the baptism of Jesus ( Mk 1 : 1 1 ). at his transfiguration (Mk 9:7), and when he was answered by
308 The Literal Meaning of Genesis for human beings with bodies? Because ifanybody should wish to take this food also in a figurative sense, they would be departing from the proper literal meaning of what actually happened, which in narratives of this kind is the first thing that has to be established with every possible care.
How could God address people on the sixth day who did not yet exist as such ?
8, 13. "So how," you may say, "was he talking to beings who could not yet either hear or understand, because they were not even there in a form capable ofcatching his words?" I could reply that God addressed them in the same way as Christ addressed us when we were not yet born and only due to to arrive on the scene so long in the future—and not only us but also all those who are going to be born after us. It was to all, I mean, whom he knew would be his in the future that he said: Behold, lam with you up to the very end oftime (Mt 28:20). In the way the prophet was known to God, who said to him: Before lformed you in the womb 1 knew you (Jer 1 :5), in the way Levi was tithed while he was in the loins ofAbraham,7 so why not Abraham himselftoo like that in Adam, and Adam himself in the first works of the universe when God created all things simultaneously?
But the words of the Lord, spoken by his actual mouth, and God's words, spoken through the mouths of prophets, are time-bound, bodily utterances, and with all their syllables take up and use up corresponding intervals of time. The case was very different, though, when God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness; and let him have authority over thefishes of the sea and theflying things ofheaven and all cattle and all the earth and all crawling things which crawl over the earth; and: lncrease and multiply andfill the earth and lord it over it, and have authority over the fishes of the sea and the flying things of heaven and all cattle and all the earth and all crawling things which crawl over the earth; and: Behold, l have given you every seed-bearingfodder seeding seed which is over all the earth, and every fruit tree which has in it fruit of seed-bearing seed, which shall beforyouforfood (Gn 1 :26.28-29). These words of his were uttered before any sound waves in the air, before any voices from lips or clouds,8 uttered in that supreme Wisdom of his, through whom all things were made, uttered, not as if to be dinned into human ears, but to insert in things already made the causes of things still to be made.
With them he was making by his almighty power things still in the future, and was establishing as it were in the seed or root of all times the man still to be
7. See Heb 7:9-10. 8. The allusion here is to God's words heard at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai (Ex 20), or at the baptism of Jesus ( Mk 1 : 1 1 ). at his transfiguration (Mk 9:7), and when he was answered by his Father with a voice from heaven (Jn 12:28).