: 'In the head of the book it is written of me' (Ps 40:8 [Vg 39:8]) — that is, in the beginning of Genesis. And in the Gospel, 'All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing' (John 1:3). Therefore it is to be known that this book is called Bresith among the Hebrews, they having the custom of giving volumes their names from their opening words.
A Carolingian catena copying Jerome, and the copying is the finding. Wigbod reproduces the Hebrew Questions on this verse almost word for word — the three Greek versions, Bresith, Aquila's 'in the head', the forehead of Genesis, Ps 40:8, John 1:3, the Hebrew custom of naming books from their openings — and drops exactly two things: the list of authorities who said the Hebrew reads 'in the Son', and Jerome's refutation of them, including the decisive philological sentence that the Hebrew for 'in the son' is ba-ben and is not what is written. What survives is the concession without the correction, and Wigbod reaches it under a question about the book's title rather than about the verse. The K7 threads found him doing the same thing to Jerome on 1:2 under the label HIERONYMUS; here he does not name Jerome at all. Migne's ex principibus is a misprint for Jerome's ex principiis.
In the SonIt is the book's name
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 790 · Luxeuil
And therefore God is most rightly believed to have made all things out of nothing: because even if all formed things were made out of that matter, that matter itself was made out of nothing. For we ought not to be like those who do not believe that almighty God could make anything out of nothing, when they consider that craftsmen and workmen of any kind cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from. For wood helps the craftsman, and silver helps the silversmith, and gold the goldsmith, and earth helps the potter to be able to finish his works. If they are not helped by that matter out of which they make something, they can make nothing, since they themselves do not make the matter. For the craftsman does not make the wood, but makes something out of wood: and so all other workmen. But almighty God had no need to be helped by any thing that he had not himself made, in order to bring about what he willed; for if some thing that he had not himself made helped him towards the things he willed to make, he was not almighty: which it is sacrilege to believe.
Wigbod copying Augustine, and this time he copies everything. At K1 his method was the interesting thing about him: he takes over Jerome's discussion of 'in the beginning' and drops precisely the sentence in which Jerome refutes the reading 'in the Son' from the Hebrew, so that the objection survives in the Carolingian schools and the answer does not. Here he takes over De Genesi contra Manichaeos I.6.10 without losing a clause — the four trades, the wood that the carpenter does not make, the argument from omnipotence, the word sacrilegium at the end. What he drops in the one place and keeps in the other is a fair index of what a Carolingian compiler thought was load-bearing: philology about a Hebrew word is expendable, an argument that secures omnipotence is not. He reads 'de nihilo facta est' where Augustine has 'de omnino nihilo'.
Out of nothingA craftsman needs a material
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 790 · Tours
M[aster]. Let us say that in a Beginning coeternal with himself God made heaven and earth — in the only-begotten Son, who is the Wisdom of the Father, of whom the Apostle says: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).
The Carolingian dialogue's answer to the question its pupil has just asked — in what beginning, the beginning of time, or a beginning that was the start of the creature? — and it refuses the alternative by making the Beginning a person: one coeternal with God himself, the only-begotten Son who is the Father's Wisdom, with 1 Cor 1:24 for the identification. What the schoolroom form makes visible is how short the step is. The pupil asked a question about time; the master answered with a doctrine of the second person, and neither notices that the question has been changed.
The Beginning is the SonFather, Beginning, Spirit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 796 · Tours
Question 19. In how many ways is the divine working? — Answer. Four. First, that in the dispensation of the Word of God all things are eternal. Second, that in formless matter he who lives for ever created all things at once (Sir 18:1). Third, that through the works of the six days he distinguished the various creatures. Fourth, that out of the primordial seeds natures do not arise unknown, but known ones are more often re-formed, lest they perish. Question 20. Which creatures were made out of nothing? — Answer. Heaven, earth, angels, light, air, water, and the soul of man.
The crux turned into a list a pupil can memorise, and the list is the Latin bench's only counterpart to the rabbinic enumerations. Seven items made out of nothing: heaven, earth, angels, light, air, water, the soul of man. Set it beside Rav Yehudah in Rav's name at b. Chagigah 12a — ten things created on the first day: heaven and earth, chaos and desolation, light and darkness, wind and waters, the measure of the day and the measure of the night — and beside Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 3's eight, and the shape of the answer is identical while the contents diverge exactly where the doctrines diverge. Alcuin's list has angels and the human soul on it, which no rabbinic list has; the rabbinic lists have tohu and bohu on them, which is the one thing Alcuin's question is designed to exclude. The four modes in question 19 are Augustine's, with Sirach 18:1 for the second, and they are what makes the list possible: 'created all things at once' in formless matter is the mode under which the seven are all made out of nothing together.
Out of nothingMatter first, then formedAll things made at once
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 796 · Tours
Question 28. What is signified by the name of heaven and earth, when it is said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' (Gen 1:1)? — Answer. That formless matter, which God made out of nothing, was first called heaven and earth: not because it already was this, but because it already could be this. For on the second day this starry heaven is read to have been made, and on the third day the earth to have appeared and begun to be clothed with flowers. Or else, by the name of heaven and earth the spiritual and the earthly creatures can be understood.
Augustine reduced to a rule a pupil can hold: heaven and earth in v. 1 are the names of formless matter, given proleptically — not because it already was this, but because it already could be this — and the proof is the calendar, since the starry heaven comes on the second day and the earth appears on the third. Then, as usual, Alcuin adds the alternative without weighing it: 'or else the spiritual and the earthly creatures'. That second answer is the seed of the empyrean reading which Remigius, the Glossa and Comestor will make the standard one.
