Chalcidius

English

There is nevertheless one beginning of all things, concerning which Solomon says in the Proverbs: 'God created me the path of his progression, leaning upon which he might accomplish his divine works; and he established me before the rising of the world, and before the founding of the earth and of the deep, before the drawing of the springs and the heaping up of the mountains' (Prov 8:22–25). Plainly indicating that heaven and earth were made with divine Wisdom going before, and that this same divine Wisdom is the first beginning of the universe. From which it appears that Wisdom was indeed made by God, but not at any point in time. For there would have been no time at all in which God was without Wisdom.

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 single most important page in this edition for what K1 turns out to be about, and the finding already rests on it. Chalcidius reaches the gloss both benches reach — the beginning of Gen 1:1 is Wisdom — and he reaches it from Prov 8:22, which on this daf is the rabbinic bench's verse and nobody else's: R. Hoshaya at Bereshit Rabbah 1:1 and Targum Neofiti's min qadmin be-ḥokhmah are the other witnesses to it, and the four Latins who reach wisdom all reach it from Ps 104:24 instead. He quotes Prov 8:22 at length, in a Latin unlike the Vulgate's (progressionis suae semitam for uiarum suarum), draws the conclusion in the rabbinic bench's own terms — divine Wisdom is the primordium of the universe — and then does the one thing that separates him from every Latin after him: he stops. Wisdom is made by God but not in time; it is not said to be the Son, and the name of Christ does not appear. Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Bede, Alcuin and the Gloss all take the last step. Chalcidius, who is the earliest of them and has the better verse, does not, and none of them read him.

Threads

• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same verse and the same conclusion, in Latin about 350 and in Galilee about 450, with nothing between them. R. Hoshaya reads reshit of Prov 8:22 — 'the Lord made me reshit of his way' — and makes the Torah the amon, the artisan's plan the King builds from. Chalcidius quotes the same verse at length and concludes praeeunte diuina sapientia coelum terramque factam, eandemque sapientiam diuinam esse uniuersitatis primordium: that heaven and earth were made with Wisdom going before, and that Wisdom is the primordium of the universe. Primordium and reshit are the same claim about the same word of the same verse. This is the contact K1's finding says existed at the head of the tradition, and it is on the page.
• → parallel · Targum Neofiti
  Neofiti does not translate bereshit but interprets it — min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, from the first, in wisdom — and Chalcidius gets to the same gloss by argument rather than by rendering, and from the verse Neofiti's tradition uses. Neither can have known the other. What separates them from the Latin bench that later reaches 'in wisdom' by Ps 104:24 is that both of these stop at Wisdom, and neither says the Son.
• → contests · Jerome
  The two Latins of the fourth century who had access to what the other bench was saying, and the opposite outcomes. Chalcidius quotes Prov 8:22, concludes that divine Wisdom is the primordium of the universe, adds that Wisdom was made by God but not in time — and stops there, without naming Christ. Jerome, at Bethlehem forty years later, states the Christological reading, refutes it on the Hebrew (the three Greek versions all say 'in the beginning'; the Hebrew for 'in the son' would be ba-ben), and then concedes it 'according to the sense rather than the translation of the word'. It is Jerome's concession and not Chalcidius's restraint that the Latin bench inherits.
• → echoes · Chalcidius
  One argument in two movements on facing leaves. First the word: the beginning of Gen 1:1 is not temporal, because time is measured by day and night and the chapter has not made them yet, and in ordinary Latin 'beginning' has a various and manifold signification anyway. Then the thing: there is nevertheless one beginning of all things, and Prov 8:22 names it Wisdom, which was made by God but not at any point in time. The lexical clearing comes first and the identification second, which is the reverse of how the Latin bench after him proceeds.