Rabanus Maurus

English

In the beginning of time, therefore, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning. But God, whose hand is omnipotent, needed no delay of times to accomplish his work, because, as it is written, 'Whatever he willed, he did' (Ps 115:3 [Vg 113B:3]). Whence it is well said that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, so that it may be plainly understood that both were made by him at once, although both cannot be said at once by a man. And then the prophet says: 'In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth' (Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26]); but here the Lord is related to have created heaven and earth in the beginning. Whence it is plainly gathered that the making of both elements was completed together, and this with such swiftness of divine power that not even the first moment of the world's birth had been passed. It can also be understood, not improbably, that God made heaven and earth in the beginning in his Only-begotten Son, who answered the Jews when they asked what they should believe him to be: 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25); because in him, as the Apostle says, 'all things were created in the heavens and on the earth' (Col 1:16).

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

Latin

PL 107, col. 444B · pd

Notes

Bede's paragraph again, taken over silently and unattributed, exactly as the K7 threads found at PL 107:447C and the K10 threads at 448D — but with a sentence in front of it that is not Bede's and that answers the crux more sharply than Bede does: 'in the beginning of time, therefore, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning.' Rabanus also drops Bede's long house-building simile and keeps everything after it. This is the Carolingian method visible in one paragraph: an inherited exposition, silently abridged, with the compiler's own thesis set at its head. On the id: K7 already holds a witness called rabanus-gen-1-1 which is in fact on Gen 1:2, so this one takes the b suffix (see notes/SOURCES-FINDINGS.md).

Threads

• → cites · Bede
  Bede's exposition reproduced almost entire and unattributed — the simultaneity argument, Ps 115:3, Ps 102:25, the 'not improbably … in his Only-begotten Son' — with the house-building simile cut and Rabanus' own thesis set at its head. The same silent copying the K7 and K10 threads trace at PL 107:447C and 448D.
• → echoes · Augustine
  The sentence Rabanus adds in front of Bede is Augustine's answer to the Manichees compressed to an axiom: 'time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning.'
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  The identical proof, eight hundred years apart, with no possible channel. Rabanus at Fulda: time is from this world, not before the world. Philo at Alexandria: time is the interval of the world's motion, and there could be no motion before the thing moved, so time is the world's coeval or younger. Rabanus has the conclusion as an axiom he inherited through Bede from Augustine; Philo has it as an argument in three steps with a premiss drawn from the Timaeus. The Latin bench holds this position for eight centuries without once being able to say where it comes from.
• → transmits · Ambrose
  Phase 4. PL 107:444B copies Ambrose Hexaemeron I.6.20 verbatim and unnamed, from 'In principio itaque temporis, coelum et terram Deus fecit' — time is from this world, not before the world, and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning. The transmission is what puts Ambrose's answer into the Carolingian schools. Written at Phase 4 because `rabanus-gen-1-1b` was built for K1.