CHAPTER XIX. FIRST HYPOTHESIS;--AN INTERVAL OF INDEFINITE DURATION BETWEEN THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND THE FIRST MOSAIC DAY.

The heavens and the earth were created before the first Mosaic day—Objection from Exodus, xx. 9-11—Answer—Interpretation of the author supported by the best commentators—Confirmed by the Hebrew text—The early fathers commonly held the existence of created matter prior to the work of the Six Days—Saint Basil, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Ambrose, Venerable Bede—The most eminent doctors in the schools concurred in this opinion—Peter Lombard, Hugh of Saint Victor, Saint Thomas—Also commentators and theologians—Perrerius, Petavius—Distinguished names on the other side, A Lapide, Tostatus, Saint Augustine—The opinion is at least not at variance with the voice of tradition—This period of created existence may have been of indefinite length—And the earth may have been furnished then as now with countless tribes of plants and animals—Objections to this hypothesis proposed and explained.

The opening verses of the Mosaic history may be rendered thus literally from the Hebrew Text:—

(1) “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.

(2) “And the Earth was waste and empty; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

(3) “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

(4) “And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

(5) “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening was, and the morning was, the first day.”

Now it appears to us that the great event with which this narrative begins, the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, is not represented as a part of the work that was accomplished within the Six Days. It is not said that on the first day God created the Heavens and the Earth, but in the beginning. Besides, the Sacred writer, uniformly throughout the chapter, employs one and the same peculiar phrase to introduce the work of each successive day. In describing the operations of God on the second day, he begins: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters:” on the third day, “And God said, Let the waters that are under the Heavens be gathered together into one place:” on the fourth, “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heavens to divide the day from the night:” on the fifth, “And God said, Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing having life:” on the sixth, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind.” Hence, when we meet this same phrase for the first time in the third verse, “And God said, Let there be light,” we may reasonably suppose that the work of the first day began with the decree which is set forth in these words. If so it plainly follows that we may allow the existence of created matter before that particular epoch of time which, in the language of Moses, is styled the First Day: for, before the creation of light, the Heavens and the Earth were already in existence, and the Earth was waste and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

An objection is sometimes raised from the words of God in the promulgation of the third commandment:—“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work on it.... For in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that is in them, and resteth the seventh day.”116 It is argued that the creation of the Heavens and the Earth is here set forth as a part of the work accomplished within the Six Days; which is directly against our opinion. This difficulty would be simply insurmountable, if it could be proved that the text refers to that first act of creation by which the Heavens and the Earth were brought into existence out of nothing. We think, however, that the phrase may fairly be understood to mean, in six days the Lord fashioned the Heavens and the Earth; that is to say, gave to them that form and shape and outward character which they now possess. In this sense the words would apply, not to the first act of creation out of nothing, but rather to that subsequent series of operations by which the Earth was fitted up and furnished for the use of man.

And this interpretation is supported by the authority of our best Commentators. Perrerius formally discusses the point, and maintains that God may truly be said to have made the Heavens and the Earth in Six Days, although the Heavens and the Earth, as far as regards their substantial matter, had been created before the First Day: for it was only within the Six Days that they were adorned and completed and perfected. Tostatus is not less explicit. In this passage, he says, the word made is very properly employed; for the Heavens and the Earth which are here referred to, and the other things that are included under this general designation, were all made from matter already existing, but this matter itself was not made, it was created. Petavius also adopts this view in his remarks upon the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis.117

We may add that this mode of explaining the passage receives no small support from the Hebrew text. When it is said, in the first chapter of Genesis, that “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” the word used by the Sacred writer is ??? (Bara), which strictly means to create out of nothing; whereas, in describing the operations of the Six Days, he commonly uses the word ??? (Hasah), which means to form and fashion, or to produce something out of pre-existing materials.118 Now, in the text of Exodus we find the word ??? (Hasah), to fashion or produce, and not the word ??? (Bara), to create. We do not want to insist very rigorously upon this distinction between the two words ??? (Bara) and ??? (Hasah)), nor would we deny that they are sometimes interchanged as regards their meaning. We think they are related to one another pretty nearly as the corresponding words to create and to make in English, and we know that the distinction between these two words is not always strictly observed. Thus, we sometimes say that God made the world, meaning that he brought it forth from nothing, and we speak of the creation of peers; and Shakspeare says:—

Nevertheless, when we compare two such passages as these:—“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” and “In Six Days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is,” we think the studied contrast of expression is a fair ground for supposing that, while the one refers to the Divine decree by which matter was first brought into existence out of nothing, the other may be understood of those subsequent operations by which it received its present form and shape.

