1. IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, THE HISTORY OF CREATION AS GIVEN BY MOSES

GENESIS CHAPTER I

According to the versions of Schmidius and Castellio.

Verses [are in parentheses after the quote]

1. ¹ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

(1) Namely, in the beginning of time, when as yet there was no time.

And the earth was waste and void, (2) or, according to the interpretation of Castellio, was inert and unformed; that is, was an unordered mass, called by the Ancients, Chaos. ¹

And darkness was upon the faces of the abyss, or, as Castellio renders it, the deep was overspread with darkness.

The universe without atmospheres is not a universe but a void, an abyss, and a deep, where is mere darkness. For it is the atmospheres, and especially the ethereal atmospheres, that transmit the solar rays, that is, light; wherefore, without these atmospheres there is a vacuity, a void, or, nothing natural; and hence mere darkness.

And the spirit of God moved upon the faces of the waters, or, according to Castellio, moved to and fro over the waters.

By the Divine Spirit is meant the ether, as may be evident from numerous passages in the Sacred Scripture. ²

When these ethers had been produced, and were incumbent upon the earth, that is, upon its waters which they moved to and fro, or whose surface they reduced to a level by their pressure,

God said, Let there be light; and there was light, (3) or, as Castellio has it, and light existed.

By this is signified that although the sun existed as the first creation of all, yet it was without light, because without atmospheres, which are the supports and vehicles of its rays; but as soon as atmospheres surrounded the earth, which was at first purely aqueous, that is, was fluid consisting of the elements of inert nature, then it began to be illumined, or to be suffused with light.

And when God saw the light that it was good, God distinguished between the light and the darkness, or, He divided the light from, the darkness. (4)

This was done when the aqueous globe — now become a terraqueous globe, or an earth with its ether, or, now encompassed by the ethereal vortex — began to rotate on its axis; for then, as is well known, darkness and light succeeded each other. Wherefore, by this division of light from darkness, is signified that an axillary motion was impressed on the earth. (Concerning the days of creation, see The Word Explained 1445.)

And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (5) Before darkness came into existence by means of the circumvolution of the globe, no light could be predicated of the latter; and before night, no day. For nothing is known and distinguished except from its opposites or contraries. For this reason day is said to come into existence only after darkness or night has first been induced, together with the distinctions of light and shade. It commences, therefore, from the darkness of the deep, and then from light.

But by Day here, and in the following verses of this chapter, is not meant one ordinary day, but the whole space of that time, or that whole time of creation during which the sun — the globe of the future earth — and also the ethereal atmospheres, came into existence. For in the Sacred Scriptures whole periods of time are frequently called a day, as will be seen even more clearly from what follows.

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9. There was, then, a time like no time, when the pregnant sun carried in his womb the gigantic brood of his own universe, and when, being delivered, he emitted them into the regions of air; for if they were derived from the sun, as a parent, it is manifest that they must have burst forth from his fruitful womb.

(Concerning the great egg of the universe, or chaos, when the pregnant sun gave birth to the world with its planets.)

Nevertheless, it was impossible that he could carry in his burning focus, and afterwards bring forth, such heavy and inert productions, and therefore such burdens must have been the ultimate effects of his exhalation, and of the forces thence flowing and efficient. Hence it follows, that the sun was primitively overspread with effluvia excited and hatched by his real irradiation, and flowing together in abundance and from every direction to him, as to an asylum and only harbor of rest; and that from those fluids, condensed in process of time, there existed a surrounding nebulous expanse, or a mass like the white of an egg, which, with the sun included in it, would resemble the GREAT EGG OF THE UNIVERSE; also that the surface of this egg could at length derive a crust, or a kind of shell, in consequence of the rays being intercepted, and the apertures shut up; and this crust, the sun, when the time of parturition was at hand, by his inward heat and agitation would burst and thereby hatch a numerous offspring, equal in number to the globes visible in his universe, which still look up to him as a parent. ¹

[2] Something similar to this appears to take place both in the great and smaller subjects within the sphere of his world and of its three kingdoms on the earth, whether they be produced from a womb, from seed, or from an egg, for they are all only types effigied according to the idea of the greatest, and in themselves, although in a small effigy, resemble and emulate a kind of universe. ¹

(Confirmation of the chaos existing around the sun.)

for occasionally new stars have been seen, shining exceedingly with a ruddy (rutile) effulgence, and presently by degrees growing obscure, yet afterwards either returning to their former splendor, or altogether vanishing; which is a sure proof that those stars, in consequence of a conflux of parts excited by their exhalation, have been covered over with a similar crust, which would either be dissipated, or would altogether hide them, so as to withdraw them from our view. Besides, if we compare the immense magnitude of the sun with the planetary bodies which revolve around him, we may easily be instructed, by a slight calculation, that such a surrounding crust would have sufficed for the production of so many and such large bodies. This egg was the chaos so famous in old time and at this day, consisting, as is supposed, of the accumulated elements of all things, which afterwards being arranged into the most beautiful order, produced our world.

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