Augustine

English

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?

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

Latin

PL 34, col. 249 · pd

Notes

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.

Threads

• → echoes · Augustine
  Twenty years apart, the same observation about the shape of v. 1 — that it commends the whole before the parts — first as a remark about visible names for little ones, then as the answer to why Scripture does not say 'let heaven and earth be made'.
• ← cites · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  'Sed quaeritur cur ita dictum est … Nisi quia prius universaliter nomine coeli et terrae comprehendendum erat, et commendandum quod fecit, et deinde per partes exsequendum' reproduces De Genesi ad litteram I.9 sentence for sentence, unnamed, and drops the second answer that made the first one provisional.
• ← cites · Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)
  Phase 4. 'Quia universaliter nomine coeli et terrae comprehendendum erat quidquid fecit Deus, deinde per partes explicandum quomodo fecit' is De Genesi ad litteram I.9 reproduced almost word for word at the head of the standard gloss on Gen 1:1. Written at Phase 4 because the VERS. 1 block was sliced whole for K1 and carries several cruxes' glosses at once.