PhiloAlexandria, c. 40
greek jewish · floruit 30–45 · Alexandria
And that invisible and intelligible light has come to be an image of the divine Reason, which interpreted its genesis; and it is a supercelestial star, spring of the perceptible stars, which one would not be wide of the mark in calling all-brightness, from which the sun and the moon and the other wandering and fixed stars draw, so far as each has the power, the beams that befit them, that unmixed and pure radiance being dimmed when it begins to turn by the change from the intelligible to the perceptible.
The oldest answer on this daf to the question the whole crux is, and the one that gives the mechanism the others only gesture at. The light of the first day is invisible and intelligible, an image of the divine Reason; it is a supercelestial star and the spring of the perceptible stars, and the sun and moon and the rest draw their beams from it, each so far as it can, the pure radiance dimming as it turns from the intelligible to the perceptible. That is an answer to the objection that governs the Latin discussion, which is what the light was doing for three days before the sun: on this account the sun does not replace it but is filled from it. Bereshit Rabbah 3:4 asks from what the light was created and answers from the light of God's garment; the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer says the same; the Latin bench splits between a bodily light and the angelic creation. Philo alone makes the relation between the first light and the luminaries a matter of derivation and degree, which is what lux-becomes-luminaries means in the Latin sources without any account of how.
An intelligible light, model of the sunThe luminaries were made from it
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
Patres378–720
latin · c. 387 · Milan
'Let there be light,' he says. Where should the voice of God in divine Scripture begin, if not from light? Whence should the adorning of the world take its start, if not from light? For it would be in vain, if it were not seen. God himself was indeed in light, for he dwells in light inaccessible, and he was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world; but he made that light which we see. […] Where the builder lays the foundations he looks out from where he may pour light into it, and that is the first grace, and if it is wanting the whole house bristles with an unlovely neglect. It is light that commends the rest of the house's ornament. 'Let there be light,' he says. A full utterance of light — it does not signify the apparatus of an arrangement, but shines out with the effect of an operation. The maker of nature spoke light, and created it.
Ambrose keeps two lights apart in one paragraph and the distinction is the whole crux in miniature: God dwells in light inaccessible and is himself the true light of John 1:9, 'but he made that light' — hanc, this one, the one under discussion. The rest is the ornament argument, that a world had to be lit before it could be seen at all, with the builder's house for an image. Nothing here is angelic. Elided at […]: the sentence on the darkness fleeing and the intervening image of the householder choosing where his windows go.
A bodily lightSpeaking is making
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
Why then was the sun made 'to rule the day' (Ps 136:8), to shine over the earth, if that light was sufficient for making a day — the light that was itself called Day? Or did that earlier light illuminate regions high and far from the earth, so that it could not be felt on earth, and so the sun had to be made, through which day might appear to the lower parts of the world? This too can be said: that the brightness was increased by the addition of the sun, so that the day is believed to have been less bright by that earlier light than it is now. This too I know to have been said by someone: that the nature of light was first brought in in the Creator's work, when it was said 'Let there be light, and light was made'; but afterwards, when the luminaries are spoken of, it was recorded what was made out of that same light, in the order of the days in which it seemed good to the Creator that all things should be made.
The crux's hardest question, asked plainly: if that light already made a day, what is the sun for? Augustine offers three answers and holds none of them. The third is the one that matters here — 'this too I know to have been said by someone', a quodam dictum scio: that the nature of light was made on the first day and the luminaries were afterwards made out of it. That anonymous opinion is, word for word in substance, what b. Chagigah 12a attributes to the sages against R. Yaakov: 'these are the lights that were created on the first day but were not hung up until the fourth.' Augustine does not know whose it is, and the Talmud names the party that holds it.
The luminaries were made from itA bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 401–415 · Hippo Regius
And what is that light itself which was made? Is it something spiritual, or something bodily? For if spiritual, it can itself be the first creature, already made perfect by this saying, which was first called heaven when it was said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' — so that what God said, 'Let there be light, and light was made', may be understood as its turning and illumination, the Creator calling it back to himself.