A name for the whole creationThe empyrean heaven
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 800 · Tours
Question 26. What is: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth'? — Answer. In the Son God completed [ms.: made] heaven and earth.
The whole crux in eleven words, question and answer, with nothing left of the argument. Jerome had denied that the Hebrew says 'in the Son'; Augustine had offered it as one of three; Bede had called it not improbable. In the Carolingian schoolroom it is simply the answer, and it is the answer a boy memorises. The Glossa will later print exactly this — a single word, Filio — as its own gloss on in principio, under Alcuin's name. Migne prints perfecit with a manuscript variant fecit; the variant is kept in the English in brackets because the choice is not indifferent, perficere making the Son the completion of the work and facere merely its instrument.
In the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 819–822 · Fulda
In the beginning of time, therefore, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning. But God, whose hand is omnipotent, needed no delay of times to accomplish his work, because, as it is written, 'Whatever he willed, he did' (Ps 115:3 [Vg 113B:3]). Whence it is well said that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, so that it may be plainly understood that both were made by him at once, although both cannot be said at once by a man. And then the prophet says: 'In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth' (Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26]); but here the Lord is related to have created heaven and earth in the beginning. Whence it is plainly gathered that the making of both elements was completed together, and this with such swiftness of divine power that not even the first moment of the world's birth had been passed. It can also be understood, not improbably, that God made heaven and earth in the beginning in his Only-begotten Son, who answered the Jews when they asked what they should believe him to be: 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25); because in him, as the Apostle says, 'all things were created in the heavens and on the earth' (Col 1:16).
Bede's paragraph again, taken over silently and unattributed, exactly as the K7 threads found at PL 107:447C and the K10 threads at 448D — but with a sentence in front of it that is not Bede's and that answers the crux more sharply than Bede does: 'in the beginning of time, therefore, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning.' Rabanus also drops Bede's long house-building simile and keeps everything after it. This is the Carolingian method visible in one paragraph: an inherited exposition, silently abridged, with the compiler's own thesis set at its head. On the id: K7 already holds a witness called rabanus-gen-1-1 which is in fact on Gen 1:2, so this one takes the b suffix (see notes/SOURCES-FINDINGS.md).
In the beginning of timeIn the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 845 · Luxeuil
It is worth asking why this volume is called Genesis in particular, since many things are recorded in it which are known not to pertain to generation — unless it be that the Hebrews have the custom of imposing the names of books from their openings, as Exodus and many others are named. Whence Bresith in Hebrew is not undeservedly rendered Genesis in Latin: because in its very opening the creation of heaven and earth, and the generation of men and living creatures, is narrated.
Jerome's last remark on the verse, promoted to the first question of a commentary. Angelomus keeps the Hebrew custom of naming books from their first words and draws from it a conclusion Jerome did not: that Bresith is properly rendered Genesis, because what stands at the opening is generation. The Latin bench thus ends by treating the crux word as the title of a book rather than as a word in a sentence. The rabbinic bench never loses the sentence, because for it the word governs what follows — either the Torah, by which God created, or, in Rashi's plain sense, the clause 'when God began to create'.
It is the book's name
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 850 · Luxeuil
But it is asked why it is said thus: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', and not said: 'In the beginning God said, Let heaven and earth be made', as it is told of the light: 'God said, Let there be light', and the rest? — Unless because first what he made had to be taken in universally under the name of heaven and earth, and commended, and then gone through in its parts, as it is read to have been done.
Augustine's question and his first answer, compressed to two sentences and shorn of the second answer that made the first provisional. What in De Genesi ad litteram is one horn of a dilemma ('was it that…? or was it that…?') is here the explanation, flatly. The sentences that follow immediately are Angelomus' treatment of 'empty and void' (built at K6), so this witness and that one are one continuous stretch of his commentary divided between two cruxes.
The whole first, then the parts
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 850 · Luxeuil
For God founded formless matter out of nothing, and out of it created all things, according to what is written in the book of Wisdom: 'For your hand, Lord, was not powerless, which created the world out of formless matter' (Wis 11:17). Whence the philosophers, as has already been said, not being able to penetrate how the divine Wisdom created the world out of nothing, reckoned the world to be coeternal. They say these things because they attend to the craftsman and not to God. For they say: wood helps the craftsman, and silver the silversmith, and gold the goldsmith. Yet although they need these, they cannot create. But the Lord needed none of these, and founded all things out of formless matter, not outside himself as a craftsman does — for the craftsman does not make the wood, but makes something out of wood. And the almighty had no need to be helped by any thing that he had not himself made in order to bring about what he willed; otherwise he would not be God.
Augustine's argument rewritten, and the rewriting turns it into a report of a debate. Where Augustine says 'we ought not to be like those who…', Angelomus says 'they say these things because they attend to the craftsman and not to God' and then quotes them: aiunt enim, lignum adjuvat fabrum, et argentum argentarium, et aurum aurificem. The objection has become a speech with a speaker, which is the form it has at Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 and nowhere else on the Latin bench — and, as there, the speaker is a philosopher and is not named. Angelomus adds the diagnosis Augustine does not give: it is because they could not penetrate how Wisdom created the world out of nothing that they concluded the world is coeternal. The paragraph immediately before this one is his analogy of sound and song for how formless matter precedes the formed creature in origin only, not in time; the one immediately after is Augustine's question about why the verse does not say 'let there be', which K5 built as angelom-gen-1-1b.