We see no difficulty, then, as far as the Sacred Text is concerned, in supposing a condition of created existence prior to the period of the Six Days. But since this opinion is the foundation on which our whole argument rests, we should wish to show, moreover, even at the risk of being tedious, that it has been put forward and defended by the most eminent writers in every age of the Church. Amongst the early Fathers, Saint Basil reasons after this manner when commenting upon the passage, “There was evening and there was morning the first day:”—“The evening is the common term of day and night; and, in like manner, the morning is the point of union between night and day. Wherefore, in order to signify that to the day belonged the prerogative of being the first begotten, the sacred writer first commemorates the close of day, and afterward the close of night; implying thereby that the day was followed by the night. As to the condition of the world before the formation of light, that is not called Night, but simply Darkness; whereas that period which is distinguished from day and opposed to it, is called night.”119 This great Doctor, therefore, teaches that the First Day began with a period of light which is called day, and ended with a period of darkness which is called night; and he recognizes a previous state of existence which was no part of the First Day. So, too, Saint Chrysostom, in his third Homily upon Genesis, lays down that the Earth was first created a rude and shapeless mass, without form or ornament; that afterward light was made, and that, with the creation of light, the First Day began.120

In the Western Church, Saint Ambrose adopts the same line of interpretation. He sets forth that God first created the world, in the beginning; and afterward during the Six Days furnished and adorned it; just as a skilful workman first lays the foundation of a building, and afterward raises the superstructure, and superadds the ornament. And elsewhere, he says that, when the voice of God went forth, “Let light be made,” in the same moment the First Day began. It follows, therefore, that the world existed before the beginning of the First Day. In another place he gives a new turn to the same idea, telling us that in the beginning God made the world; and with the world, time began. But not with time did the First Day begin: for the First Day is not the beginning of time, it is rather an epoch of time.121

Passing on to the middle ages, we find our view supported by the authority of Venerable Bede, in several parts of his writings. His notion is that, during the Six Days, God formed and fashioned the world out of shapeless matter; but, before the Six Days began, He had made this shapeless matter itself out of nothing. “Two things,” he says, “did God make before all days, the angelical nature, and shapeless matter.” And again, he dresses up this opinion in the form of a dialogue:—“Disciple. Tell me the order in which things were made throughout the Six Days? Master. First, in the very beginning of created existence, were made heaven and earth, the angels, air, and water. Disciple. Continue the order of creation? Master. In the beginning of the First Day light was made; on the second was made the firmament,” etc.122 Nothing can be more plain than the distinction here set up between the beginning of all time, when the Heavens and the Earth were made, and the beginning of the First Day, when light was made.

And when we come to still more recent times, we find this interpretation was taken up and defended by the great masters in the schools of Theology. Peter Lombard, the famous Magister Sententiarum, referring to the first verse of Genesis, says that “in the beginning God created Heaven, which means the Angels, and the Earth, which means confused and unshapely matter, the same that is called Chaos by the Greeks; and this was before any day.” Not less clearly speaks out Hugh of Saint Victor, who for his profound and varied erudition, was called the second Augustine. In explaining the history of the Six Days, he says: “The first of the Divine operations was the creation of light. But the light was not then created from nothing, it was formed from pre-existing matter. This was the work that was accomplished on the First Day: but the material of this work had been created before the First Day. Directly with the light the day began; for before the light it was neither night or day, though time already existed.”123

Later still, St. Thomas himself clearly leans to this view when he says: “It is better to maintain that the creation was before any day.” And Perrerius, the most learned, perhaps, of all our commentators on Genesis, argues with us that the world was created before the production of light, and before the commencement of the First Day. Nay, he adds that he cannot tell how long that primeval state of existence may have endured before the Six Days began; nor does he think it can be known except by a special revelation. Petavius, too, is with us. He does not indeed accept our interpretation of the first verse. When it is said, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” he holds that these words do not describe any one particular act of God, but represent, as it were in a brief summary, the whole work of creation. Thus we are informed, at the outset, that the Heavens and the Earth as we see them now are the work of God; and afterward, the various parts that make up this great whole are described, and the order in which they were accomplished is set forth. According to Petavius, then, the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, recorded in the first verse, was not a distinct act from the operations of the Six Days, but rather includes them all. Nevertheless, he maintains, as we do, that the earth, at least, and water, were in existence before the creation of light; and that, therefore, some period of time must have elapsed before the beginning of the Six Days. Furthermore, he says in the same spirit as Perrerius, that it is beyond our power to conjecture how long that period may have lasted.124