The crux as a disjunction, in the sentence that decided the Latin question for eight centuries: spiritual or bodily? Augustine leaves the alternative open here in form, but the whole of his exposition follows the first limb, and the doctrine is already complete in the second half of the sentence — the light is the spiritual creature that was called 'heaven' in verse 1, and 'let there be light' is not its making but its conversion, its turning back to the Creator and being illuminated by him. Bonaventure will state this position fairly and decline it, and give the reason: not that it is unreasonable, but that the text more readily intimates the other.
The angelic creation
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 500–600 · Caesarea in Cappadocia
And God said, Let there be light. The first voice of God fashioned the nature of light, and drove away the darkness, and dissolved gloom, and suddenly brought forth every glad and pleasant appearance. Then the vault appeared, which had until then been hidden by the Lord; and so great a beauty of it shone out as the sight bears witness to even now. And the air was lit up by that light which had been mingled with it, and it stretched the sharp penetration of its own brightness everywhere through all its bounds.
The Greek tradition entering Latin, and it has no doubt at all: the light is a nature that God's voice fashioned, and what it does is physical — the air takes it up and carries it to its limits, the water throws it back, the sky becomes visible. Basil is the only Father on this bench who describes the light as a phenomenon rather than as a question, and Eustathius' Latin keeps that. The twelfth-century schoolmen — Hugh, Honorius, Comestor — end up where Basil starts, and they get there without citing him.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 717–725 · Jarrow
It befits the works of God that he should begin the adorning of the world from light: he who, being himself the true light and dwelling in light inaccessible, in the beholding of which the angels, newly created in the heaven of heavens, had already begun to rejoice, fittingly gave to this world too, for its adorning, the first grace of material light, so that there might be something from which the rest that he would create could appear.
Bede does the thing that decides the crux for the whole Carolingian line, and does it in one sentence without argument: he distinguishes three lights — God who is the true light, the inaccessible light the angels were already enjoying in the heaven of heavens, and 'the first grace of material light' given to this world. The angels are on the page and are not the light; they were made earlier and elsewhere. Augustine's identification is not refuted here, it is quietly stepped around, and Alcuin, Rabanus and the Glossa all inherit the step.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 717–725 · Jarrow
But if it is asked in what places, at God's bidding, the light was made, since the abyss still covered the whole breadth of the earth — it is quite plain that that first light shone in the upper parts of that same earth, the parts which the daily light of the sun is now accustomed to illumine. Nor should we wonder that by a divine working light can shine in the waters, since it is agreed that they are often lit by a human working too: by sailors, that is, who, sunk in the deep of the sea, make it clear and bright for themselves by letting oil out of their mouths. For if a man can do such things by the oil of his mouth, how much must God be believed able to create by the Spirit of his mouth.
Once the light is material it acquires a location, and Bede supplies one: in the upper parts of the earth, where the sun's daylight falls now. The objection that the abyss covered everything he answers with an observed fact about divers, who let oil out of their mouths to see under water, and a pun that carries the argument — if a man can do it by the oil of his mouth, what can God do by the Spirit of his mouth. The Glossa keeps both the location and the divers and cuts the pun.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
VersionesLXX · Vulgate
greek jewish · c. 250 BCE · Alexandria
And God said, Let light be made. And light was made.
The Greek uses one verb twice, γενηθήτω and ἐγένετο, so that the command and the thing commanded are the same word — which is the whole of the Latin argument about how God speaks, transplanted from a feature of the Greek that Latin's fiat / facta est reproduces exactly. Abelard is the only Latin on this crux who knows that the Hebrew does something different again.
Speaking is making
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 392 · Bethlehem
And God said: Let there be light. And light was made.
Four words that carry the crux: the light is made on the first day, the sun on the fourth, and Scripture never says what this light is. Every witness on both benches is answering a question the verse creates by silence.