Out of nothingA craftsman needs a materialMatter first, then formed
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 890 · Auxerre
Allegorically, in what is said, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, by the name of 'beginning' we may not inappropriately understand the Son of God, as he himself said of himself to the Jews: I am the beginning, who also speak to you (John 8:25). For God the Father is a beginning, but not from a beginning, since he was not made or created by the Father but begotten; through which Beginning God the Father created heaven and earth, that is, the heavenly and the earthly. For by 'heaven' are signified the heavenly, or those leading a heavenly life; by 'earth', those gaping after earthly business. Both of these were created through the Beginning, because when Jesus Christ was born it became plain who were heavenly and who were earthly.
A distinction made in passing that nobody else on this daf bothers with: the Father too is a beginning — but not from a beginning, since he is not made or created but begotten. Remigius has noticed that if 'in the beginning' names the Son because the Son is a principium, the word will also fit the Father, and he heads it off with the credal formula. The rest is the standard identification with John 8:25 and then the ecclesial reading, in which heaven and earth are the heavenly-minded and the earthly-minded and the division became visible only at the Incarnation. Set beside R. Yudan's 'to this one it is fitting to call God', the two benches are doing the same thing with the same clause — asking what may properly be predicated of the creator, and answering out of the word order.
The Beginning is the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 900 · Auxerre
At the beginning of this volume the philosophers are refuted, who tried to argue about the creation of the world: Plato, for instance, who said there were three principles, namely God, the exemplar, and matter, and that God did not create all things from nothing as their author, but that matter furnished help to him as to a workman in the making of things. Aristotle said there were two principles, namely matter and form, and something third which he wished to call, I know not what, the operative. Opposing their errors, Moses, as chosen by God, is said to have shown the truth, showing that God formed all things at once out of nothing — not indeed in time, but at the beginning of time, saying 'In the beginning', with 'of time' understood; whence it is beyond doubt that time then began, which before was not at all.
Remigius makes the temporal reading do the polemical work Ambrose gave it, and does the crux's grammar out loud: 'In principio, and of time is understood' — a supplied genitive, which is what every Latin reader is doing silently. The named opponents are Plato with his three principles and Aristotle with his two, and the distinction he needs is not in time but at the beginning of time. His neighbour on the rabbinic bench is Bereshit Rabbah 1:9, where a philosopher tells Rabban Gamliel that God is a great artisan who found good materials to hand and is told the list of them is a list of things created — the same refutation of the same philosophy, on the same verse, with the same absence of contact. That section is K4's.
In the beginning of timeThe world is not eternal
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 900 · Auxerre
'For he created heaven and earth.' By 'heaven' we ought not to understand this visible firmament, but that empyrean — that is, fiery, or intellectual — heaven, which is called fiery not from burning but from brightness, and which was at once filled with the angelic spirits, of whom it is said in Job: 'When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy' (Job 38:7). And note that three elements are named here. For under the name of heaven gather the air; under the name of earth, the earth itself, and the fire that lies hidden in its bowels. Of the fourth element, that is water, mention is made in what follows.
The empyrean enters the Latin gloss tradition here in the form it will keep: not the visible firmament but a fiery heaven, and fiery from brightness rather than heat — the qualification matters, because it is what makes the fire intelligible rather than physical — filled with angels the moment it was made, on the authority of Job 38:7. The Glossa prints this sentence almost word for word at PL 113:68C, inside the VERS. 1 block that K1 slices whole, and from there it reaches Comestor. Remigius then counts the elements out of the two words and finds only three, water being held over to v. 2 — where Ambrose and Abelard find all four.
The empyrean heavenThe four elements
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1078–1100 · Segni
It is God, then, who speaks. Was it to the angels? God forbid! For man was not created by angels; otherwise there would be not one but many creators, whereas God alone is the Creator of all. For thus it is written: The Creator of all, terrible and strong (2 Macc 1:24). And again: You have made all things in wisdom (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:24]). If therefore it is true, as cannot be denied, that God alone created all things, whom was he inviting to the making of man when he said, Let us make man? Let us hear, then, what is said at the head of this book: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. You have therefore God, that is, the Father; you have also a beginning, that is, the Son — for so he himself says: I am the beginning, who also speak to you (John 8:25). But what follows? And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. You have therefore the Holy Spirit also. And that not the Father alone created heaven, but the Son and the Holy Spirit together with him, let the psalmist say: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth (Ps 33:6 [Vg 32:6]). Now the whole Trinity, that is, God and his Word and his Spirit, is one God; and it is he who says, Let us make man — not seeking help outside himself, but disposing all things within himself with his Son and the Holy Spirit.
The one Latin witness on this crux who states the negative half of the question, and he states it in the rabbinic bench's own terms. Whom was God inviting when he said 'let us make man'? Not the angels — for man was not created by angels, and otherwise there would be not one creator but many. That is R. Yitzḥak's 'no creature can say that two authorities created the world', with the angels in the place of the second authority and with the same horror of it. Having refused the answer, Bruno goes back to the head of the book for the right one, and lays the triad out in three short moves: you have God, that is the Father; you have a beginning, that is the Son; and what follows? — the Spirit of God borne over the waters, so you have the Holy Spirit too. Nothing in the argument is his own except its shape, which is a schoolman's: the wrong answer refuted first, from a premise both benches share.
Father, Beginning, SpiritNot spoken to the angels
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1079–1123 · Segni
'In the beginning,' he says, and before every creature, God created heaven and earth. For this the Psalmist too testifies, saying: 'And you, God, in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands' (Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26]). Not, therefore, heaven before earth, but God created heaven and earth together. Whence also this: 'He who lives for ever created all things at once' (Sir 18:1). For even if God is narrated in this same book to have made all things in six days, it is not to be doubted that he nevertheless created all things at once out of nothing. He created at once the very matter of all things, out of which he commanded the rest to be made at distinct times, as he willed. Let it be said, then: In the beginning of all creatures God created heaven — and those things, namely, which are contained in it, that is, the angels and the heavenly powers — and the earth, already as it were pregnant and in labour, and the matter and mother of all those things that arise from it.