Our opinion, then, is not open, in the slightest degree, to the imputation of novelty or singularity. On the contrary, it would seem rather to reflect the prevailing tradition of the Church. We think it right, however, to add that there are great names against us. A Lapide, for instance, who considers that the Heavens and the Earth were created at the beginning of the First Day.125 And Tostatus, who incidentally notices our view, and contents himself with saying that it is unreasonable. For himself he seems to waver between two opinions. He thinks the primeval darkness, described in the second verse, may have been the night belonging to the First Day; and that during that night, which probably lasted about twelve hours, we may suppose the Heavens and the Earth to have been created. Or else, he says, we may allow that the First Day of the Mosaic narrative began with the creation of light; but in that case we must hold that the Heavens and the Earth were created at the same time with light.126

Saint Augustine, too, we must reluctantly give up; or, at least, we must be content to regard him as neutral. If he is not a decided opponent, he is certainly not a consistent advocate, of our opinion. No doubt he is often quoted in its favor; and it would be easy to select passages from his works which seem to enforce it in the plainest terms. As for example: “In the beginning, O my God, before any day, Thou didst make the Heavens and the Earth.”127 But, in truth, this opinion is utterly irreconcilable with the well known and very singular teaching of Saint Augustine concerning the creation of the world. He held that all the great works recounted in the first chapter of Genesis were, in fact, accomplished in a single instant. There was no real succession, according to him, in the order of time, between the production of the Heavens and the Earth, of light and the firmament, of the sun, moon, and stars, of plants, trees, and animals. In one and the same instant of time all these came into existence together. As to the description given by Moses, it is accommodated to the capacity of a rude people; and the succession there set forth is intended only to exhibit the several parts of a great whole, in the manner best suited to the conceptions of human intelligence.128

This view of the creation is repeated again and again by Saint Augustine in his numerous works upon Genesis, and illustrated in diverse ways, so as to leave no doubt that he held it deliberately and persistently. With regard to such passages as that quoted above, in which he says that God created the Heavens and the Earth before any day, it may be maintained that Saint Augustine was not always consistent with himself, and that he held different opinions at different times; or even that he put forward opposite opinions at the same time, not setting them forth as true, but only as possible and legitimate.129

We think, however, that his consistency, in this case at least, can be defended, and that he has himself sufficiently explained in what sense he wished these passages to be understood. He tells us that we must distinguish two kinds of succession: succession in the order of time, and succession in the order of our conceptions. Thus, for example, in the order of time there is no succession between the sound of the voice in singing and the musical note that is sung: the sound is, in fact, the note, and the note is the sound. But in the order of our conceptions we first apprehend a thing according to its substance, and then according to its qualities. We first conceive the sound itself, as a sound, and then we conceive it as having that peculiar quality which makes it a musical note. Such as this is the succession Saint Augustine seems to admit in the order of the creation. He tells us, no doubt, that God first created shapeless matter, and afterward gave to it form and beauty: and certainly this statement, if standing alone, would, according to the ordinary use of language, imply a real succession in the order of time. But then, a little further on, he expressly repudiates the idea of a succession in point of time, and says that the priority he ascribes to shapeless matter is only a priority in the order of our conceptions. We must first conceive matter to exist before we can conceive it to have this or that particular form; and the Inspired Writer follows the order of our conceptions, in order to adapt his narrative to the mental feebleness of our present condition.130

With the truth or falsehood of these views we are not concerned just now. We have dwelt upon them rather from an honest desire of showing that Saint Augustine is not so clearly on our side in this question, as might be supposed from some isolated passages of his writings. He says indeed that the world was created before light, and before the beginning of the First Day; but then again he tells us that this is only a way of speaking, and that, in reality, all things were created together.

