Augustine
PL 34, col. 173
English
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.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Si eligerent Manichaei quos deciperent, eligeremus et nos verba quibus eis responderemus: cum vero illi et doctos litteris, et indoctos errore suo persequantur, et cum promittunt veritatem, a veritate conentur avertere; non ornato politoque sermone, sed rebus manifestis convincenda est vanitas eorum. Placuit enim mihi quorumdam vere christianorum sententia, qui cum sint eruditi liberalibus litteris, tamen alios libros nostros, quos adversus Manichaeos edidimus, cum legissent, viderunt eos ab imperitioribus, aut non aut difficile intelligi, et me benevolentissime monuerunt ut communem loquendi consuetudinem non desererem, si errores illos tam perniciosos ab animis etiam imperitorum expellere cogitarem. Hunc enim sermonem usitatum et simplicem etiam docti intelligunt, illum autem indocti non intelligunt.
PL 34, col. 173 · pd
Notes
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
Threads
- → contests · the Mishnah
The identical question and the opposite discipline. The Mishnah: whoever looks at what is above, what is below, what is before, what is after, it were fitting for him that he had not come into the world. Augustine, in the chapter following this one: the Manichees ask 'in what beginning? if God made heaven and earth in some beginning of time, what was he doing before he made heaven and earth?' — and he answers it, at length and in the plainest Latin he can manage. On one bench the question is put by a student who must be stopped; on the other by an opponent who must be answered, and being answered it becomes part of the commentary tradition for good. - → contests · Bereshit Rabbah
Both texts stand at the head of an exposition of Genesis 1 and both are about who should be doing the expounding. Bereshit Rabbah: may they be silenced, may they be made mute — is it in order to boast, I am expounding the work of creation? Augustine: since the Manichees pursue the learned and the unlearned alike, the reply must be made not in ornate and polished speech but in plain facts, and educated friends warned him kindly that his earlier books could not be followed by ordinary readers. One tradition's answer to a wide audience is to restrict the teaching; the other's is to change the prose. - ← parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
Both fence the same question from opposite sides at the head of the same chapter. R. Yona in the name of R. Levi: the bet is closed behind, so you may not ask what was before, only from the day the world was created onward. Augustine's opponents ask precisely what was before, and his answer — that no time could pass before God made time, since none can be the maker of times except one who is before times — is the fence rebuilt as an argument. Bar Kappara reaches for Deut 4:32, 'ask now of the early days that were before you, from the day God created man'; Augustine reaches for Titus 1:2, 'before eternal times'. Each has a verse for the boundary and only one of them will say what lies past it. - ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
Philo's contrast, without Philo. Philo divides earlier lawgivers into those who wrote bare statutes and those who wrapped them in mythical fictions, and praises Moses for doing neither. Augustine, defending Genesis against the Manichees, says Scripture speaks not with ornate and polished speech but with plain facts, and that this is deliberate. The move is identical, the frame is identical, and Augustine's version has lost the third term: Philo's Moses avoids bareness as well as ornament, because he has a philosophical programme to state, and Augustine's Moses is bare on purpose because his readers are simple.