Alcuin

English

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.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 100, col. 520A · pd

Notes

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.

Threads

• → parallel · Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer
  Both make the first light derive from God himself rather than merely follow him: Alcuin adds to Bede's sentence the words a luce aeterna, so that the temporal light is made out of the eternal one, and Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer makes the heavens out of the light of the garment God wears. Neither argues for it; both state it as though it needed none.
• → cites · Bede
  'Congruit operibus Dei … ut esset unde caetera quae crearet apparerent' is Bede word for word, compressed into a schoolroom answer, with a luce aeterna added and the angels of the heaven of heavens dropped.