Bruno takes the second of Augustine's three readings, the one nobody else on the bench builds on: not in the beginning of time and not in the Son but 'in the beginning of all creatures', that is, before anything else — and he takes it in order to get simul out of the verse, so that Sir 18:1 and the six days can both stand. His pregnant earth, matter and mother of what rises from it, is the same instinct as Bereshit Rabbah 1:1's architect's plans: read the first verse as a statement about what was available to the maker. The Corpus Corporum text of Bruno is the dirtiest on the bench (K7 found Dei. vero, K10 found tuce for luce); nothing in this slice looks corrupt, but it is not collated.
First of all thingsThe world is not eternal
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1079–1123 · Segni
In what beginning? In him, surely, who says: 'I am the Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25) — 'for all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing' (John 1:3). In this beginning, therefore, God created from the outset the whole fabric of the world and the very orders of the angels.
The same commentator, the same verse, the other answer — and the structure is the point. Bruno finishes the literal exposition of the whole first day, and only then turns back: 'having set these things out to the letter, let us see what they also signify allegorically. In what beginning? In him, surely, who says: I am the Beginning.' The two readings are not rivals for him but layers, taken in order, and he does not ask which is the sense of the word. This is how the Latin bench keeps three answers alive for seven centuries without ever having to lose two of them; Peter Comestor's 'the phrase is to be repeated' is the same manoeuvre, made explicit.
In the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
But if anyone should object that man too, though made not out of nothing but out of the earth, is said to be created — as it is written, 'And God created man to his own image; to the image of God he created him' (Gen 1:27); or again what is likewise said, 'And God created the great sea-creatures' (Gen 1:21) — we say to this that it is rightly said, but in this respect only, that the matter out of which those forms were produced or taken had already been created. And by these names, that is heaven and earth, as was said above, the whole creation visible and invisible together is signified. That nothing is excepted is proved from the apostolic creed also, in which we say: I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth — adding nothing of the creatures; we do not doubt that under these names we have taken in all things visible and invisible together. For in the other creed of the catholic faith no less, when we say: I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, at once, explaining what we have said by heaven and earth, we add: of all things visible and invisible. Therefore what is said, 'in the beginning God created heaven and earth', is the same as if it were said: through his Son, God the Father created the whole substance of all things visible and invisible, such as yet as the earth that follows expresses: 'But the earth was empty and void.'
A Latin abbot meeting the objection from usage and answering it with a distinction, forty years before Ibn Ezra meets the same objection from the same verses and lets it stand. The objection: Scripture uses creavit of man, who was made out of the earth (Gen 1:27), and of the sea-creatures (Gen 1:21) — so the verb cannot carry the sense the doctrine needs. Rupert's answer is that the word is rightly used there, but only in the respect that the matter from which those things were shaped had itself already been created; the verb reaches back through the shaping to the creation of the stuff. He then secures the scope of Gen 1:1 from the creeds rather than from Genesis: creatorem coeli et terrae in the apostolic creed adds nothing after it, and the other creed glosses the pair as visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Ibn Ezra brings Gen 1:21 and Gen 1:27 in that same order and concludes instead that bara simply has a second sense. The sentence immediately before this one, in which Rupert refuses the philosophers' coeval hyle by name, is inside the slice K1 built as rupert-gen-1-1.
Out of nothingCreated, not formed'Created' does not mean from nothing
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
Since the creation itself is the beginning of the world, why was it said thus: 'In the beginning he created'? For it is the same as if it were said: In the beginning he made the beginning; and if you take 'beginning' here in the ordinary way when it is said 'in the beginning he created', it is a vice of superfluity of expression. Well, therefore, is 'beginning' taken in this place as a kind of proper name of the Son, because he himself so willed it, who when he was asked by the Jews, 'Who are you?', said: 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25). For truly in this Beginning God created heaven and earth, because all things were made through him (John 1:3). Another Scripture confesses this too when it says: 'You have made all things in wisdom' (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:24]) — which wisdom is none other than the Word of God, the Word God, who, as has been said, named himself the beginning. Not indeed that the native tongue of this Scripture, that is Hebrew, signifies son and beginning by one word: for son is ben in that language, and beginning is bresith. But we say this too, that though not in word, yet in sense the Son is the Beginning. He is Son, because born of God; Beginning, because he is shown to be the first and efficient cause of all creatures. And so in the beginning, that is, in the Son, in his Word, in his Wisdom, God created heaven and earth. Created, I say — that is, not, as the philosophers of the gentiles vainly supposed, that he had matter or hyle coeval with himself, but he made the substance of heaven and earth out of nothing.
The best argument the Latin bench produces on this crux, and the one that shows it had absorbed Jerome. Rupert does not begin from the proof texts; he begins from a defect in the sentence. If the creation is itself the world's beginning, then 'in the beginning he created' says 'in the beginning he made the beginning', which as ordinary Latin is a vitium, a redundancy. A word that would be superfluous in the common sense must be a proper name — so principium here names the Son. Then, having reached Jerome's conclusion by a route Jerome never took, he concedes Jerome's philology in Jerome's own terms and with the Hebrew words in his mouth: son is ben, beginning is bresith, they are not one word, and the identity is of sense and not of speech. That is the twelfth century answering the fourth on the fourth century's ground.
In the SonThe world is not eternal
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1110–1130 · Regensburg
And it is to be noted that Moses the prophet records the Son as the beginning, and all things created in him; but John the apostle proclaims the Father as the beginning, and that the Son always remained in him, coequal to him, and that all things were made through him. For without doubt they announce to us in concord the one substance of both. It is said therefore (Gen 1): 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' — that is, God the Father created in the Son, at once, the heavenly and the earthly, the visible and the invisible.
