Philo of Alexandria

English

First, then, the Maker made an incorporeal heaven, and an invisible earth, and the idea of air and of void; of which the one he named darkness, since air is black by nature, and the other the abyss, for the void is very deep and yawning. Then the incorporeal substance of water and of breath, and over all, seventh, of light, which again was incorporeal, an intelligible model of the sun and of all the light-bearing stars that were to be constituted throughout the heaven.

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

Greek

Philo, De opificio mundi 29 (Cohn-Wendland i. 9) · first1k-greek

Notes

The passage Chalcidius is reporting when he tells the Latin west what Philo held, and the one place in this edition where a Latin witness and its named Greek source can be set side by side. Philo lists what was made first, and every item on the list is incorporeal: a heaven without body, an invisible earth, the idea of air and of void. Then he does something no other witness on this daf does, and identifies the terms of Gen 1:2 with items on that list: the darkness is the air, because air is black by nature, and the abyss is the void, because the void is deep and yawning. Water, breath and light follow, light seventh and last, itself incorporeal and the model of the sun and the stars. This is a reading of the first two verses as an inventory of models rather than a narrative of events, and it is why Chalcidius can say that those who search more deeply deny that this heaven was made in the beginning. On the other bench the same instinct is b. Chagigah 12a's ten things created on the first day, which is also an inventory and is also longer than the verse.

Threads

• ← cites · Chalcidius
  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.
• → parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  Two inventories where the verse gives a narrative. The Bavli asks which was created first and stages Beit Shammai against Beit Hillel, and the sugya's answer is a list of ten things created on the first day. Philo also answers with a list, and his has seven items: incorporeal heaven, invisible earth, the idea of air, the idea of void, the substance of water, of breath, and seventh light. Both readings decide that the first verse under-reports, and both fill it out by enumeration rather than by exegesis of a word. Neither list can be got from the other and the two do not share a single item's rationale.
• → parallel · Augustine
  Both are looking for names for what has no form, and both borrow from the verse. Augustine asks what it was to be called if not by some familiar word, and settles on earth and abyss as names given for the sake of our slowness. Philo takes the same two words and assigns them referents in his inventory: the darkness is the air, because air is black by nature, and the abyss is the void, because the void is deep and yawning. Augustine treats the words as a concession to the reader; Philo treats them as precise. The daf has the same problem solved in opposite directions eight hundred years and one language apart.
• → parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  Both give tohu and the abyss a physical identification rather than a moral one, and the two identifications have nothing in common. The Bavli: tohu is a green line that encircles the whole world and from which darkness goes out. Philo: the darkness is the air, which is black by nature, and the abyss is the void. Each bench reaches for the physics it has, and each ends with the same conviction, that the second verse names things and not merely states.