Sect. 123The Doctrinal Portions of the Mosaic HexahemeronThe Doctrinal Portions of the Mosaic Hexahemeron
I. The work of the six days, the Hexahemeron, lies between the creation of the chaos, or first creation, and the commencement of the regular government of the world by God. It is the work of formation, or second creation described as “the making of the world out of formless matter” (κτίζειν τὸν κόσμον ἐξ ὑλῆς ἀμόρφου, Wisd. 11:18), and alluded to by St. Paul: “By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God: that from invisible things visible things might be made” (πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι Θεου, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐν φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι, Heb. 11:3). In this sense the Hexahemeron is properly a “Cosmogony,” in the ancient meaning of the word, viz. the history of the formation and ornamentation of this visible universe, of which the earth is the centre and man the king. It is not a cosmogony in the modern sense, because it does not deal with the formation and ornamentation of other worlds than ours; nor a Geogony, because it deals only with the external aspect of the earth.
II. The object of the Mosaic narrative being to represent the Cosmos as a Divine work of art,—made not with hands, but by the Word of God, Who is the expression and image of the Divine Power and Wisdom,—we must expect to find the particular productions represented as parts devised for the perfection of the whole work. And, in fact, in the order observed by Moses, the work of each day appears as part of a magnificent picture in which all the things of this visible world find their place. The first half of the narrative describes the formation and placing of the chief components of the Cosmos, which lay latent in the fluid chaotic mass. They are disposed in concentric spheres, beginning with the outermost: light, the atmosphere, and the solid earth. Then follows, in the second half, the adorning and filling in of this framework: the heavenly bodies shed their light on it; living things appear, beginning with the lowest and closing with man. The production of plants forms the transition between the work of formation and the work of ornamentation. The division of the six days’ work into the work of separation during the first three days, and the work of ornamentation during the three last days, has been in favour since the Middle Ages.
The general plan of the Cosmos centres in the idea that the world is a dwelling-place for man. The Divine Architect first produces the raw material in an obscure and formless mass; He afterwards creates light, and spans the roof of the house, and gives it a solid floor; here He places the vegetable kingdom as an ornament and as a storehouse for the food of living creatures; then an inexhaustible supply of light is shed abroad; next come the beings destined for the service of man, having their abode in the waters and in the air; and lastly, the animals which dwell in the same house as man himself. The beauty of a work of art combined with the usefulness of a dwelling-place—such is the character of the Cosmos.
III. The narrative is a genetic explanation of the work of creation—that is, an enumeration of its parts in the order in which they necessarily or naturally succeeded one another. Whether we consider the work of the six days as six separate creations or as six tableaux of one instantaneous creative act, the order of nature must be observed. If God made things successively, He could not make them otherwise than in the order which their nature requires; if He made them in one moment of time, the Sacred Writer had no other foundation for a successive narrative than this same order of nature. The more we study the separate parts of the Divine work, the better we see how they fit into each other, and how exactly the narrative gives to each the place it holds in nature.
IV. The best Catholic authorities on the present question are so persuaded that the intention of the writer of Genesis was to give a genetic account of the architectonic order of the world, that they deem it admissible that the whole act of creation occupied only one instant of time, and that the division of it into six days is but a way of presenting to the reader “the order according to the connection of causes” rather than the order “according to the intervals of time” (St. Aug., De Gen. ad Lit., 1. v.). Such is the opinion of St. Augustine, and St. Thomas thinks it highly probable (I., q. 66, a. 1). Without examining what may be said for or against it, we may notice that St. Augustine has, until lately, found few followers. See Reusch, The Bible and Nature; Bp. Clifford, Dublin Review, April, 1883; Dr. Molloy, Geology and Revelation; Zahm, Bible, Science, and Faith, chap. iv.
V. It is quite possible and even probable that the Mosaic narrative is of a highly poetical character. In language simple and true, it puts before the reader a vivid and sublime picture of the artistic work of the Creator. Then according to Heb. 11:3, its aim is to show how the component parts of the cosmos were brought by the Creator from darkness to light, i.e. made visible. This poetical conception finds expression in the “evening and morning” of which the days are composed. The Hebrew words for evening and morning are etymologically equivalent to confusio and apertio. At the very beginning of the narrative the opposition between darkness and light appears, and seems to point out that in all other works the same idea is adhered to. Again, the writer’s intention of making the Creation week the model of the human week may have led him to give to the periods of the former the same number and name as those borne by the periods of the latter. Lastly, it is possible that the writer received his inspiration by means of a prophetic vision, in which the several phases of Creation were pictured before his mind. If so, his narrative would naturally be of a poetical character: the divisions he adopts and the name of days which he applies to them may be no more than a means of conveying to the reader the number and splendour of the visions of his mind. These and similar considerations, quite independently of natural science, have induced the theologians of all times to allow a very free interpretation of the six days’ duration. See Dublin Review, April, 1883.
