Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)

English

Verse 7. 'Come, therefore', etc. He is understood to have said it to the angels; or according to that: 'let us make a human to our image and likeness.' For it is added in the singular number: 'and he divided them', etc., just as there: 'God made the human to his own image and likeness.'

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

Latin

PL 113, col. 114D · pd

Notes

⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. ⚠ A second anchor note applies: this is a gloss on Gen 11:7, the tower of Babel, not on Gen 1:26 or on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf because it says of venite, confundamus what nobody in the Gloss says of faciamus: he is understood to have said it to the angels. And it gets there by the same route the rabbinic bench does. The gloss pairs Gen 11:7 with Gen 1:26 as the two plural verses; it then answers the plural of Gen 11:7 with the singular of Gen 11:8 — 'and he divided them' — exactly as the plural of Gen 1:26 is answered by the singular of Gen 1:27. That is R. Yoḥanan's rule at b. Sanhedrin 38b, which lists the same two verses in the same order with the same singular refutations beside them, and it is the structure of Augustine's chapter de locutione qua Deus Angelis loquitur (`aug-civ-16-6`), where Gen 1:26 is refused to the angels and Gen 11:7 is granted to them. Three benches, the same pair of verses, the same test. The Gloss is the one place where a Latin schoolbook prints the angel reading as the plain sense, and it does so where the image clause is missing and the argument against it therefore fails.

Threads

• → parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  The Gloss joins Gen 11:7 to Gen 1:26 and answers both with their singulars — 'Ad angelos dixisse intelligitur; vel secundum illud: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram. Nam singulari numero subjunctum est: et divisit eos, sicut ibi: Fecit Deus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem suam' — which is R. Yoḥanan's list and R. Yoḥanan's test, in a Latin schoolbook, with the conclusion left open. It is the one place in the Gloss where the angel reading is printed as the plain sense, and it is printed at the verse where the argument from the image cannot be run.
• → cites · Augustine
  The gloss is Augustine's chapter reduced to its verdict. De civitate Dei XVI.6 grants the angels at Babel because nothing prevents them, having refused them at Gen 1:26 because of the image; the Gloss keeps the grant, keeps the cross-reference to faciamus hominem, and drops the reason for the difference — so that a twelfth-century reader meets the angel reading of one plural without the argument that had excluded it from the other.
• ← parallel · Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
  An Aramaic targum of the eighth century and a Latin schoolbook of the twelfth put the same hearers behind the same kind of plural. 'Va-amar YY le-malakhaya di-meshamshin qomoi' — and the LORD said to the angels who minister before him. 'Ad angelos dixisse intelligitur' — he is understood to have said it to the angels. Neither argues for it; both simply state it as what the verse means. The Gloss says it at Gen 11:7 and cross-refers to Gen 1:26; the targum says it at Gen 1:26 outright.