Speaking is making
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
Glossa ordinariaLaon, c. 1120
latin · compilation 1110–1130 · Laon
Verse 3. 'And God said: Let there be light.' (AUGUSTINE, on Genesis to the letter, book I, ch. 17, vol. III.) The light made on the first day is understood as spiritual or bodily, etc., down to: morning, the beginning of what is to come. (BEDE, Hexaemeron.) But if bodily light was made on the first day, fittingly is the adorning of the world begun from light, whence the rest that were to be created might be seen. And if it is asked where it was made, since the abyss covered the whole height of the earth — it is plain that it was in those parts which the daily light of the sun now illumines. Nor is it a wonder that light can shine in the waters, since they are often lit even by the working of sailors, who, sunk in the deep, let oil out of their mouths and light the waters for themselves: which waters were then much thinner than they now are, in the beginning, because they were not yet gathered into one place. 'And God said: Let there be light.' (AUGUSTINE, ibid., ch. 2.) Not temporally: for if temporally, then changeably; if changeably, then through a creature subject to him, and light is not the first creature. But perhaps, etc., down to: that it may be and may abide. 'Let there be light.' (AUGUSTINE, ibid., ch. 4, 5, 9.) On that condition, namely, by which all things subsist timelessly in the wisdom of God before they subsist in themselves. 'And light was made', that is, the angelic and heavenly substance, in itself temporally; as it was in wisdom, so far as concerns its unchangeableness, eternally. Or the unformedness of this creature is noted, that is, its imperfection before it was formed in the love of its Maker: for it is formed when it is turned to the unchangeable light of the Word. 'Let there be light.' (AUGUSTINE, ibid., ch. 10, 11, 16.) If light was made bodily, etc., down to: for there were not yet animals to whom this alternation might be exhibited.
The margin refuses to decide, and it does so by putting four glosses on one verse of which three are Augustine and one is Bede. The first Augustine gloss states the disjunction and abbreviates the discussion with the Glossa's 'etc., usque ad'; Bede's supplies the bodily answer with its location and its divers; then two more Augustine glosses give the angelic answer in full, 'et facta est lux, id est angelica et coelestis substantia'. A reader of this page is told what both parties hold and given no verdict, which is the opposite of what the same margin does at Gen 1:1, where Alcuin's one-word Filio stands unopposed. Note that the Bede gloss cuts his oil-of-the-mouth / Spirit-of-the-mouth pun and keeps the divers.
The angelic creationA bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
מפרשיםTargums · Midrash · Bavli · Rashi
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
Rabbi Shimon ben Yehotzadak asked Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman, saying to him: ‘Since I have about you that you are a master of aggada, [I ask you:] from what was the light created?’ He said to him: ‘It [the verse] teaches that the Holy One blessed be He wrapped himself in it like a garment, and the aura of its radiance shone from the end of the world to its end.’ He said it to him in a whisper. He said to him: ‘It is an explicit verse: “Wrapped in light as if with a garment” (Psalms 104:2), and you say it to me in a whisper? This is bewildering.’ He said to him: ‘Just as I heard it in a whisper, so I said it to you in a whisper.’ Rabbi Berekhya said: Had Rabbi Yitzḥak not expounded this in public, it would not have been possible to say it. Beforehand, what would they say? Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Yitzḥak: It is from the site of the Temple that the light was created. That is what is written: “And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the direction of the east…[and the earth shone with His glory]” (Ezekiel 43:2). And his glory is nothing other than the Temple, just as it says: “Throne of glory, exalted from the first, the place of our Temple…” (Jeremiah 17:12).
The question of this crux asked in the rabbinic idiom — not what the light was but what it was made from — and answered in a whisper. R. Shmuel bar Naḥman says the Holy One wrapped himself in it like a garment and the radiance shone from one end of the world to the other, and he says it under his breath even though Ps 104:2 says it outright; when challenged he answers only that he heard it whispered and so passes it on whispered. Then a second answer that no Latin witness could have imagined: R. Berekhya in the name of R. Yitzḥak, that the light was created from the site of the Temple. The Latin bench asks where the light shone (Bede: in the upper parts of the earth, where the sun's daylight falls now); this bench asks where it came from, and answers with a place in Jerusalem.
