lower atmosphere, and treated by Aristotle and others as a "fifth element" (a quintessence), of
118 Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis story-telling, which requires the story teller's tale to have a beginning, a middle and an end?
Or did it say there should be lights in these times, meaning the times which human beings measure by marking intervals of space in the movement of a body? There would be none of these times, you see, if there were no movement of bodies, and times so measured are the ones people are most immediately aware of. Ifwe allow this, the question arises whether, apart from the movement of material bodies, there can be time in the movements of an immaterial creature such as the soul is, or the mind itself. This certainly experiences movement in its thoughts, and in this movement there is something that comes first, and some thing that comes next, and this cannot be understood without some interval of time. lfwe accept this, then it can be readily understood that there was time even before heaven and earth, if the angels were made before heaven and earth because that means there was already a creature which would move time along by immaterial movements, and so we rightly understand that time also existed with it, as it does in the soul, which has grown accustomed through the senses of the body to bodily movements. But perhaps it is not there in the supreme princi palities and powers.
But however this may be—it is, after all, a most abstruse matter, quite impen etrable to human guesswork—this assuredly has to be accepted in faith, even if it exceeds our habits of thought, that everything created has a beginning and that time itself is something created, and thus itself also has a beginning, and is not co-eternal with the creator.
9. It can also be reasonably supposed that "heaven and earth" are put here for the whole of creation, so that both this visible firmament of ether13 is called heaven, and so too is that invisible creation of the higher powers; and again that "earth" means the whole lower part of the universe, together with the animals that occupy it. Or else, is "heaven" what the whole sublime and invisible creation is called, while "earth" means the whole visible world, so that in this way too what is said here, ln the beginning God made heaven and earth, can be understood to include the whole of creation? May one suggest, perhaps, that it is not inappropriate for everything visible to be called "earth" in comparison with the invisible creation, so that this alone is given the name of "heaven," since the soul too, which is invisible, was called earth when it started being swollen with love of visible things, and preening itself on their acquisition, as it is written, What have earth and ashes to be proud of? (Sir 10:9).
13. The Greek aither, originally just a poetic word for air, but later distinguished from the air of the lower atmosphere, and treated by Aristotle and others as a "fifth element" (a quintessence), of which the firmament and the heavenly bodies were made, it being assumed they could not be composed ofany or all of the four terrestrial elements, earth, water, fire and air, because they do not appear to behave like any of these.