VI. Natural Science has also undertaken to give an account of the origin of things. The interest which Theology takes in this natural history of Creation is purely apologetic, and consequently does not come within our province.
Elaborate attempts have been made to reconcile the two accounts. Veith and Bosizio held that the six days were days of twenty-four hours; the destructions of flora and fauna, the remains of which are now found in the crust of the earth, are placed by them in the times between Adam and the Flood. Buckland, Wiseman, Westermaier, Vosen, and Molloy admit the destruction of a world before the Hexahemeron. Others, as Pianciani, Hettinger, Holzammer, and Reusch, place the catastrophes within the six days of creation, but take the “days” to be long periods. Reusch, however, in the third edition of his work, acknowledges the impossibility of thus establishing a harmony between natural and supernatural cosmogony, because natural science admits the simultaneous origin of plants and animals, and their continued simultaneous existence. Bishop Clifford and other Catholic writers cut the knot by considering the so-called Mosaic cosmogony, not as a narrative, but as a hymn in which various portions of creation are commemorated on the days of the week. See the Dublin Review, l.c. On this question, see also Proteus and Amadeus, letter viii.
It is best, however, to state frankly that it is not the object of Revelation to teach natural science. In the words of St. Augustine (quoted by Leo XIII., in the Encyc. Providentissimus Deus), “The Holy Ghost, speaking through the Sacred Writers, did not wish to teach men matters which in no way concerned their salvation” (De Gen. ad Litt., II. ix. 20). St. Jerome, too, declares that many things are related in Scripture according to the opinions prevalent at the time, and not according to actual fact (In Jerem. Proph. xxviii.). And St. Thomas distinctly states that Moses suited his narrative to the capacity of his readers, and therefore followed what seemed to be true (I q. 70, a. I). See supra, p. 56. Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament, 3 Lect.
I. The work of the six days, the Hexahemeron, lies between the creation of the chaos, or first creation, and the commencement of the regular government of the world by God. It is the work of formation, or second creation described as “the making of the world out of formless matter” (κτίζειν τὸν κόσμον ἐξ ὑλῆς ἀμόρφου, Wisd. 11:18), and alluded to by St. Paul: “By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God: that from invisible things visible things might be made” (πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι Θεου, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐν φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι, Heb. 11:3). In this sense the Hexahemeron is properly a “Cosmogony,” in the ancient meaning of the word, viz. the history of the formation and ornamentation of this visible universe, of which the earth is the centre and man the king. It is not a cosmogony in the modern sense, because it does not deal with the formation and ornamentation of other worlds than ours; nor a Geogony, because it deals only with the external aspect of the earth.
II. The object of the Mosaic narrative being to represent the Cosmos as a Divine work of art,—made not with hands, but by the Word of God, Who is the expression and image of the Divine Power and Wisdom,—we must expect to find the particular productions represented as parts devised for the perfection of the whole work. And, in fact, in the order observed by Moses, the work of each day appears as part of a magnificent picture in which all the things of this visible world find their place. The first half of the narrative describes the formation and placing of the chief components of the Cosmos, which lay latent in the fluid chaotic mass. They are disposed in concentric spheres, beginning with the outermost: light, the atmosphere, and the solid earth. Then follows, in the second half, the adorning and filling in of this framework: the heavenly bodies shed their light on it; living things appear, beginning with the lowest and closing with man. The production of plants forms the transition between the work of formation and the work of ornamentation. The division of the six days’ work into the work of separation during the first three days, and the work of ornamentation during the three last days, has been in favour since the Middle Ages.
The general plan of the Cosmos centres in the idea that the world is a dwelling-place for man. The Divine Architect first produces the raw material in an obscure and formless mass; He afterwards creates light, and spans the roof of the house, and gives it a solid floor; here He places the vegetable kingdom as an ornament and as a storehouse for the food of living creatures; then an inexhaustible supply of light is shed abroad; next come the beings destined for the service of man, having their abode in the waters and in the air; and lastly, the animals which dwell in the same house as man himself. The beauty of a work of art combined with the usefulness of a dwelling-place—such is the character of the Cosmos.