From the light of his garmentFrom the site of the Temple
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · compilation 400–500 · Galilee (Tiberias / Sepphoris)
It is taught: The light that was created during the six days of Creation cannot illuminate by day, because it would make the orb of the sun seem dim [by comparison], nor can it [illuminate] at night, as it was created to illuminate only during the day. Where is it, then? It was stored away, and is designated for the righteous for the future, as it is stated: “The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of the seven days” (Isaiah 30:26). This is bewildering: “Seven [days]”? Are they not three? Is it not so, that the lights were created only on the fourth day? It is, rather, like a person who says: This and that I am preparing for the seven days of the wedding feast. Rabbi Neḥemya said: These are the seven days of mourning for the righteous Methuselah, during which the Holy One blessed be He conferred extra light upon them.
The rabbinic answer proper, and it has no Latin counterpart at all. The light of the six days cannot shine by day, because it would make the sun's disc look dim, and it was not made to shine by night: so where is it? It was stored away, designated for the righteous in the time to come (Isa 30:26). The section then has to explain why Isaiah says seven days when the luminaries were made on the fourth, and answers with a wedding feast and, in R. Neḥemya's name, with the seven days of mourning for Methuselah. The Latin bench never hides the light: it either turns it into the angels or turns it into a proto-sun, and the one thing it never does is take it out of the world and keep it. Slice note (Phase 4): this witness originally ran to the end of the Sefaria segment and so swallowed the va-yavdel material — R. Ze'eira on the havdala blessing, hivdilo lo, R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's two generals, R. Tanḥuma on Isa 45:7 and R. Elazar on the missing divine name. That is a different argument on a different clause and is now `br-3-6b` on K9. The slice was trimmed here rather than the new witness deleted.
Stored for the righteous
English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022
rabbinic · redaction 500–600 · Babylonia (Sura / Pumbedita)
And was light created on the first day? But it is written, (Genesis 1:17) "and God set them in the firmament of the heaven," and it is written, (Genesis 1:19) "and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day." It is like R. Elazar. For R. Elazar said, The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, Adam saw through it from one end of the world to the other. When the Holy One, blessed be He, peered at the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion, and saw that their actions were destructive, He stood up and hid it from them, as it is said, (Job 38:15) "And from the wicked their light is withheld." And for whom did He take it away? For the righteous of the time to come, as it is said, (Genesis 1:4) "And God saw the light, that it was good," and "good" only refers to the righteous, as it is said, (Isaiah 3:10) " Say of the righteous, that he is good." Once He saw the light He hid away for the righteous, He rejoiced, as it is said, (Proverbs 13:9) "He rejoices at the light of the righteous." Like [the following] Tannaic argument: The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, Adam observed and peered through it from one end of the world to the other. These are the words of R. Yaakov. And the sages say, These are the lights which were created on the first day, but were not hung up until the fourth day.
The whole crux in five short segments, and it opens with the objection in the same form the Latin bench uses: was light created on the first day? But it is written that God set them in the firmament, and that was the fourth day. Two answers follow. R. Elazar's: by that light Adam saw from one end of the world to the other, and when God looked at the generations of the Flood and the Dispersion he hid it, storing it for the righteous. And then a tannaitic dispute — R. Yaakov holds the seeing-light, and the sages say 'these are the lights that were created on the first day but were not hung up until the fourth.' That second answer is exactly the one Augustine reports as having been said 'by someone' at De Genesi ad litteram I.11, without a name.