The neatest thing said on this crux in the twelfth century, and the neatness is the problem. Honorius observes that Genesis and John begin with the same words and mean opposite persons by them: in Genesis 'the beginning' is the Son, in whom all is created; in John 'the beginning' is the Father, in whom the Son always was. The two openings had been read together since Jerome as evidence for one another; Honorius is the first on this bench to notice that reading them together requires the same phrase to name two different persons, and he resolves it not by choosing but by an appeal to the single substance. Honorius has already appeared on K7 (PL 172:254C) and K10 (255D) from the same columns of the same work.
In the Son
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
By the name of heaven and earth I judge the four elements to be taken in here, out of which, as out of a material first beginning, all other bodies are agreed to be composed. By 'heaven' he means the two light elements, that is fire and air. The remaining two, which are heavy, he calls generally 'earth'. For we call heaven both the airy — as in 'the birds of heaven' — and the ethereal, which is fiery. Whence it is not unfitting that he here names both air and fire 'heaven'. It is agreed too that the ethereal heaven, in that its fire is purer, is properly wont to be called heaven; whence with reason the name of heaven, since the purer the fire the lighter its nature, is here put, as has been said, for the two light elements, fire and air. Just so, on the contrary, by 'earth', whose nature is most heavy and weighty, he marks out both the earth itself and the water that clings to it. These four elements, then, as the first principles of all other bodies, he announces that God made in the beginning. And what he says is as if he said: In the beginning, before all those things which he enumerates in order, and of whose completion he adds afterwards, 'Thus the heavens were finished' (Gen 2:1). What he says, 'in the beginning' of the works that follow, is as if he said: In the beginning of the world, that is, before he brought about anything of those things which belong to the world. For the angels, being of an incorporeal nature, are not included among the creatures of the world, as men are, of whom the philosopher makes mention in the third book of the Topics: 'The world,' he says, 'is governed by Providence; but men are a part of the world; therefore human affairs are governed by Providence.'
The most thoroughly physical reading of the verse on the Latin bench, and it ends by throwing the angels out. Heaven names the two light elements, fire and air; earth names the two heavy, earth and the water that clings to it; and the whole verse announces that God made the four elements as the first principles of bodies. Then the consequence, stated without embarrassment: the angels are not included among the creatures of the world at all, being incorporeal, so 'in the beginning of the world' does not touch them — and Boethius' Topics is quoted for the premise that men are a part of the world. That is the exact position Remigius and the Glossa deny, and it is what Ibn Ezra argues for in Lucca, from the other direction, when he asks those who make the heavens of v. 1 the heaven of heavens what they will then do with the earth.
The four elementsOne earth, and no heaven of heavens here
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1130 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
And it is well said of the elements 'created' rather than 'formed', because that is properly said to be created which is so brought forth from non-being to being that it has no pre-existing matter, and did not first subsist in any state of nature. But when something is made out of matter already prepared, by the joining on of a form, that is rightly said to be formed — as is what is set down in what follows: 'The Lord God therefore formed man of the slime of the earth' (Gen 2:7). And again: 'All the animals of the earth therefore having been formed out of the ground' (Gen 2:19). For when a pre-existing matter is denoted — as when 'out of the ground' is put first, since it was to be formed into some appearance — then a thing is most rightly said to be formed.
The distinction stated as a rule about two Latin verbs, and the rule is exactly what Ibn Ezra denies about the one Hebrew verb underlying both. Creare is properly said of what is brought from non-being to being with no pre-existing matter and no prior state of nature; formare of what is made out of matter already prepared by the joining on of a form. The proof is the usage of Genesis itself: formavit hominem de limo terrae at 2:7, formatis de humo cunctis animantibus at 2:19 — where the material is named first, the verb is formavit. Abelard is reading a Latin translation, and the two verbs he separates render two different Hebrew verbs at 2:7 and 2:19 but not at 1:21 and 1:27, where the Hebrew has bara and the Latin has creavit of things made out of something. That is the gap Rupert closes with a distinction and Ibn Ezra widens into a lexical entry, and none of the three has read either of the others.
Created, not formedOut of nothing
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1135 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
But when in what follows he says a second day and a third and the rest, he means by the first day that on which heaven and earth were created, as it was said: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth', on which also light was created or divided from the darkness. For to the works of the first day there belongs only the creation of heaven and earth, which is to be assigned to the first day, in respect of which first day the second or third day is so called; so that 'in the beginning he created' is as if it were said: On the first day — that is, before the other works that follow.
Abelard reads the word as a position in a series and nothing more: 'in the beginning' means 'on the first day', because a second and a third day are named afterwards and something must be first for them to be second to. Of everything on the Latin bench this is the closest to Rashi's plain sense — both make the phrase relative to what follows rather than absolute — and it is arrived at from the opposite end, Rashi from the construct state of a Hebrew noun and Abelard from the ordinals of the Latin chapter. Abelard is also the Latin witness that K7 found reporting the Hebrew against Jerome (volitabat at PL 178:735B): he is the one commentator on this bench who habitually asks what the words are doing rather than what they signify.
