Bereshit Rabbah

English

A certain philosopher once asked Rabban Gamliel, saying to him: ‘Your God is a great artist, however he found many excellent raw materials that helped him: Emptiness, disorder, darkness, wind, water, and depths.’ He said to him: ‘May the spirit of that man depart from him; regarding all of them, creation is written.’ Emptiness and disorder, as it is stated: “Who makes peace and creates evil” (Isaiah 45:7). Darkness, “who forms light [and creates darkness]” (Isaiah 45:7); water, “Praise Him, heavens on heavens, and the water [above the heavens]” (Psalms 148:4). Why? “For He commanded and they were created” (Psalms 148:5). Wind, “For behold, He forms mountains and creates wind” (Amos 4:13); depths, “when there were no depths, I generated” (Proverbs 8:24).

The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · sefaria-midrash-rabbah

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 (Vilna numbering) · cc-by-sa

Notes

Six lines, and they contain the whole crux. A philosopher tells Rabban Gamliel: your God was a great artist, but he found good materials to help him — emptiness, disorder, darkness, wind, water, the deeps. The answer is not an argument but a concordance: may that man's spirit depart, of every one of them creation is written. Tohu and bohu from Isaiah 45:7, 'who makes peace and creates evil'; darkness from the same verse; water from Psalm 148:4–5, 'for he commanded and they were created'; wind from Amos 4:13, 'he forms mountains and creates wind'; the deeps from Proverbs 8:24, 'when there were no deeps I was brought forth'. The list is exactly the list of BR 1:5's embarrassment, and the objection is exactly Augustine's fabri and Basil's smith and carpenter — the craftsman who cannot work without a material. The rabbinic bench meets it once, in a chreia, and answers by producing a verse for each item; the Latin bench meets it as a philosophical position and answers with a doctrine of omnipotence. Neither method would satisfy the other.

Threads

• → parallel · Augustine
  The philosopher: 'Your God was a great artist, but he found good materials that helped him.' Augustine: 'those who do not believe that almighty God could make anything out of nothing, when they consider that craftsmen and workmen cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from … wood helps the craftsman, silver the silversmith.' The same inference from the same analogy, and the verb is the same in both — the materials help. Thagaste 389, Galilee c. 450, no contact.
• → parallel · Basil of Caesarea
  Basil diagnoses the position the philosopher states: 'with us each art is exercised upon some matter brought to it — smithcraft upon iron, carpentry upon wood … so they suppose it is with the divine working too.' Two trades where the midrash has none and Augustine has four, and the same conclusion drawn about God's poverty.
• ← contests · Bereshit Rabbah
  Four sections apart in one compilation, and the second answers the first. BR 1:5: 'were the matter not written explicitly it would not be possible to say it — In the beginning God created — from what? The earth was emptiness and disorder.' BR 1:9: the philosopher names emptiness, disorder, darkness, wind, water and the deeps as the materials God found, and Rabban Gamliel answers that of every one of them creation is written. The same list of six, read once as the stuff the world was made of and once as a list of created things.
• ← contests · Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer
  Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer answers 'from what?' with substances — the earth from the snow beneath the Throne of Glory, congealed on the waters, with Job 37:6 for proof; the heavens, in the preceding section, from the light of his garment. Rabban Gamliel's answer to the same question is that nothing was found and everything was created. Neither text acknowledges the other, and both stand in the rabbinic bench's own tradition.
• ← parallel · Augustine
  One difficulty, two opposite methods. Augustine argues that Genesis' silence about when a thing was made cannot prove it coeternal, and makes the case with a second silence (the waters above the firmament). Rabban Gamliel meets the same objection by breaking the silence item by item: Isaiah 45:7 for tohu and darkness, Psalm 148:4–5 for the waters, Amos 4:13 for the wind, Proverbs 8:24 for the deeps.
• ← parallel · Chalcidius
  A Latin reporting the rabbinic position on this crux, correctly, and by name. Hebraei syluam generatam esse confitentur — the Hebrews confess that hyle was generated. At Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 a philosopher tells R. Gamliel that his God was a great artist but had good materials to hand — tohu and bohu, darkness, wind, water, the deeps — and is answered that Scripture says of every one of them that it was created. That is the rabbinic bench refusing coeval matter, which is exactly what Chalcidius says the Hebrews hold. He is a fourth-century Latin who knows the other bench's answer to this crux, states it accurately, and is read by nobody who argues the crux afterwards.