But although these high authorities—A Lapide, Tostatus, Saint Augustine—and some others less illustrious than these, are unfavorable to our interpretation, we think it is supported by a preponderance of the best interpreters, both in ancient and modern times. At all events, with such an array of venerable names as we have been able to bring forward in its behalf,—and they are but a few chosen out of many,—no one can deny that we are fairly entitled to hold it without any note of censure, without any suspicion of Theological error. Setting out, then, from this point, that there was a state of created existence prior to the Six Days of the Mosaic history, the question naturally arises, how long did that state of existence endure? Was it for an hour? a day? a week? a month? a century? a million of years? We cannot tell. To these questions the Sacred Text gives no reply. It simply records that in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, and that, at some subsequent epoch of time, His decree again went forth, Let there be light, and light there was. One thing, however, is plain, that, if this period existed at all, it might just as well have lasted a hundred millions of years as a hundred seconds. It would be folly to attempt to measure the succession of God’s acts, when he does please to produce effects in succession, according to our petty standards of time. “One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”131

And it is not a little remarkable that, long before the discoveries of Geology had suggested any necessity for allowing the lapse of many ages between the first creation of the world and the creation of man, the sagacity of our commentators led them to observe that the duration of this interval is left undefined in the Sacred Record. “How long that interval may have lasted,” says Petavius, “it is absolutely impossible to conjecture.” And Perrerius, as we have seen, declared that it could not be known except by a special revelation. And five centuries earlier, at the very dawn of Scholastic Theology, Hugh of Saint Victor raised the same question, and expressed his opinion that it could not be solved from Scripture. Citing the passage, In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, he says, “From these words it is plain that in the beginning of time, or rather with time itself, the original matter of all things came into existence. But how long it remained in this confused and unshapely condition the Scripture clearly does not tell us.”132

We may go further still. If we are at liberty to admit an interval of indefinite length between the creation of the world and the work of the Six Days, there is certainly nothing which forbids us to suppose that, during this period, the earth should have undergone many revolutions, and have been peopled by countless tribes of plants and animals, which, as age rolled on after age, came into existence, and died out, and were succeeded by new creations. We cannot, perhaps, see the use of all this, nor can we penetrate the motives the Great Creator might have had in bringing into existence such a boundless profusion of organic life. Granted: but then we have studied the Sacred Text to little purpose if we have not yet realized the solemn truth that, to our poor and feeble intellects, His judgments are incomprehensible, and his ways unsearchable. Did He not set His stars in the remotest regions of space, far beyond the reach of unaided human vision, and did they not shine there for ages, though man could see them not? And for ages, too, did not the wild flowers spring up, and bloom, and decay, in many a fair and favored spot of this beautiful Earth, where there was none to admire their splendor, none to inhale their sweetness? Then again, look at that marvellous kingdom of minute animalcules, in number almost infinite, which only within the last few years the microscope has revealed to our wondering eyes. They swarm around us in the air, in the earth, in the water. Millions of them would fit in the hollow of your hand; many hundreds might swim side by side, without crowding, through the eye of a cambric needle. And they too, we can hardly doubt, must have flourished for centuries in countless myriads, unseen and unknown by man. It is impossible for us, in our present imperfect state, to understand the motives of an All-wise Creator in this profuse expenditure of his goodness, this lavish display of His power. How then can we presume to say that He may not have good reasons, though inscrutable to us, for peopling this Earth with many tribes of plants and animals, through a long cycle of ages, before it pleased Him to fit it up for the habitation of man? “Who is he among men that can know the counsel of God? or who can find out His designs? For the judgments of mortal men are hesitating, and uncertain are our thoughts. For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly dwelling presseth down the mind that museth upon many things. And hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth: and with labor do we find the things that are before us. But the things that are in heaven who shall search out?”133

We have heard it sometimes objected that plants and animals could not have existed without light; and that light was not created until the beginning of the First Mosaic Day. Many curious and interesting facts are adduced in support of this argument. For example, we are reminded that certain Fossil animals belonging to the earliest Geological Periods, are shown by the clearest evidence, to have had eyes constructed on the same optical principles, and accommodated to the same optical conditions, as the eyes of those animals that have flourished on the Earth during the period of history: and such eyes, it is contended, plainly import the existence of light. The answer to this objection may be stated in a very few words. We freely admit that the hypothesis we have been defending would be of little use to account for Geological phenomena, if it did not include the existence of light, during that Period of indefinite duration which we suppose to have elapsed between the first creation of the world and the work of the Six Days. But in truth there is no difficulty in supposing that, during such an interval, light may have prevailed upon the earth, and air, and all the other conditions of organic life, pretty much as they do at the present day. Afterward, at the close of the period, when, perhaps, ages innumerable had rolled by, this planet of ours would have appeared in that condition which is described in the second verse of Genesis: “And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Then the command of God would have gone forth, “Let there be light:” and at once the darkness would have been dispelled, a new era of existence would have commenced, and the Earth would forthwith have been set in order and furnished, in a special manner, for the habitation of man.