Stored for the righteousThe luminaries were made from it
English: Sefaria Community Translation
rabbinic · 750–850 · Palestine
Whence were the heavens created? From the light of the garment with which He was robed. He took (of this light) and stretched it like a garment and (the heavens) began to extend continually until He caused them to hear, "It is sufficient." Therefore is He called God Almighty (El Shaddai), who said to the world: "It is sufficient," and it stood (firm). Whence do we know that the heavens were created from the light of His garment? Because it is said, "Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain" (Ps. 104:2).
The garment of Bereshit Rabbah 3:4, no longer whispered and turned into cosmogony: the heavens were made out of the light of the garment God wraps himself in, taken and stretched like a curtain until he said Dai, enough — which is why he is called El Shaddai. Ps 104:2 supplies both halves in one verse, 'who covers himself with light as with a garment, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain'. The first light is thus not merely prior to the luminaries but prior to the sky and the material of it. Nothing on the Latin bench makes the light the stuff of anything; the nearest is Augustine's report at De Gen. ad litt. I.11 that someone held the luminaries were made out of it.
From the light of his garment
English: Gerald Friedlander, 1916
ScholaeCarolingian and twelfth-century Latin, 790–1170
latin · c. 800 · Tours
Question 33. Why is light read to have been created on the first day? — Answer. It befits the works of God that on the first day a temporal light should first be made from the eternal light, so that there might be something from which the rest that he would create could appear.
Bede's sentence reduced to a schoolroom answer, with one word added that is not Bede's and that does the work: a luce aeterna, from the eternal light. Bede had set the eternal light beside the material one; Alcuin makes the temporal light come out of it, which is a claim about derivation and not merely about order. Compare Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, where the heavens are made out of the light of God's garment: on both benches the first light acquires a source in God himself, and on neither is that reading argued for.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 819–822 · Fulda
It befits the works of God that he should begin the adorning of the world from light, since he himself is the true light and dwells in light inaccessible (1 Tim 6:16); in the most blessed beholding of which the angels, newly created in the heaven of heavens, had already begun to rejoice. Fittingly he gave to this world too, for its adorning, the first grace of material light, so that there might be something from which the rest that he would create could appear. […] But if it is asked in what places, at God's bidding, the light was made, since the abyss still covered the whole breadth of the earth — it is quite plain that it was in the upper parts of that same earth.
Bede again, verbatim and unattributed, as at K1 and K7 and K10; the only visible editorial act is the chapter heading Rabanus puts over it, 'Where light is first commanded to be made', which turns Bede's continuous exposition into a lemma. Elided at […] is the long passage on how God speaks — that Moses' 'God said' and John's 'all things were made through the Word' are one statement — which Rabanus also takes from Bede entire.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 845 · Luxeuil
As for his saying 'let there be light', it is said on account of the swiftness of the divine power. For if the luminaries which supply light are described as made on the fourth day, what is it that he said, 'Let there be light'? Was there perhaps already some light created above the firmament, by whose illumination the sun was lit? Rather, by the name of light the angelic dignity is figured, which is signified by the higher heaven and is here called light. It was founded first, then, but was afterwards made light by turning to behold the glory of its creator. And therefore it was said, 'Let there be light, and light was made' — as if it were plainly being said: Let it turn to contemplate me unceasingly.
The one Carolingian on this bench who takes Augustine's side rather than Bede's, and he states the doctrine more sharply than Augustine does: the angelic nature was founded first and became light afterwards, by turning to behold its creator, so that 'let there be light' is a command to contemplate. He reaches it by the same route the Talmud's objectors take — if the luminaries are made on the fourth day, what is this? — and he even floats the physical answer (a light above the firmament from which the sun was lit) before rejecting it. K7 found Angelomus splicing Augustine onto Jerome without naming either; here he does the same with Augustine's angelic light.
The angelic creation
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · c. 900 · Auxerre
'Let there be light.' Light (lux) is so called from cleansing (luendo), that is, from purging away the darkness. But that light was not of the kind that now is, with the sun set above; rather it was such as it is wont to be before the rising of the sun, or after its setting.
