Honorius Augustodunensis

English

And God saw the light, that it was good. That is, he gave the rational creature to understand how good are all the things it discerns by the light. And he divided the light and the darkness: namely, so that the light should shine twelve hours above the earth and twelve below the earth; and the darkness, put to flight by the light, should lie hidden twelve hours below the earth and as many above it.

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

Latin

PL 172, col. 255D · pd

Notes

The literal answer taken as far as it will go: the division is a timetable. The light of the first day travels on a twelve-hour circuit above the earth and twelve below, and the darkness does the reverse, hiding below while the light is above. Bede's difference of place has become a mechanism with hours in it, and there is no privation anywhere in the sentence — the darkness is put to flight by the light and lies hidden, which are things only a body does. On the ki tov half Honorius takes the seeing out of God altogether: 'he gave the rational creature to understand how good are all the things it discerns by the light', so the goodness is what we see by the light, not what God saw in it. Nobody else on either bench makes the approval a gift to the beholder.

Threads

• → echoes · Bede
  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 · Nicholas of Lyra
  Honorius already had the mechanism in the twelfth century -- twelve hours above the earth and twelve below -- and used it to explain the length of the day rather than the dividing of v. 4. Lyra applies the same fact to the verse itself, so that vayavdel reports what the sun does rather than what God decided about darkness.