Where Augustine and the pagan opponents he has in mind took their astronomy from is really
196 The Literal Meaning of Genesis rotate all the faster;9 and because it has to experience this every day it is thus, so they tell us, that each single revolution of the heaven unrolls a single day, it ought to have generated greater heat from the more rapidly spinning heaven.
Indubitably, therefore, what makes it cold is the nearness of those waters set in place above the heavens, which these people refuse to believe who argue in the way I have summarized about the movement of the sky and the constella tions. It is by drawing such inferences that some of our people meet those who refuse to believe there are any waters above the heavens and still insist on the coldness of that star whose circuit is nearest to the highest heaven, thereby forcing them to conclude that the substance of water is held up there not in the fine form of vapor, but in the solid form of ice. ln whatever form, however, waters may be there, and of whatever kind, let us have no doubts at all that that is where they are; the authority of this text of scripture, surely, overrides anything that human ingenuity is capable of thinking up.
How the persons of the Trinity are indicated in the text
6, 10. But it has been remarked by some people—and it is a good point which I for my part do not think should be ignored—that after God had said, Let a solid structure be made in the midst of the waters, and let it be a division between water and water, it did not seem sufficient to continue. And thus it was made, without also adding, And God made a solid structure; and God divided between the water which was above the solid structure, and between the water which was below the solid structure (Gn 1 :7). Now the way they understand it is to say that the person of the Father was indicated by the text, And God said: Let a solid structure be made in the midst of the waters, and let it be a division between water and water; and thus it was made; and then, so that the Son may be under stood to have done what the Father said, so that it should actually be made, they reckon that it went on to say, And God made a solid structure, and God divided, etc.
1 1 . But when we read first, And thus it was made,]0 by whom are we to under stand that it was made? lf by the Son, what need was there to go on to say, And God made and the rest? But if we are to understand the words And thus it was
9. Like a small cogwheel being spun round by a bigger one rotating in the opposite direction? Where Augustine and the pagan opponents he has in mind took their astronomy from is really rather obscure; it seems to bear little or no resemblance to the sophisticated Ptolemaic astronomy that was accepted by the learned ancient world up to the time of Copernicus. 10. Augustine's text, following the Greek Septuagint, puts the refrain "And thus it was made" ("And it was so" in the usual translation) before the longer statement, "And God made" etc. Throughout this creation narrative the Septuagint text is more uniformly consistent than the Hebrew text from which our modern versions (as also the Latin Vulgate of Saint Jerome) are taken.