Two sentences, and the second is the answer the twelfth century will build a physics on: the light was twilight — what the sky is like before sunrise or after sunset. Honorius says the same (a brightness such as there is now before sunrise), Comestor calls it a luminous cloud thin as the dawn, and Hugh gives it a body and an orbit. The etymology in the first sentence is Isidore's manner and is false; it is kept because Remigius is arguing from it.
A bodily lightA light like the dawn
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1079–1123 · Segni
But what is that light, which is said to be prior to the sun, the moon and the stars? Hear what follows: 'He called the light Day, and the darkness Night.' Light, therefore, is put for day.
The crux asked in the Latin bench's own words — quae est ista lux, quae prior sole, luna et stellis esse perhibetur? — and then dismissed in six. Bruno's answer is that the verse answers itself two clauses later: God called the light Day, so 'light' here simply means the day, and there is nothing further to look for. Of every witness on this crux he is the only one who declines the question rather than answering it, and he does it by the same appeal to the text's own next words that he uses at K10 to settle dies unus.
'Light' just means day
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
But what is this very thing that he said, 'Let there be light'? What kind of light is that? For it seems to some that the light then made was nothing other than an illumination of the air, and that those darknesses which were over the face of the abyss were divided by night and day so alternating that, when the space of daytime — twelve hours, that is — was passed, the light was put out and darkness succeeded; and again, when the space of nighttime was over, the light shone out; and so for three days, day and night, without these bodily luminaries, that is without sun and moon and stars, gave way and succeeded to one another of their own accord. But on this reading this one day is the poorest of all days: for whereas each of the other days is made illustrious by the creation or forming of substances, this day is dismissed with nothing but an unstable colour of some accident thrown over it, when it is said 'let there be light'. For whatever was made on the other days is substantial and abides; but that accidental light, once relit on the third day, thereafter perished utterly. And see whether it be worthy of so great a majesty that the works of the other days — the sun, for instance, and moon and stars that were made on the fourth day, and the division of the waters that was made on the second — he should establish for ever and ever, and lay upon them a decree that shall not pass away (Ps 148:6), but should make the work of the first light such that, changing his counsel, he should utterly put it out after a scant three days. What then? Was it for this that the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, and that he said 'let it be' — a saying that holy Scripture wonders at and celebrates as the uttering of a truly good word — that only such a light should come to be, an accident of the air soon to perish, and no substance be created? The great and most renowned Fathers understood better: the angelic nature, signified by the name of light. Their view we approve as the more reasonable and follow it, that the angelic creature is rightly called light — an intellectual light; light, I say, not only as having the power of discerning, but also as shining with the grace of the true and uncircumscribed light.
The best argument on the crux, and it is an argument from what would be unworthy. Rupert states the physical reading in full and with its details — twelve hours, three days, no luminaries — and then asks what it would make of the first day: every other day makes a substance that abides, and this one would make an unstable accident, a colour thrown over the air, snuffed out after three days when God changed his mind. Would the majesty that laid on sun and moon a decree that shall not pass away do that? Therefore the light is the angelic nature. He then adds, in the next chapter, that this is not said by likeness but of the thing itself: the visible light and the stars were made in the likeness of that light, not the other way about. Written in the same decade as Honorius' twelve-hour circuit and Hugh's luminous body.
The angelic creation
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1112–1117 · Liège
Because these are the works of the creating Trinity, holy Scripture rightly triples its testimony everywhere. For there are three sayings, or rather one and the same thing said three times. God said, whose saying is doing. And so it was done, and the earth brought forth. And the first is according to the evening, that is, the secret of the Word of God, in which was life; whatever is according to the morning, that is, by the substantial bringing forth of things; and another was done according to this same morning, and a third according to the continuing day of the creature persevering in whatever manner. You will find this in all the works of the six days: God said, Let there be luminaries, and it was so, and God made two great luminaries. Again: Let the waters bring forth creeping things, and God created the great sea-creatures, and God blessed them, and so on. But in the creation of the light, God said: Let there be light, and light was made, and he divided the light and the darkness. Everywhere three words of testimony agree, because everywhere, at evening and at morning and through the whole day, the creating Trinity works. And this is the original cause of the holy and just law by which the same writer laid down that no judicial case needs more than three witnesses.
