2. Thus on the first three chapters of Genesis.
Extract from Revisions (11, 24)
During the same period1 1 wrote twelve books on Genesis, from the beginning until Adam was turned out of paradise and a flaming sword was put there, to guard the way to the tree of life.2 But when eleven books were completed up to this point, I added the twelfth, in which paradise was more thoroughly discussed. The title of these books is The Literal Meaning ofGenesis; that is, not the alle gorical meanings of the text, but the proper assessment of what actually happened. It is a work in which more questions were asked than answers found; and of those that were found only a few were assured, while the rest were so stated as still to require further investigation. l began these books after those on the Trinity, but finished them sooner. So l have mentioned them here, in the order in which I began these works.
In the fifth book (19,38), and anywhere else in these books that l put about the seed, to which thepromises had been made, which was disposed through angels in the hand of the mediator (Gal 3; 19): that is not what the apostle has, nor the more reliable manuscripts which l examined later, especially the Greek ones. It was about the law, you see, that this was said, which many Latin manuscripts, in a mistaken translation, present as said about the seed. What l said in the sixth book (27,38; 28,39), that "Adam lost by sin the image of God according to which he was made," is not to be taken as meaning that no image at all remained in him, but that it was so misshapen as to stand in need of reshaping. In the twelfth (33,62-63), on the subject of hell, I think I should just have asserted that it is under the earth, rather than giving reasons why it should be believed or be said to be under the earth, as though it were not really so. This work begins, "All divine scripture is twofold."
1 . As he wrote a small book Holy Virginity, which is to say about 400. 2. Thus on the first three chapters of Genesis.