14. As indeed it does in the Jewish way of reckoning!
Book I 49 called," since the deeper we plunge into the scriptures and get used to them, the more familiar we become with their style and manner of speaking.13
Manichee slur on the order of evening and morning
10, 16. And there was made evening and there was made morning, one day (Gn 1:5). Here too the Manichees bring forward one of their slurs, thinking that this was said as though the day began from the evening.14 They do not under stand how the activity ofmaking the light and dividing between the light and the darkness and calling the light day and the darkness night—so they do not under stand how this whole activity belonged to the day; while it was after this activity, as at the close of the day, that evening was made. But because the night also belongs to its day, it doesn't say that one day has been completed until the night also has, when morning is made. Thus from then on the remaining days are reck oned from morning to morning. For now, when morning has been made and one day has been completed, the activity begins which follows from the morning which has already been made, and after that activity there is made evening, then morning, and another day passes; and in the same way the remaining days also pass from then on.
Difference between the water above and the water below thefirmament
11, 17. And God said. Let a solid structure be made in the midst of the water, and let it be a division between water and water; and thus it was made. And God made a solid structure, and divided between the water which is above the solid structure and between the water which is below the solid structure. And God called the solid structure heaven. And God saw that it was good (Gn 1 :6-8). I do not remember the Manichees finding any fault at all with this. However, that the waters were divided so that some would be above the solid structure, others below it, means in my opinion (since we have said that the basic material was given the name of water) that by the solid structure of heaven the basic bodily material of visible things was separated from the basic non-bodily material of things invisible. While the sky or heaven, I mean, is the most beautiful of all bodies, every invisible creature surpasses even the sky in beauty; and that perhaps is why the invisible waters are said to be above the sky, overtopping the heavens not by their local situation but by the greater worth of their nature—as a
13.1 have switched around this sentence, beginning "But later on" and the one before it, beginning "Thus we for example." 1t seems clear to me that they have somehow or other ended up the wrong way around in the text. 14. As indeed it does in the Jewish way of reckoning!