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and image of God, from man. This is the cause of the so-called anthropomorphisms in Holy Scripture, the transference of expressions which apply first to human actions, to analogous divine actions.1 This anthropomorphic mode of expression obtains throughout the whole account of creation, and it is just for this reason that it is such a vivid picture. The writer of the account speaks as if he had been present at the divine work of creation as an eye-witness; he was not that, but the circumstances of the creation have, as I have shown above, been revealed to man, and thus he who received that revelation was supernaturally made, as it were, an eye-witness of the divine working, and therefore he can speak as such. For scientific exposition the separate statements must, of course, be translated from the language of intuition into that of understanding.

In this language we say: Light came into being by the will of God; but as we make our will known by speaking, by commanding, so the author of Genesis says: "God said, Let there be light, and there was light," etc. God then brings about that that light and darkness should regularly alternate; the present regular sequence of light and darkness rests on a divine ordinance; man calls this alternation day and night. The author of the Hexameron expresses it in this way: 'God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night." Similarly in the following verses God makes the firmament, and divides the waters under the firmament from those above the firmament, and calls the firma

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1 Habent enim consuetudinem divinæ Scripturæ de rebus humanis ad divinas res verba transferre.-Aug. de Gen. c. Man. i 14 20

ment heaven; and He gathers the waters under the firmament into one place, and causes the dry land to appear; and He calls the gathering together of the waters, sea, and the dry land, earth; that is to say, the division between the watery elements on the earth and those in the atmosphere, the creation of what we call the heavens, the division of the earth's surface into what we call land and sea; all this rests as we see now that we have brought out the real facts which are contained in the language of the Bible-on a divine ordinance.1

The expression which we have just discussed at length, "And God saw that it was good," is also an anthropomorphism. The human artist looks back on the work which he has created after he has completed it, and he calls it good; he is satisfied if the work corresponds to the idea which he had of it beforehand. God does not need so to try to compare His work, therefore if it is said, "He saw that it was good," it is simply in order to acknowledge the fact that the divine idea has been adequately realized in the divine work.

1 "Vocavit❞ autem dictum est vocari fecit; quia sic distinxit omnia et ordinavit, ut et discerni possent et nomina accipere.-Aug. de Gen. c. Man. i. 9. 13. Intelligitur ubique per hoc quod dicetur "vocavit;" dedit naturam vel proprietatem, ut possit sic vocari. Thom. i. 9. 69, a. 1 extr. "In dividing the things, God divided also the notions and the names of the things. That is the meaning of the divine naming. Human division is only the echo of the divinely ordained distinction between things."-Delitzsch, Genesis, p. 91.

VII.

EXPLANATION OF GENESIS I. 1, 2.

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THE first verse of the Bible runs thus : "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The Hebrew word which we have translated "create means, especially in conjunction with "b'reschith,' "in the beginning," the creatio ex nihilo, creation proper, the bringing forth from nothing, to bring forth something according to its being and substance.

The most common Hebrew word for bringing forth is "asah," which answers to our "make," the Greek TOLEV, the Latin facere. The words "jazar" and "bara" have a more special meaning than "asah." Jazar answers to our "form," Greek Tλaoσew, Latin formare or fingere, and is therefore frequently combined with the so-called accusative of the subject; this is also possible with "asah," because this more general word does not exclude the idea of the special word. In Gen. ii. 7, e.g., it is said: "And the Lord God formed man "-as the context shows, the body of man" of the dust of the ground." Where we have formed, the Hebrew has jazar, with "dust" in the accusative, the Septuagint eλaσev, the Vulgate formavit. Unlike asah and jazar, bara never has the subject in the accusative, and it is never used for human productions, but only for divine productions.

The fundamental meaning of the word is certainly "to create," and although it may be occasionally found when there is no question of actual creation, it is only employed for divine actions, and for those divine actions which are marvellous, so that they are to a certain degree equal to creation. You will find proofs of this use of the words in every Hebrew dictionary, and in every thorough commentary on this passage. And here the addition "in the beginning" excludes any other idea.

The expression is explained in this way by every exegete who is worthy of the name, although their theological bias may be as different as, among the modern expounders of Genesis, that of Keil and Knobel.1

I need not now enter into the question as to whether God is here intentionally called Elohim and not Jehovah, or whether the name Elohim contains a reference to the Trinity." It is sufficient for our object to know that God is described as the creative framer of the world. On the other hand, I cannot overlook the exegetical controversy as to whether the visible material world is here meant by "heaven

1 "How and from what did God create matter? According to the narrator, certainly entirely through His own will, and therefore from nothing."-Knobel, Gen. i. 1. Cf. Tuch, Genesis, 2nd ed. p. 14. I omit the answer contained in the 1st ed. to Bunsen's assertion "that the question of the schoolmen, whether God created the world out of nothing, is left quite unnoticed in Gen. i. 1, and generally in the Bible," in order to leave room for more necessary discussions. For the translation, "In the beginning, when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void . . .,—and God created" (Dillmann, Genesis, p. 17, etc.), see Delitzsch, Genesis, p. 75.

2 "We cannot, without destroying the differences between the Old and New Testaments, say that Elohim is pluralis trinitatis; but we may perfectly well say the trinitas is the revelation in the New Testament of the pluralitas of Elohim."-Delitzsch, Genesis, 3rd ed. p. 67.

and earth," or whether heaven means the spiritual immaterial creation, the angel world, and earth the material creation.1

There is no doubt that in the Hebrew Old Tes

tament generally, "heaven and earth" express one idea, and mean the universe, the same which the Greek books of the Old Testament call ó Kóσμos.2 Look at the passage in the Psalms (cii. 25, 26): "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They (heavens and earth) shall perish, but Thou shalt endure." 3 It is impossible to quote a passage in the Bible in which heaven and earth mean two separate conceptions, the spiritual and material creation: and it is the less allowable to take that as the meaning here, because in the following verses heaven certainly does not mean the spiritual (vers. 9, 10) and earth the material world (vers. 2, 10). If, therefore, the angels are meant to be included in the first verse as the creatures of God, it is only in so far as they belong to the world; but it does not mean that they are specially denoted by the word "heaven."

1 Amongst the modern writers, specially Michelis, Entwicklung, etc., p. 7. Kath. Lit. Zeitung, 1859, No. 44. Natur u. Offenbarung, 1862, 473; 1869, 83. C. M. Mayrhofer, Das dreieine Leben in Gott und jedem Geschöpfe, Regensburg 1851, i. 93. Westermayer, Das alte Test. i. 6. Baltzer, Biblische Schöpfungsgesch. p. 184 seq. Cf. Theol. Lit. Blatt. 1867, 236.

2 Wisd. xi. 18 : ἡ παντοδύναμός σου χεὶρ καὶ κτίσασα τὸν κόσμον ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης. 2 Macc. vii. 9 : ὁ τοῦ κόσμου βασιλεύς. vii. 13 and xiii. 14: ὁ τοῦ κόσμου κτιστής. viii. 18: τῷ παντοκράτορι θεῷ, δυναμένῳ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον ἐν ἑνὶ νεύματι καταβαλεῖν. Aug. Qu. in Hept. v. 5 : Assidue quippe Scriptura his duabus partibus (coelum et terra) commemoratis universum mundum vult intelligi.

3 For other passages, see Reinke, Die Schöpfung der Welt, Münster 1859, p. 143.

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