PL 178, col. 740C
'And there was evening and morning, one day.' He here calls 'one day' the whole completion of those works of God — held first in his mind, and afterward completed in the work on the sixth day. And the evening of this whole span of time which he here calls one day, he calls that whole working of God according as it first lay hid in his mind, before it came forth into the light through its effect. And again he names that same working morning, according as, being afterward completed in the work, it showed itself visible. Thus he calls the conception of the divine mind, in the disposing of the work to come, evening; and morning he calls the working out of that conception and the effect of the divine disposition, completed in six days.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
PL 178, col. 740C · pd
Abelard takes the reading Augustine raised and set aside: 'one day' names not the first of the days but the whole of them. His evening is the work as it lay hidden in God's mind, his morning the same work made visible — the pair describing the passage from conception to execution rather than any part of a night. He then allows, fairly, that a reader who prefers to refer the phrase to the first day's work alone may do so, 'nihil impedit'. As in K7 he is the Latin most willing to hold two readings and rank them rather than refute one.