First of all thingsIn the beginning of time
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1133 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
It is to be noted that in this very opening of Genesis the prophet carefully expressed the foundation of our faith concerning the unity of God and the Trinity. For when he said 'the Spirit of the Lord', he plainly distinguished at once both the person of the Holy Spirit and that of the Father, from whom that Spirit principally proceeds, as blessed Augustine records. But in that he added 'God said', he openly expressed God's own saying, that is, his Word, which is the Son, together with the Father himself. For no one of sound head can be so foolish as to reckon this saying corporeal, since the Godhead is not corporeal, nor has it to speak in a bodily way, nor was there yet anyone present to whom it would have had to speak bodily. Now where we say 'God created', for what is 'God' the Hebrew has Eloim, which shows a plurality of divine persons. For El is singular, which is interpreted 'God'; but Eloim is plural, by which we understand the diversity of the persons, of which each one is God. But why is it said 'Eloim created' and not 'they created'? — namely, so that a singular verb should be referred to a plural noun; in order that it might be intimated that in those three persons not three creators but one only is to be understood. When therefore he said 'Eloim created', in which he taught that the divine persons work equally together, he assuredly laid down beforehand that the works of the Trinity are undivided. And when afterwards, as we have said, he distinguished the persons of the Father and the Spirit and the Word, he determined wherein that Trinity consists.
The star witness of this crux, and the only place on the Latin bench where the Hebrew word is brought to Gen 1:1 at all. Abelard knows that El is singular and Eloim plural, and he asks the exact question the midrash asks — why 'Eloim created' and not 'they created'? — and answers it by the concord: a singular verb referred to a plural noun, so that in those three persons one creator is understood and not three. From which he draws the technical doctrine, opera Trinitatis indivisa. Where he got the grammar is unknown: Jerome's note that the Hebrew word is common in number sits at Gen 6:2 and is about the sons of God, and no Latin before Abelard brings it forward to the first verse. What he does not have is the rest of the Hebrew: he reads the plural as a plurality of persons, which is the one thing the rabbinic bench never lets it mean, and Ibn Ezra will refute the reading twenty years later without ever having heard of him. Note also the first half of the passage, where the Trinity is got out of the sequence of the verses rather than the noun — Spirit and Father from 'the Spirit of the Lord', Word and Father from 'God said' — which is Augustine's method and needs no Hebrew at all.
Eloim is plural: three personsThe verb is singular, so one makerFather, Beginning, Spirit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1137 · Paris
For that that first matter of all things arose in the beginning of time, or rather with time itself, is clear from what was said: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth.' But how long it remained in this unformedness or confusion, Scripture does not plainly show. To me, however, it seems, so far as I can conjecture, that between the creation and the disposing of things there was indeed an order of time but no delay interposed; so that it can truly be said that this was made after that, yet that between this making and that no postponement whatever came between.
Hugh sharpens the temporal reading to the point where it stops being a place in time at all: not in the beginning of time but 'or rather with time itself', so that the verse dates nothing, it institutes the possibility of dating. From that he draws the conclusion the schools needed — that between creation and the ordering of things there was an order of time but no interval — which is how a literal six days can be held together with 'he created all things at once'. Compare b. Chagigah 12a, where the measure of the day and the measure of the night are themselves among the ten things made on the first day: both benches, asked what the beginning is the beginning of, answer that time is inside the creature and not outside it.
In the beginning of timeThe world is not eternal
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1137 · Paris
'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' (Gen 1:1). What was created was made out of nothing. For what was made out of something was indeed made, but was not created, because it was not made out of nothing. God therefore made heaven and earth; and not only made but created, that is, made out of nothing. The philosophers of the gentiles laid down three principles of things without a principle: the workman, matter, and form — professing that all the things that were made were brought forth out of matter into form through the workman. But they professed God to be only a maker and not a creator. The true faith, however, confesses one only first principle, which always was; and through it alone it came about that what once was not should be. And the power of his unspeakable omnipotence, just as it could not have anything coeternal besides itself by which it might be helped in making, so it had at hand, when it willed, that what it willed and when and how much it willed should be created out of nothing. All things therefore that were made, God not only made out of matter, but himself created the matter of all things out of nothing.
The first chapter of the first book of De sacramentis, which is to say that when the Latin bench organises itself into a systematic theology this crux is where it starts. The chapter title is the thesis: that there is one principle from which all things were made out of nothing. Then the distinction as a definition — what was made out of something was made but not created — followed by the doxography Ambrose opened the Hexaemeron with, now compressed to three words, opifex, materia, forma, and given its precise consequence: those philosophers professed God to be a maker and not a creator. The move that closes it is Augustine's, that nothing coeternal could help him in the making. Ramban reaches the same last sentence in Girona a century and a quarter later — two substances only were created, and everything else was constructed from them — from the Hebrew of the verb and a Greek word for the matter, and with nothing of this in front of him.
Out of nothingCreated, not formedGod, exemplar, matter
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1137 · Paris
Two things are set down in the beginning, heaven and earth. Which of these do you suppose was below, and which shall we say was above? Either earth above and heaven below, or earth below and heaven above? But is it to be believed that in that first condition of things heaven was created underneath, and afterwards in the forming was set above? Perhaps, because Scripture named heaven before earth, someone may say that heaven was created below as a foundation. But I judge it to be so placed not for the sake of order but of dignity; and because the discourse that follows had to be about the element of earth, as about the nearer thing — and for this reason named later — therefore heaven had to be named first and earth afterwards. Nor indeed would the very nature of the things founded allow any other order of position or placing than that the weighty should be disposed downward and the light upward. Therefore the earth was below and heaven above, and what was above the earth was heaven. Therefore heaven was above the earth.
Hugh takes the question seriously enough to consider the absurd answer — that heaven was made underneath, as a foundation, because it is named first — and then gives the school's rule: word order is dignity, not sequence. His second reason is better than his first and is entirely about composition: the discourse that follows is going to be about the earth, so the earth is named last, nearest to what comes next. That is a claim about how the sentence was written rather than about what happened, and it is R. Yoḥanan's distinction between creation and completion, and Resh Lakish's between creating and stretching, arrived at from the writer's side rather than the world's.
