starting ofthe day and the lesser lampfor the starting ofthe night: it is really as if
Book 1 53
22. As for its saying. And God made the two lamps, the greater lampfor the starting of the day and the lesser lampfor the starting of the night: it is really as if it said "for the empire of the day and for the empire of the night."16 The sun, you see, does notjust start the day, and then not also complete and finish it, while as for the moon, it sometimes comes out to us at midnight or at the end of the night. So if those nights on which it does this are not started by it, how was it made for the starting of the night? But ifby "starting" you understand "being first," and by "being first" understand "being the emperor," then it is clear that the sun exer cises imperial authority throughout the day, while the moon does so throughout the night, because even ifthe other constellations also appear then, she nonethe less surpasses them all with her brilliance, and therefore is very rightly said to be their empress.
23. As for its saying, And let them divide between day and night: here too they can cast a slur and say, "How had God already divided earlier on between day and night, if this is done by the heavenly bodies only now on the fourth day?" So therefore this is how it says here, Let them divide between day and night: it' s as if it said, "Let them so divide day and night between themselves that the day is given to the sun, the night to the moon and the other constellations." These two periods had already been divided, but not yet between heavenly bodies. So from now on there would be certainty about the number ofheavenly bodies, and about which would appear to human beings through the day and which through the night.
Quibbles about the work of thefifth day
1 5, 24. And God said: Let the waters throw up reptiles oflive souls andflying thingsflying over the earth under the solid structure ofheaven. And thus it was made. And God made the great whales and every soul ofanimals and crawling things which the waters threw up, according to the kind ofeach, and everyflying winged kind, according to the kind ofeach. And God saw that they were good; and God blessed them saying: lncrease and multiply andfill the waters of the sea; and letflying things multiply upon the earth. And there was made evening and there was made morning, afifth day (Gn 1 :20-23). The fault-finding they go
16. As Augustine will explain in his later and greater work. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 11,25,32, when dealing with the fourth day of creation, this curious problem arose from the translators of the old Latin versions being both excessively literal in their rendering of the Greek Septuagint and not too well versed in that language. The Greek word arche means both
"beginning" and "rule"; so, as the versions we are familiar with put it, God made the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. Where, the reader may ask, does "empire" come in? Well, the Latin word for "beginning" isprincipium, meaning "being first"; and from this comes the wordprinceps (English, "prince"), the number one person in the state; and this was the title of the post-Augustan Roman Emperors, who exercised aprincipatus, an imperial authority.