10. The week of the World-Ages
TRANSLATION
this prophecy is attested both by the account of men of old and by the events of our own time.
Therefore, pondering the whole of the Prophet's testimony, we have explained it as much as our wit can devise, for we realized that this was unknown to many readers, and that they were much exercised by this special type of week. Those who think the Hebrews used this type of year are mistaken, for otherwise the whole sequence of the Old Testament would be disordered [uacillat], nor would the age of anything be understood to be as great as it is written, but would be reduced to the course of the Moon.103 Indeed, we read that the ancient Greeks, thinking that the year was 354 days long, according to the course of the Moon, always intercalated 90 days, distributed into three months of 30 days, in the eighth year. These 90 days result when the quarter-day, plus the 11 days of the epacts, are multiplied by eight.104 But the Jews were never accustomed to insert a thirteenth lunar month (which we call embolismic) except in the second or third year, as the famous rule for calculating the fourteenth Moon of Easter plainly proves.105
It should be noted that [Julius] Africanus thinks that the sequence of weeks, which we, following Eusebius' chronicle, have brought down to the seventeenth or eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar ^ the year in which we believe the Lord su¡ered ^ is complete in the ¢fteenth year of that emperor. /310/ Beginning where we do, he thinks that by the 15th year of the said emperor ^ the year in which he thinks that Christ su¡ered
^ there had been 115 years of Persian rule, 300 of Macedonian rule, and 60 of Roman. The careful reader should choose [the version] he thinks preferable.106
10. THE WEEK OF THE WORLD-AGES107
The eighth kind of week, unvarying and unique in that it does not come back again to its beginning, is composed of the unstable Ages of this
103 Cf. Letter to Plegwin 11.
104 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.13.8^10 (62.23^63.10).
105 Cf. Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, Epistola ad Leonem papam 2, ed. Krusch, Studien I, 248^249.
106 Cf. Jerome, In Danielem 3.9.24, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL (1964):867.190^195. But note that Jerome's quotation from Africanus accords 230 years to the Persians; cf. Eusebius, Demonstratio euangeliorum 7.2 (trans. Jerome, PG 10.81).
107 On the main sources for Bede's conception of the Six World-Ages, see Commentary on ch. 66.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
world, and follows in all respects the pattern of the ¢rst week. For on the ¢rst day, light was created, and in the First Age man was placed in the beauties of paradise. When light was divided from darkness, evening was made, and evil came about when the sons of God were separated from [their] seed. Not long after, when the giants were born, the whole earth was corrupted; at that point the Creator, regretting that He had made man, determined to destroy the world by a £ood.
On the second day, the ¢rmament was suspended in the midst of the waters; in the Second Age, the Ark was borne up in the midst of the waters, at once carried aloft on the fountain of the deep, and deluged by the cataracts of heaven. The evening of this day was when the sons of Adam, making their way from the east, conspired to build the tower of vainglory; they were punished by the division of languages, and scattered from one another.
On the third day, when the waters were gathered together, dry land appeared, adorned with woods and grasses; and in the Third Age, when the nations were rooted in the worship of demons, Abraham the patriarch, leaving his people and his homeland, was made fruitful in the seed of the saints. The evening came when /311/ the Hebrew people, beset by wicked men, acted against the will of God and demanded a king of their own, who, as soon as he was set upon the throne, butchered the priests of the Lord and the Prophets. Afterwards, he and all his clan perished by the sword of foreigners.
On the fourth day the heaven was adorned with lights; in the Fourth Age this people, renowned for its heavenly faith and glorying in the rule of David and Solomon, won fame throughout the whole world for the splendour of its most holy Temple. But it too had its evening: because sin increased, that realm was shattered by the Chaldeans, the Temple demolished and the whole nation carried o¡ to Babylon.
On the ¢fth day the ¢shes and birds came forth from the water; the former remained in their native waves, while the latter £ew over air and land. In the Fifth Age the people of Israel multiplied in Chaldea; some of them sought out Jerusalem, £edged in the plumage of heavenly yearnings, and others abode amongst the rivers of Babylon, lacking all powers of £ight. The evening arrived when, with the Saviour's advent imminent, the Jewish people was made tributary to the Romans because of the magnitude of their wicked deeds, and moreover was oppressed by foreign-born kings.
On the sixth day the earth was ¢lled with its living creatures, and the