Rupert's whole design for the Hexaemeron in one paragraph, and it is the boldest thing said on this crux: the threefold formula that runs through the six days — God said, and it was so, and God made — is itself the trace of the Trinity, because the creating Trinity is at work everywhere, and Moses laid down the law of three witnesses for the same reason he wrote the chapter this way. Augustine had entertained precisely this reading at De Genesi ad litteram II and rejected it, on the ground that it would make the Son appear to act under orders and the Spirit merely to approve. Rupert takes it up anyway and generalises it past the point where Augustine's objection can be raised, by making the three words a testimony rather than a distribution of labour — and then, having done so, ties it to the law of evidence, which is a claim about how Scripture was written rather than about what happened.
The threefold formula of the six days
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1110–1130 · Regensburg
And God said: Let there be light. When 'he said' is written of God, it is said after our manner, and the efficacy of the one commanding is expressed. But for God to speak is nothing other than to found all things through his Word. Through this Word he brought forth this bodily light from the element of fire, and brought it into this world. Which light then showed such a brightness as there now is before the rising of the sun; and it lit the waters, then thin, as it now lights the air. For twelve hours it remained above the earth, as the sun does now; and for twelve it lit the lower parts of the globe.
The physical answer at its most confident and most specific: the light is drawn from the element of fire, its brightness is that of the sky before sunrise, it lights the waters as light now lights the air, and it keeps a twelve-hour circuit above and below. Honorius gives no argument for any of it. Rupert, writing in the same years, describes precisely this opinion — that the light was nothing but an illumination of the air, alternating over twelve hours through three days — in order to demolish it.
A bodily lightA light like the dawn
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1125–1135 · Paris
But fire, once distinguished, furnished light of some kind to the lower world, and had a circular motion: it was carried round like a kind of luminous cloud, as the sun is now.
One sentence of physics, and it names the material: the first light is the element of fire, separated out and carried round the world in a circuit. Honorius says the same in the same decade — this bodily light he brought forth from the element of fire — and Comestor's luminous cloud is the same image. Hugh's fuller treatment is in De sacramentis and is built separately; the Adnotationes give the picture without the argument.
A bodily lightA light like the dawn
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1135 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
But that light which removed the aforesaid darkness we take to be the distinction itself of the works that follow — that distinction, namely, by which that confused heap, which did not yet present itself as visible, nor could be known as fit for any use, nor could yet be perceived from itself for what it had been created…
An answer nobody else on either bench gives: the light is neither a body nor an angel but the ordering of the works themselves — the coming-into-distinctness of the confused heap, so that it could be seen and known for what it was made for. Abelard reaches it by taking 'darkness' as unintelligibility rather than as absence of illumination, which is Augustine's privation doctrine turned from optics to knowledge. It is also the only reading on the crux that makes the first light not a thing at all, and so the only one for which the sun on the fourth day raises no difficulty whatever.
The distinguishing of the works
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1135 · The Paraclete (Nogent-sur-Seine)
It is to be noted that, where we say 'Let there be light, and light was made', in the Hebrew it is: 'Let light be, and light was'; and likewise in the rest that follow, wherever we have 'God said, Let this be made, and it was made so', in the Hebrew it is 'Let this be, and it was so'. By which words perhaps the greatest swiftness of the divine working is expressed. For while something is being made which is not yet, there can be some delay in the making. But when it is said 'let it be' and 'it was', with no delay interposed the perfecting of the thing…
Abelard reporting the Hebrew against the Latin, exactly as K7 found him doing at PL 178:735B with volitabat. The observation is correct — yehi or va-yehi or is one verb twice, as the Greek's γενηθήτω / ἐγένετο is, while the Latin's fiat / facta est is two — and he draws a conclusion from it that the whole bench had been reaching for by other means: no delay is interposed, because a thing that is merely told to be is not first made and then finished. Where he got the Hebrew is unknown, as at K7. He is the only Latin on this crux who looks at the other language at all.
