Bede

English

And he divided the light and the darkness. For he divided them not only by a difference of quality, but of places: namely by spreading the light over the upper part of the world, in which the human way of life was to be, and by allowing the lower parts of it to remain in their ancient darkness.

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

Latin

PL 91, col. 17C · pd

Notes

Two clauses, and they set the Latin bench's literal answer for the next five hundred years: the division is by quality and by place, the light spread over the upper part of the world where men were going to live and the lower part left in the darkness it already had. Bede does not argue with Augustine; he simply does not raise the question whether darkness is a thing, and answers a question about where. The sentence is copied verbatim by Rabanus, taken over by Angelomus with an attribution to Clement, and reappears in Comestor as 'he divided the created things by distance of places and by quality'. It is also, without any contact, the same answer as Basil's long distances and the same answer as R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's two generals, each given his bound.

Threads

• ← cites · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  'Lucem videlicet in superiore orbis parte diffundendo, in qua humana erat conversatio futura, inferiora vero ejus priscis in tenebris remanendo' is Bede's sentence with one verb changed, introduced by 'as Clement says: lighting up one part of the world, he left the other dark.' Angelomus has the words from Bede and the attribution from somewhere else.
• ← transmits · Rabanus Maurus
  Verbatim and unnamed, from 'Divisit namque eas non solum qualitatis, sed et locorum distantia' to the end of the sentence. The transmission is what makes 'by quality and by place' the standing literal answer of the Latin bench.
• ← echoes · Peter Comestor
  'Et creatas divisit locorum distantia, et qualitate' is Bede's pair of terms four centuries on, with the mechanism supplied — 'so that they should never be together, but always claim opposite hemispheres in turn' — and with the darkness made a created shadow rather than an ancient dark left in place.
• ← echoes · Honorius Augustodunensis
  The same answer turned into a timetable: twelve hours above the earth and twelve below, the darkness put to flight and lying hidden. Bede's 'difference of places' has become a circuit with a count of hours, and the darkness has become the kind of thing that can be driven off and can hide.
• ← parallel · Basil of Caesarea
  Both answer 'why divide them?' with distance, and neither could have got it from the other in this form: Basil, that God fashioned their natures unmingled and set them apart from one another by long spaces; Bede, that he divided them not only by quality but by place, the light over the upper part of the world. Basil's Latin was available in Northumbria, but the shared term is the commonplace, not a phrase.
• ← parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's king with two generals, each claiming the day, told 'day shall be your bound' and 'night shall be your bound', and Bede's division 'not only by quality but by place', with the light over the upper part of the world and the lower left dark. Both make va-yavdel an assignment of territory, and the midrash says outright what Bede assumes: havdala mamash, a real separating and not a figure.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  Bede reads the dividing as real and local, not only by a difference of quality but of places, and Rabanus copies the sentence. Philo reads it as local for a reason Bede does not have: separated things that touch will fight, so God set borders in the intervals. Both refuse the reading that the division is only the naming, which is Ibn Ezra's, and both refuse the reading that it is only a judgement, which is Hugh's.