Chalcidius

English

But it is to be understood what heaven, or what earth, Scripture is speaking of. Those who are content with a hasty understanding think that this heaven which we see, and the earth on which we are carried, are meant; whereas those who search more deeply deny that this heaven was made in the beginning, but on the second day. For in the beginning light was made, and that was called day. But this heaven afterwards, which God called the solidity. Then on the third day, the waters being removed, the dry appeared, and the name of earth was imposed on it. So that it is evident that neither this heaven known to us, nor this earth on which we are, was made from the outset, but that there are others more ancient, to be drawn in by the understanding rather than by the senses. Scripture therefore testifies that the true heaven is one thing and the solidity another; and in the same way that the earth is one thing and the dry another. What heaven, then, did God found before the rest, or what earth? Philo judges them to be incorporeal and intelligible essences, the ideas and exemplars both of this dry land and of the solidity. And finally he says that the human too was first intelligible, the archetypal exemplar of the human race, and only then made corporeal by God. Others not so: but that the prophet, knowing that there are two species of all things, one intelligible and one perceptible, called those powers which embrace and contain both natures 'heaven and earth' — heaven being the incorporeal nature, and earth that which is the substance of bodies, which the Greeks call hyle.

Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson · cc-by

Latin

Paris 1520, fo. LVIII recto (archive.org bub_gb_LxGcsxR3tWgC, page/n116.jpg) · chalcidius-1520

Notes

The oldest Latin statement of this crux on the daf, and it arrives with an apparatus nobody after him has. The question is put exactly as the twelfth century will put it — what heaven and what earth does Scripture mean? — and answered by a chronology within the chapter itself: the firmament is called heaven on the second day and the dry is called earth on the third, so the heaven and earth of the first verse cannot be the ones we see, and must be older and intelligible rather than sensible. That is Remigius's empyrean and Comestor's container-and-contained argument, six hundred years early. What is unique to Chalcidius is the sourcing. He names Philo, who does not appear anywhere else in this edition and whom the Latin bench of Gen 1 never cites: heaven and earth are the incorporeal ideas and exemplars, and the human too was intelligible before he was corporeal. Then he reports a second school — alii non ita — for whom the two names are the two species of all things, the intelligible and the perceptible, earth being the substance of bodies, quam graeci hylen uocant. The Greek word is printed in Greek type in the 1520 edition. On the other bench the same question is Beit Shammai against Beit Hillel at b. Chagigah 12a, and the same instinct is R. Akiva's, that the et of the verse must include something more than what is named.

Threads

• → parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  Both benches decide that the heaven of the first verse is not the one overhead, and both get there by reading the chapter against itself. Chalcidius: those content with a hasty understanding think this heaven is meant, but the firmament is not called heaven until the second day and the dry is not called earth until the third, so the heaven and earth of the beginning must be older, and drawn in by the understanding rather than by the senses. The Bavli asks what shamayim is and answers by decomposing the word. The move is the same — the name in v. 1 cannot be the thing the chapter later names — and the machinery is entirely different.
• → parallel · Remigius of Auxerre
  Remigius's empyrean, six hundred years early and argued rather than asserted. Remigius says the heaven of v. 1 is that empyrean, fiery or intellectual heaven, and leaves it there. Chalcidius reaches the same conclusion from the chapter's own sequence and then names two schools for what the intelligible heaven and earth are — Philo's ideas and exemplars, or the two species of all things, incorporeal nature and hyle. There is no line of transmission: Remigius has the doctrine without the argument.
• → contests · Augustine
  The same question, opposite answers, and Augustine's is the one that wins. Augustine takes heaven and earth in v. 1 as a name for the whole creation, universally stated and then unfolded in its parts. Chalcidius takes them as two things older than what we see and knowable only by the understanding — the intelligible against the perceptible. Augustine's reading makes the verse a summary; Chalcidius's makes it a report of a prior order. Every Latin after Augustine on this daf takes the summary.
• → parallel · Peter Comestor
  Comestor's container and thing contained is Chalcidius's two species with the Platonism removed. Both split the pair of v. 1 into two orders rather than two places, and both need the split because the chapter names a heaven on day two and an earth on day three. Comestor has the distinction as a schoolroom formula; Chalcidius has it as the position of a named school, alii non ita, set against Philo's.
• → cites · Philo of Alexandria
  The only edge in this edition where a Latin witness names a Jewish author and the passage he is naming is printed beside him. Chalcidius: what heaven, then, did God found before the rest, or what earth? Philo judges them to be incorporeal and intelligible essences, the ideas and exemplars both of this dry land and of the solidity. Philo, De opificio 29: first the Maker made an incorporeal heaven and an invisible earth and the idea of air and of void. The report is accurate, including the detail Chalcidius adds next, that Philo said the human too was first intelligible and only then corporeal, which is De opificio 134. Everywhere else on this daf a Latin knows a Jewish reading and does not say so; here one says so, and he is the one Latin nobody after him read.