account any element ofthis world was overlooked, it being generally agreed that
218 The Literal Meaning of Genesis air at the summit ofOlympus is said to be so rarified that it is never overcast with clouds, nor disturbed by winds, nor able to hold up birds in flight or support any human mountain climbers with the breath of this denser atmosphere which they have grown accustomed to at these lower levels. But for all that, it is air still, which means it has the same quality ofdiffusing itself as water does, and for this reason it too may be supposed to have turned into the humid nature of the latter at the time of the flood. It cannot, l mean, be supposed that it took over any of the space of the starry heaven, when the water had topped all the mountains, even the highest.
Various opinions about the changing of the elements into one another; the element, air, is not omitted in the creation narrative
3. 4. Yet as a matter of fact there is no little argument going on, among those who have solemnly wasted their leisure hours looking into these matters, about the conversion of the elements into one another. Some of these scientists say, you see, that they can all be changed and converted into each other, while others roundly assert that there is something altogether proper to each one of the elements which cannot in any way at all be converted into the quality of any other element. We shall discuss this point, maybe, if the Lord so wishes, more thoroughly in its proper place.6 Meanwhile, as far as our present topic is concerned, I have thought it shouldjust be mentioned, to help us understand how the order of things was preserved, by which it was right to tell of the aquatic animals being created before the terrestrial ones.
5. Nor must the idea be entertained for a moment that in this scriptural account any element of this world was overlooked, it being generally agreed that it consists of that well-known four, because it does seem as if sky and water and earth are mentioned in it, while it keeps silent about air.7 But our scriptures in fact are in the habit of either referring to the cosmos by the name of heaven and earth, or of sometimes also adding sea. And so air is to be understood as belonging either to heaven, if there are any entirely calm and tranquil regions in its higher spheres, or to earth on account of this turbulent and murky level which is rendered more dense by the earth's damp exhalations—though it too is often enough referred to as heaven or sky. And that is why the text here does not run, "Let the waters produce reptiles of live souls, and let the air produce flying things flying over the earth," but states that each of these two kinds of animated beings is the product of the waters. So the waters in either form, whether as a
6. See below, 7,9 and 1 0, 1 5, where he does talk of one element changing into another. But he may have in mind here a place where he discusses the point more extensively. 7. Sky, of course, was never one of the four traditional elements; but it has already been established, in Book 11,3,6, that the upper sky or heaven, where the sun and moon and stars were placed on the fourth day, consists of the fourth element, fire.