Even as regards the Sun, Moon, and Stars, they too may have existed before the work of the Six Days began. We read, no doubt, that on the Fourth Day, God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night:” and a little farther on it is added that “God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars.” But then it must be remembered that some of our best Commentators, without any reference to Geology, have taught that, before this command was given, the heavenly bodies were already in existence for three days, and were already discharging the office of dividing day and night. They explain the passage by saying that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, are represented as having been made on the Fourth Day, not because they were then produced for the first time out of nothing, but because the vapors by which they had been obscured were, on that Day, dissipated, and they began to shine visibly in the Firmament of Heaven. If this line of interpretation is admissible, and it seems to us not unreasonable, then we are certainly at liberty to hold, consistently with the Mosaic narrative, that the Heavenly bodies may have been created with the Heavens and the Earth in the beginning of all time; and that on the Fourth Day they were made manifest in the Firmament to rule over the day and the night, and to regulate the course of the years and the seasons.134

Again it is urged against our hypothesis that Moses could not have passed over in complete silence such a long and eventful era in the history of the world. Certainly not, we admit, if he professed to write a complete history of the Earth and all its revolutions. But this was not his purpose. Every book, whether sacred or profane, must be examined and interpreted according to the end for which it was designed. Now the end and scope of the Book of Genesis was not to instruct mankind about the movements of the heavenly bodies, or the physical changes of the Earth’s surface, or the laws which govern the material universe. It was, first of all, to impress on the minds of the Jewish people that this world of ours is the work of one only God, distinct from all creatures, and Himself the Creator of sun, moon, and stars, and of every other object which pagan nations were wont to worship: and in the next place, to set forth, briefly and simply, the story of God’s dealings with man in the first ages of the human race. Whatever we may hold, therefore, about the revolutions and changes of the Earth’s surface previous to the work of the Six Days, it is plain that the history of these phenomena did not appertain to the object which the Sacred writer had in view. Consequently he cannot be said, by the omission of these events, to lead his readers into error; he simply allows them to remain in ignorance. What it was his purpose to tell, he tells truly: what did not belong to his purpose, he passes by in silence.

But it is further argued that this long interval of time we have been contending for, is incompatible with the use of the copulative conjunction, by which the several clauses of the narrative are connected together. The Sacred text runs thus:—“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was waste and empty: and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.” Is it possible, we are asked, to admit a period of indefinite length between events thus closely linked together? Our answer is that, according to the idiom of the Hebrew language, the conjunction ?? or ?? (ve or va), which is here employed, while it serves to connect together the clauses of a narrative, does not of necessity imply the immediate succession of the events recorded. The very wide and indefinite signification which belongs to this little particle is well known to all who are familiar with the Hebrew text. It is sometimes copulative, sometimes adversative, sometimes disjunctive, sometimes causal. Very frequently it is used simply for the purpose of continuing the discourse;135 and this we believe is the true force of the word in the passage under discussion.

An example very much to the point occurs in the Book of Numbers, twentieth chapter and first verse:—“And the children of Israel, the whole congregation came into the desert of Sin.” Here the narrative opens with the connecting particle ?????? ??? ????? ?? ????—:?. And yet the reader will find, if he carefully examine the passage, that the event thus introduced by the sacred writer was separated by a period of eight-and-thirty years from those which had been related in the preceding chapter. This conjunction, therefore, does not exclude an interval of eight-and-thirty years between the events which it links together in history. And that being so, there is no good reason for supposing that it should, of necessity, exclude an interval of indefinite length.

The Weakness of this objection may be made even more strikingly manifest by an inspection of the opening words in the first chapter of Ezechiel:—???? ?????? ???. So little did the notion prevail that the conjunction ? (ve) could be used only to connect together events closely associated in point of time, that here it actually begins the narrative, and is, in fact, the first word of the whole book. In the Douay version the passage is not inaptly rendered after this manner: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, when I was in the midst of the captives by the River Chobar, the heavens were opened, and I saw the visions of God.”

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We have now brought to a conclusion the first part of our inquiry. We have endeavored to show that there is nothing in Scripture or Tradition which forbids us to admit a long interval of time between the Creation of the world and the work of the Six Days. It remains to examine what was the nature of these Six Days themselves. Were they, as Saint Augustine maintained, one single indivisible instant of time? or were they days of twenty-four hours, as is more commonly supposed? or were they simply periods of time of which the duration is left wholly undetermined in the Sacred Text?