Named for dignity, not order
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1137 · Paris
CHAPTER II. What is the matter of the divine Scriptures. The matter of all the divine Scriptures is the works of human restoration. For there are two works in which is contained everything that has been made. The first is the work of foundation. The second is the work of restoration. The work of foundation is that by which it was brought about that the things which were not should be. The work of restoration is that by which it was brought about that the things which had perished should be better. Therefore the work of foundation is the creation of the world with all its elements. The work of restoration is the incarnation of the Word with all its sacraments, whether those which went before from the beginning of the age or those which follow to the end of the world. For the incarnate Word is our King, who came into this world to fight with the devil; and all the saints who were before his coming are as soldiers going before the face of the King, and those who came after and will come to the end of the world are soldiers following their King. And the King himself is in the midst of his army, walking hedged about on this side and that and thronged by his companies. And although in so great a multitude various kinds of arms appear in the sacraments and observances of the peoples going before and following after, yet all are proved to serve one King and to follow one standard, and to pursue one enemy and to be crowned with one victory. In all these the works of restoration are considered; on which the whole intention of the divine Scriptures turns. Worldly or secular writings have for their matter the works of foundation. The divine Scripture has for its matter the works of restoration. Therefore it is rightly believed to be more excellent than all writings, by as much as the matter is worthier and more sublime in which its consideration and treatment is engaged. For the works of restoration are far worthier than the works of foundation; because those were made for service, that they might be under man while he stood; these for salvation, that they might raise him fallen. Therefore those, as some small thing, were completed in six days; but these cannot be completed save in six ages.
The sharpest Latin answer on this crux, and it is sharp because Hugh gives away more than he means to. The matter of all divine Scripture is the works of restoration; the works of foundation — the creation of the world with all its elements — are the matter of secular writings. That is a clean division and it leaves Genesis 1 on the wrong side of it, which is why the next chapter has to explain how divine Scripture descends through the works of foundation to narrate the works of restoration. Hugh is therefore saying, in the technical vocabulary of a Paris master, exactly what R. Isaac says in Troyes at the head of Rashi's commentary: this chapter is not what the book is for. The two go on to give incompatible reasons — Hugh that Scripture passes through the creation on its way to the Incarnation, Rashi that Israel needs a title to the land — and neither bench ever hears the other's. ⚠ Anchor note: a prologue, built by PLAN.md §5's specification for K2; see the file docstring.
Scripture is about restorationFoundation belongs to secular writings
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1169–1173 · Paris
But Moses prophesied God alone to be eternal, and the world created without pre-existing matter. And it was created in the beginning, that is, in the Son; and 'in the beginning' is to be repeated thus: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, in the beginning, namely, of time. For the world and time are coeval. And as God alone is eternal, so the world is everlasting, that is, always eternal, eternal in a temporal way; the angels too are everlasting. Or: in the beginning of all creatures he created heaven and earth, that is, he made these primordial creatures, and made them at once.
The settlement, stated as a rule of reading: iterandum est in principio — say the phrase twice. Once it means in the Son, once it means at the beginning of time, and Comestor then adds Bruno's third sense as an alternative, in the beginning of all creatures. Augustine had listed the three as questions; the handbook that taught Europe the Bible for three hundred years prints all three as the answer and instructs the reader to take the words over again for each. Note the distinction Comestor needs and that the English must keep: God alone is aeternus, the world and the angels are sempiternus, everlasting — 'eternal in a temporal way'. The preceding columns, where he sets Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus against Moses, are not sliced here; that doxography is Remigius' material and belongs with K4.
Say the phrase twiceIn the SonIn the beginning of timeFirst of all things
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1170 · Paris
'World' is said in four ways: sometimes the empyrean heaven is called world, on account of its cleanness; sometimes the sensible world, which is called by the Greeks pan and by the Latins 'all', because the philosopher did not know the empyrean; sometimes the region below the moon alone, because this alone has the living creatures known to us — of which it is said, 'The prince of this world shall be cast out' (John 12:31); sometimes man is called a world, because he presents in himself the image of the whole world, whence by the Lord man was called 'every creature', and the Greek calls man microcosm, that is, the lesser world. Now the empyrean and the sensible world and the sublunary region God created, that is, made out of nothing; but man he created, that is, moulded. Of the creation, then, of those three the lawgiver says: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' (Gen 1) — that is, the container and the thing contained, that is, the empyrean heaven and the angelic nature. But 'earth' is the matter of all bodies, that is, the four elements, that is, the sensible world consisting of them. Some understand 'heaven' as the upper parts of the sensible world, and 'earth' as the lower and palpable.
The twelfth-century synthesis, and it is the most systematic thing said on this crux in Latin: four senses of 'world' laid out first, so that when the verse is read the reader already knows which world is meant. Heaven and earth are then 'the container and the thing contained' — the empyrean heaven with the angelic nature, and the matter of all bodies, the four elements. Remigius' empyrean and Abelard's elements are here in one sentence, which is what Comestor is for; and the aside that the philosopher did not know the empyrean is a quiet acknowledgement that the best-attested part of this reading has no ancient authority behind it. He then reports the rival, flatter reading — heaven the upper parts of the sensible world, earth the lower — without deciding.
The empyrean heavenThe four elementsA name for the whole creation
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1169–1175 · Paris
But when Moses said 'created', he struck down the errors of three men: Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. Plato said that three things were from eternity, namely God, the ideas, and hyle, and that in the beginning of time the world was made out of hyle. Aristotle said two, the world and the workman, who worked out of two principles, namely matter and form, without a beginning, and works without an end. Epicurus said two, the void and the atoms: and in the beginning nature solidified certain atoms into earth, others into water, others into air, others into fire.