III. The narrative is a genetic explanation of the work of creation—that is, an enumeration of its parts in the order in which they necessarily or naturally succeeded one another. Whether we consider the work of the six days as six separate creations or as six tableaux of one instantaneous creative act, the order of nature must be observed. If God made things successively, He could not make them otherwise than in the order which their nature requires; if He made them in one moment of time, the Sacred Writer had no other foundation for a successive narrative than this same order of nature. The more we study the separate parts of the Divine work, the better we see how they fit into each other, and how exactly the narrative gives to each the place it holds in nature.
IV. The best Catholic authorities on the present question are so persuaded that the intention of the writer of Genesis was to give a genetic account of the architectonic order of the world, that they deem it admissible that the whole act of creation occupied only one instant of time, and that the division of it into six days is but a way of presenting to the reader “the order according to the connection of causes” rather than the order “according to the intervals of time” (St. Aug., De Gen. ad Lit., 1. v.). Such is the opinion of St. Augustine, and St. Thomas thinks it highly probable (I., q. 66, a. 1). Without examining what may be said for or against it, we may notice that St. Augustine has, until lately, found few followers. See Reusch, The Bible and Nature; Bp. Clifford, Dublin Review, April, 1883; Dr. Molloy, Geology and Revelation; Zahm, Bible, Science, and Faith, chap. iv.
V. It is quite possible and even probable that the Mosaic narrative is of a highly poetical character. In language simple and true, it puts before the reader a vivid and sublime picture of the artistic work of the Creator. Then according to Heb. 11:3, its aim is to show how the component parts of the cosmos were brought by the Creator from darkness to light, i.e. made visible. This poetical conception finds expression in the “evening and morning” of which the days are composed. The Hebrew words for evening and morning are etymologically equivalent to confusio and apertio. At the very beginning of the narrative the opposition between darkness and light appears, and seems to point out that in all other works the same idea is adhered to. Again, the writer’s intention of making the Creation week the model of the human week may have led him to give to the periods of the former the same number and name as those borne by the periods of the latter. Lastly, it is possible that the writer received his inspiration by means of a prophetic vision, in which the several phases of Creation were pictured before his mind. If so, his narrative would naturally be of a poetical character: the divisions he adopts and the name of days which he applies to them may be no more than a means of conveying to the reader the number and splendour of the visions of his mind. These and similar considerations, quite independently of natural science, have induced the theologians of all times to allow a very free interpretation of the six days’ duration. See Dublin Review, April, 1883.
VI. Natural Science has also undertaken to give an account of the origin of things. The interest which Theology takes in this natural history of Creation is purely apologetic, and consequently does not come within our province.
Elaborate attempts have been made to reconcile the two accounts. Veith and Bosizio held that the six days were days of twenty-four hours; the destructions of flora and fauna, the remains of which are now found in the crust of the earth, are placed by them in the times between Adam and the Flood. Buckland, Wiseman, Westermaier, Vosen, and Molloy admit the destruction of a world before the Hexahemeron. Others, as Pianciani, Hettinger, Holzammer, and Reusch, place the catastrophes within the six days of creation, but take the “days” to be long periods. Reusch, however, in the third edition of his work, acknowledges the impossibility of thus establishing a harmony between natural and supernatural cosmogony, because natural science admits the simultaneous origin of plants and animals, and their continued simultaneous existence. Bishop Clifford and other Catholic writers cut the knot by considering the so-called Mosaic cosmogony, not as a narrative, but as a hymn in which various portions of creation are commemorated on the days of the week. See the Dublin Review, l.c. On this question, see also Proteus and Amadeus, letter viii.
It is best, however, to state frankly that it is not the object of Revelation to teach natural science. In the words of St. Augustine (quoted by Leo XIII., in the Encyc. Providentissimus Deus), “The Holy Ghost, speaking through the Sacred Writers, did not wish to teach men matters which in no way concerned their salvation” (De Gen. ad Litt., II. ix. 20). St. Jerome, too, declares that many things are related in Scripture according to the opinions prevalent at the time, and not according to actual fact (In Jerem. Proph. xxviii.). And St. Thomas distinctly states that Moses suited his narrative to the capacity of his readers, and therefore followed what seemed to be true (I q. 70, a. I). See supra, p. 56. Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament, 3 Lect.
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