dicitur, quando dicimus orbem terrarum et orbem terrae; which, as this literal translation will
Book 111
Genesis 1:20-31: The fifth and sixth days of creation
Why the living creatures of the waters and the air were produced before those of the dry land l, 1. And God said: Let the waters produce reptiles of live souls andflying things over the earth along the solid structure ofheaven. And it was made thus. And God made the great whales and every animal of reptiles which the waters produced according to their kind, and every wingedflying thing according to kind. And God blessed them, saying: lncrease and multiply andfill the waters in the sea; and let flying things multiply over the earth. And there was made evening and there was made morning, afifth day (Gn 1 :20-23). 1 It is now in the lower section of the cosmos that those things are being made which can move themselves with the spirit of life, and first the ones in the water, which is the element nearest in its quality to air. The fact is, the air borders so closely on that heaven in which the luminaries are placed that it too has received the name of "heaven"; I am not sure, though, whether it can also be called "the solid struc ture."
However, the plural, "heavens," is used with reference to one and the same thing as is called a single heaven. While this book, you see, mentions heaven, in the singular, as dividing between the waters which are above and those that are below, it says in that psalm, on the other hand, And let the waters which are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord (Ps 148:4-5). And if we are right in understanding the "heavens of the heavens" to mean the starry over the airy heavens, as the higher over the lower, and ifwe also find these in the same psalm, where it says, Praise him, heavens of the heavens (Ps 148:4), then it is clear enough that this air is not only called heaven, but also heavens.2
1 . 1t is abundantly evident from this passage that Augustine was following a different text from the one he had used in his Unfinished Commentary on Genesis. 2. Here he adds, sicut dicuntur et lerrae. nee aliud significatur quam illa quae singulariter terra dicitur, quando dicimus orbem terrarum et orbem terrae; which, as this literal translation will show, is a Latin idiom that has no corresponding usage in English: "as one can also talk about
'earths,' and nothing else is meant but what is called 'earth' in the singular, when we talk of the globe of the earths and the globe of the earth."