Nicholas of Lyra

English

Here it is asked why on the second day it is not said, And God saw that it was good, as on the other days. To which some answer that it is because the number two is of ill repute, in that it is the first to depart from unity. But that answer seems to be trifling, especially because in the holy Gospel the number two is marked out as praiseworthy and mystical; whence on that passage of Luke 10, He sent them out two by two before his face, Gregory says that by the pair he signified charity, which is the most excellent of the virtues and the form of the virtues. Others say that the reason is that the angels who sinned fell on the second day; but this has no authority from the Scriptures, and so is dismissed as easily as it is proved, especially because the doctors commonly say that between the creation of the angels and their fall there was a brief moment of time, whereas on that answer there would have been at least the space of one natural day, since on everyone's account the angels were created at the beginning. Therefore Rabbi Solomon answers otherwise, and more according to the intention of the letter, as it seems, saying, and it is true, that this word, God saw that it was good, is said on the other days for the approval of the work of those days; and approval properly regards a work that is complete.

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

Latin

Koberger 1486-87, leaf n44, right column (archive.org biblia-sacra-lyra_202308, page/n44.jpg) · lyra-koberger-1487

Notes

⚠ Anchor note: Lyra is on the day-two absence of the approval formula, Gen 1:8, which is outside this edition's scope; anchored on gen.1.4 under the second clause of the anchor rule, because the question is the one that verse raises and this crux is built on. This is the page Paul of Burgos indicts, and every charge in burgos-add-3 can be checked against it. He does call the fathers' answer truphatica, in that word. He does refute them from Luke 10 and Gregory, which Burgos calls a motive of small value. And he does prefer Rashi, in the sentence an early reader of this copy underlined in ink: Ideo aliter respondet Ra. Sa., et magis secundum intentionem littere. Two things are worth noticing that neither of his critics mentions. The first is that Lyra rejects two Latin answers and not one, and the second, that the angels fell on the second day, he refutes on strictly Latin grounds. The second is that the answer he takes from Rashi is not a Jewish reading of a Jewish text but a rule about how the word approval works: approbation regards a completed work, the separating of the waters was not finished until the third day, so the formula waits. Anyone could have said it. The quarrel that follows is not about whether it is right.

Threads

• ← contests · Paul of Burgos
  The indictment and the page it indicts, printed a hundred leaves apart in the same volume and now on the same daf. Every charge checks out. Lyra calls the answer of Rabanus and the Master truphatica, in that word; he refutes them from Luke 10 and Gregory on the pair; and he prefers Rashi in the sentence Burgos quotes back at him, Ideo aliter respondet Ra. Sa., et magis secundum intentionem littere. What Burgos does not say is that Lyra rejected a second Latin answer too, the angels falling on the second day, on grounds that have nothing to do with any Hebrew.
• → parallel · Augustine
  Augustine's reason for the withheld approval is that the two should not both be called good; Lyra's is that approval regards a completed work and the work of the second day was not finished until the third. Both make the silence deliberate and neither needs the arithmetic of the binary that Rabanus and the Master reached for and that Lyra dismisses. Augustine is on the daf and is not cited by any of the three men arguing about it.