Speaking is making
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1130–1137 · Paris
…for the lighting of bodily and visible things, nothing but a bodily light could have been suitable. And every body, however fine and however near it comes to a spiritual nature, must be circumscribed by place. And again, unless that light had been mobile, it could in no way have distinguished day and night by their alternating turns, nor traversed any space of time at all without motion. According to this consideration, then, I think it more fitting that we believe that light, made in the beginning for the lighting of bodily things, to have been beyond doubt bodily — such as some luminous body might perhaps have been, by whose presence all things were lit, as can now be seen in the sun — and that it was made in the sun's stead and place, so that for the time being it was carried round by its own motion, and marked off night and day.
The argument the Victorines put under the twelfth century's physical answer, and it is an argument from fitness of means: bodily things can only be lit by a bodily light; every body is in a place; and a light that made evening and morning must have moved, since without motion no span of time is traversed. From which the first light was a luminous body standing in the sun's stead and turning as the sun turns. The chapter headings of De sacramentis announce the whole programme — 'why light was made first', 'of what kind that light was made, and where', 'that light illumined three days, and why it was made before the sun' — which is the crux set out as a syllabus.
A bodily light
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1169–1173 · Paris
And God said: Let there be light. And light was made (Gen 1) — that is, he begot the Word in whom it was that light should be made; that is, as easily as if someone were to say it in a word. By 'light' he means a kind of luminous cloud, lighting the upper parts of the world, but with a thin brightness, such as comes about at dawn; and this driven round much as the sun is. By its presence it lights the upper hemisphere and in turn the lower.
The settlement, and it is the physical answer, stated as fact in a handbook with no mention that anybody ever thought otherwise. A luminous cloud, thin as the dawn, driven round like the sun, lighting one hemisphere and then the other. Rupert had argued at length that this cannot be right and Bonaventure will say Augustine's view is the subtler; the Historia scholastica simply prints the cloud, and that is what most of Europe learned. Comestor's angelic-light material, where he has it, is elsewhere and not on this verse.
A bodily lightA light like the dawn
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
latin · 1322–1332 · Paris
Let there be light. This light is the light of the sun, which is an accidental quality, and it is from this light that the other lights of heaven are illuminated; on which account it is said in the second book On the Soul that the sun is the father of men and of gods, because the lights of heaven, which the ancients used to call gods, receive their light from the sun. And God saw the light, that it was good, because it is useful for many things, as will appear below in the work of the fourth day. It is to be noted, however, that this solar light, which is said to have been made on the first day, was still unformed in some respect until the fourth day, according to what Dionysius says in the fourth chapter of On the Divine Names. In what way it was formed on the fourth day will appear below.
The end of this crux on the Latin bench, and it is reached by giving up the question. For a thousand years the difficulty had been that there is light on the first day and no sun until the fourth, and every answer on this daf is a way of holding those apart: an angelic creation, a light stored for the righteous, a luminous cloud, a body of fire in the sun's stead, a brightness like the dawn on a twelve-hour circuit. Lyra does not hold them apart. The light of the first day is the light of the sun, ista lux est lux solis, and the sun's light is an accidental quality from which the other luminaries are lit. The difficulty is then met not by making the light something else but by making the sun's light itself unfinished: it was informis quantum ad aliquid until the fourth day, which is when it was formed. Notice what has changed. Hugh's luminous cloud and Comestor's dawn are inventions required by the chapter; Lyra's answer requires nothing that is not already in the sky. He supports it, oddly, with a tag from the second book On the Soul that the sun is the father of men and of gods, and reads the ancients' gods as the planets, which take their light from the sun.
It is the sun's own lightA bodily lightThe luminaries were made from it
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson