The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK EIGHT 33 simply a place, that is, a land,> where an earthly man would live.
2. The narrative in these books is not written in a literary style proper to allegory, as in the Canticle of Canticles, but from beginning to end in a style proper to history, as in the Books of Kings and the other works of that type. But since those historical books contain matters familiar to us from common human experience, they are easily and readily taken in a literal sense at the first reading, so that the meaning of the historical events in relation to the future may also be subsequently drawn from them.
But in Genesis, since there are matters beyond the ken of readers who focus their gaze on the familiar course of nature, they are unwilling to have these matters taken in the literal sense but prefer to understand them in a figurative sense. Accordingly, they assume that history, that is, the literal narrative of events that happened, begins at the point where Adam and Eve, dismissed from Paradise, were joined in sexual union and begot children. Do they think that all the subsequent events of the narrative are parallel to our human experience, such as the great number of years that Adam and Eve lived, the translation of Enoch, conception in the case of an old and sterile woman, and so forth?®
3. But there is a difference, they say, between a narration of wondrous deeds and a narration of the making of creatures. In the former case the very unfamiliar character of the deeds points to a distinction between the ordinary works of nature and miracles or marvels, as they are called, whereas in the latter case the creation of natures is presented.
In answer to this, I say that the creation of natures narrated here is something unfamiliar, because it is the creation of things for the first time. For what is so unique and unparalleled in the constitution of the things of the world as the world itself? Surely we are not to believe that God did not make the world because He does not make worlds today, or that He did not make the sun because He does not make suns today. And this response should be given not just to those who question the creation of Paradise but also to those who question the creation of man. But