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a theory is an utterance of the English king Edgar in the 10th century, to the effect, that as God had driven the angels from the earth after their fall, whereupon the earth had been changed into chaos, He had now placed kings on the earth so that justice might reign.1 But a theological theory is not to be rejected because it is new, it only has to be proved that the new theory is in harmony with the old assured propositions. For my part I believe the opinion in question to be theologically admissible if it is thus formulated: "It is possible that the destruction of the original form of the earth is connected with the fall of the angels."

But how we are to conceive this causal connection I do not know. I cannot reconcile myself to the ordinary idea of it. If the devastation was a consequence of the fall of the angels, we must not think of the angels as purely spiritual beings. They must have a bodily form by which they are connected with the material world; the fallen angels must have been inhabitants of the earth just as men are, and the angels who have not fallen must now inhabit the fixed stars, as Kurtz, Zöckler, and others imagine; the earth was destroyed through their fall, restored again through the work of the six days, and made into a dwell

1 Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, ii. 230. Delitzsch's quotation from the Anglo-Saxon poet Caedmon (Genesis, 3rd ed. pp. 106, 613, cf. 4th ed. p. 530) contains nothing but the opinion, found also among the Fathers and mediæval theologians, that man was created in order to replace the fallen angels. (Klee, Dogmengeschichte, i. 275; Joh. Delitzsch, Ein altkirchliches Theologumenon, Zts. für luth. Theol., 1872, p. 427.) The passage which Delitzsch quotes from the Quæstiones ex V. et N. T., q. 2 (in the Migne ed. of Aug. iii. 2216), which is ascribed to St. Augustine, is also inapplicable.

Die Urgeschichte, p. 12.

ing-place for man.

There is no doubt about the consistency of all the suppositions in this theory, as it is circumstantially detailed by Kurtz, and as it has been, without any important modifications, adopted by Westermayer. But the last supposition is rather hazardous. According to the ordinary theory, the angels are incorporeal beings, and although some of the Fathers and some theologians have not thought it necessary to deny that they possessed any bodily form, but only that which resembled man, it seems to me that the bodily form of the angels must at any rate be supposed to resemble very nearly that of man, if the causal connection between the fall of the angels and the chaotic condition of the earth is to be explained by it.

VIII.

EXPLANATION OF GENESIS I. 3-31.

THE earth, we are told in the second verse of Genesis, did not always exist in the condition of order which prevailed when man first appeared upon it. It had been waste and desolate, there was no light, and its surface presented the appearance of a great mass of waters. The forming of this chaotic mass is described from ver. 3 onwards, it is what theologians call the creatio secunda. Moses begins with a sentence which has been often since ancient times justly quoted as an example of sublime language:1"And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." He continues, "And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness called He night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

We shall discuss these statements at greater length later, especially the peculiar circumstance, which has been often pointed out with triumphant scorn, that light was created on the first day, and the stars only on the fourth. At present I shall only remark that nothing is said in the words of Genesis about the nature and essence of light; the questions whether

1

Spengel and Creuzer, however, doubt the authenticity of the passage in Longinus, in which this sentence is quoted as an example of sublime language testifying to a sublime spirit. Cf. Delitzsch, Genesis, p. 529.

light is matter, or only a condition or motion of matter, are not answered here. The third verse only says that it became light in consequence of an act of the divine will; that is, that one quality of chaos, darkness, was removed. Darkness, however, is not quite removed, but it is no longer absolute; it loses its sole supremacy, it is kept within certain limits, and its relation to light is fixed. God divided the light from the darkness. This relation is that of regular change; and this alternation between light and darkness is called day and night, so that when Moses says God called the light day, and the darkness called He night, he means that the alternation between light and darkness, called by men day and night, rests on a divine ordinance. This alternation begins at once; God creates light, and so it is day; after a time, about the length of which nothing is said, darkness again sets in and it is night; this again in its turn gives place to light, the second appearance of which is the beginning of the second day. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

In order to explain the fact that here and in all the following passages the evening is mentioned before the morning, it is usual to appeal to the Hebrew custom of beginning the civil day in the evening. This, however, is an unfortunate explanation. Moses could not have expressed himself in any other terms. The first day of creation begins with the appearance of light, with the morning therefore; the natural day ends with the withdrawal of light and the recurrence of night, that is, the evening; the second day begins again with the morning; the night which lies between the evening of

the first day and the morning of the second natural day constitutes with the first natural day a single alternation of day and night, that is, a civil day, a νυχθήμερον. Moses declares: "The evening and the morning were the first day," and not: "It became evening and night, and thus one day was ended," because the former is only a short way of expressing that it became evening and night, and this up to the following morning was the first day. Moses chooses this mode of expression in order to lead up to the second morning.1

The darkness therefore, which, according to ver. 2, covered the waters, was removed on the first of the six days. The work of the second day is concerned with the waters themselves; ver. 6: "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters; and let it divide" (or be a dividing thing, or that it should divide) "the waters from the waters," i.e. as the following verse shows, so that one part of the waters spoken of in ver. 2 should be above, and one part below this firmament. Ver. 7: Ver. 7: "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so : and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

I have hitherto translated the Hebrew word "Rakia"

1 Chrysostom in Gen. hom. x. 5, and Aug. de Gen. c. Man. i. 10, are right as to this: quia etiam nox ad diem suum pertinet, non dicitur transisse dies unus nisi etiam nocte transacta, cum factum est mane: sic deinceps reliqui dies computantur a mane usque in mane. Cf. Sermo 220 (de div., 79). The above theory is disputed by Choyer, La théorie géogenique, p. 144. See Th. Lit. Bl. 1872, 358. Delitzsch, Genesis, pp. 82, 106. Dillmann, Genesis, p. 23

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