Ambrose's doxography at the end of its Latin life, in the textbook every thirteenth-century student read. Three named opponents now instead of two, with Epicurus added and given the void and the atoms; and the whole apparatus hangs on a single word of the verse — cum vero dixit Moyses, creavit. Plato's three are God, the ideas and hyle, which Migne prints ile. What follows immediately is the sentence K1 built as comestor-hs-1-1, in which Moses prophesied God alone eternal and the world created without pre-existing matter, so this crux and that one hold the two halves of one paragraph: the errors here, the answer there.
God, exemplar, matterMatter was already there
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 1170 · Paris
It belongs to imperial majesty to have three chambers in the palace: the hall of audience or council, in which it decrees laws; the dining-hall, in which it distributes food; the bedchamber, in which it rests. After this manner our Emperor, who commands the winds and the sea, has this world for his hall of audience, where all things are disposed at his nod — whence that word of Isaiah: I fill heaven and earth. According to this he is called Lord: whence, The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. He has the soul of the just for his bedchamber, because his delights are to rest there and to be with the sons of men: according to this he is called the bridegroom, and each soul the bride. He has holy Scripture for his dining-hall, in which he so makes his own drunk that he renders them sober: whence, We walked in the house of God with consent — being of one mind in holy Scripture. According to this he is called the householder. Of this dining-hall there are three parts: foundation, wall, roof. History is the foundation, of which there are three kinds: annals, calendars, day-books. Allegory is the wall leaning upon it, which figures one deed by another. Tropology is the roof set on the summit, which by what has been done intimates what is to be done by us. The first is plainer, the second sharper, the third sweeter.
Why a book of Scripture begins with a narrative of events, answered by a builder's metaphor that is also a curriculum. Scripture is the Emperor's dining-hall, and the hall has a foundation, a wall and a roof: history, allegory, tropology — the first plainer, the second sharper, the third sweeter. History is the foundation, so it comes first because nothing can be built before it is laid, and the Historia scholastica is a whole book written on that principle. It is the most institutional answer on the daf: not why God began the book here, but why a master beginning to teach it must begin here. The three kinds of history — annals, calendars, day-books — are the technical vocabulary of a twelfth-century classroom. ⚠ Anchor note: a prologue, built by PLAN.md §5's specification for K2; see the file docstring.
History is the foundation
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1322–1332 · Paris
He says therefore: In the beginning, that is, of time or of the production of things. God created, that is, produced out of nothing, which belongs to God alone. Heaven, that is, all the heavenly bodies distinct in their substantial forms, although as yet they were unformed in certain accidental properties, as will appear below. And the earth, distinct in its substantial form and in certain properties necessarily accompanying a substantial form; but because as regards certain things it was still unformed, therefore there follows.
The most widely read Latin commentary on Genesis of the later middle ages, and on this verse it prints the answer the Glossa does not have. Where the Glossa's first word on Gen 1:1 is Filio -- in the beginning, that is, in the Son -- Lyra's literal exposition gives in principio, scilicet temporis vel productionis rerum, of time or of the production of things, and the Son does not appear. That is not a denial: Lyra keeps the moral and mystical senses in a separate apparatus and this is the Postilla litteralis. But it is the point at which the reading Jerome had refuted, Alcuin had reduced to four words and the Glossa had printed as one, stops being the literal sense of the verse for the schools. The line just before this one gives his reason, that in the beginning marks a priority not of duration but of nature, as sound precedes the voice. On creavit he states the whole of K4 in a clause -- de nihilo produxit, quod est proprium ipsius Dei -- and on celum and terram he takes the pair as the heavenly bodies and the earth already distinct in their substantial forms, which is Abelard's four elements read through a fourteenth-century physics. This witness and the two that follow it are transcribed from the Koberger folio, not sliced from the Patrologia, which does not contain Lyra.
In the beginning of timeFirst of all thingsOut of nothing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
Bereshit / in principio · out of nothing? · heaven and earth
latin · c. 1429 · Burgos
From which presupposition it follows that the postillator conducts himself less fittingly in the introductory procedure of the literal exposition of this chapter. For he says that the understanding of the work of the six days depends on the variety of opinions about the nature of matter put forward by the philosophers, which seems unfittingly said. For it is agreed that the philosophers do not proceed demonstratively in this matter — otherwise it would not happen that they hold different or contrary opinions, as it does not in geometry and the like — but proceed only by opinion. Hence the sense of Scripture ought not to vary on this account; and this is why the holy doctors took little care about such various opinions in this matter.
Eight centuries of this crux answered by ruling it out of order. Every Latin witness before this one takes some position on the nature of the matter and argues it: Ambrose refutes the hyle of the philosophers, Augustine accepts a formless matter and insists God made it, Abelard defines what created properly means, Hugh distinguishes making from matter and creating the matter. Lyra opens his exposition of Genesis 1 by laying out the philosophers' opinions on matter and saying that the understanding of the six days' work depends on which is taken. Burgos says that is unfitting, and the reason he gives is a claim about what kind of knowledge natural philosophy is: the philosophers do not proceed demonstratively here, and the proof is that they disagree, which does not happen in geometry. Where a discipline yields only opinion, the sense of Scripture must not be made to move with it. He then reads the Latin bench's whole history on this crux as agreeing with him — sancti doctores modicum curaverunt de huiusmodi opinionibus — which is a striking thing to say about a bench that spent eight hundred years on the question, and is what makes the witness worth printing beside the men who did. This is his substantive addition on Gen 1:1, as against Additio iij, which is a quarrel about credit.
The philosophers only have opinionsScripture's silence proves nothing
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson