FIRST OBJECTION

The universal and strongest objection is drawn from the Hebrew meaning of the word dies. The Hebrew expression yom, which is translated by day, also signifies, it is said, any length of time, an indeterminate period.

REPLY

1. The word yom does indeed express, along with the idea of day, that of epoch, but only sometimes. Ordinarily it has the same meaning in Hebrew as the word dies in Latin and the word jour in French. When it is taken in the first acceptation, the sense of the context determines it clearly enough

that it is not possible to be mistaken about it. The texts cited then present a broad sense which renders all error impossible. But in the first chapter of Genesis, where the term dies is repeated as many as ten times—fiant luminaria, et dividant diem ac noctem [let there be luminaries, and let them divide day and night]; luminare majus ut præesset diei [the greater light to rule the day]; et posuit ea ut præessent diei [and he placed them to rule the day], etc., etc.—nothing indicates that they must there receive a meaning different from that which is the most natural, the most common, and which our adversaries themselves assign to the texts which we have just cited.

Let us observe, moreover, that in French, in Latin, as doubtless in all the languages of the world, it would be easy to find phrases in which the word day sometimes replaces the word time or epoch, without anyone thinking of distorting the primitive and absolute sense of the first of these words.

2. Not only does nothing indicate another sense, but the sacred historian took care to forestall it by designating the parts of the day: vesperé et mané, it was evening, it was morning; expressions which, according to the authors of commentaries on Holy Scripture, have never been applied to periods other than the diurnal revolution. What, indeed, would these terms light and darkness, evening and morning, which suit our solar day so perfectly and suit it alone, signify on the supposition of the periods? Let us add that the ignorant Hebrews whom Moses addressed certainly could only have regarded as

days of twenty-four hours the three days posterior to the creation of the sun, whose mission was to divide the day and the night, the days and the years: Ut dividerent diem ac noctem, dies et annos [That they might divide day and night, days and years], since they knew no others. But they must consequently also have regarded the first three days as such, since the former and the latter were designated by the same expression. It is also important to observe that time, that is to say, the duration of contingent beings, began before the sun, which, in this respect, was to serve only to measure it for the use of humanity.

3. We have said that one of the rules to follow in order to interpret Scripture properly consisted in comparing and consulting parallel or analogous passages. Often a text which appears obscure finds its explanation in other places, in other texts, where the same things are explained more clearly. The application of this rule to the difficulty which occupies us resolves it peremptorily. In the twentieth chapter of Exodus (verses 9 and 10), and in the thirty-first chapter of the same book (verses 15 and 17), Moses says clearly what he understands by the six days of creation, by comparing them to the six days of the week, and the day on which God rested after the completion of his great work to the seventh day of the Sabbath. He says to the Israelites: “You shall work for six days, and you shall rest on the seventh,” and the reason which he gives for it is that “God employed

six days in making heaven and earth.¹” In these two passages we find the same terms employed to designate either the days of creation or the days of the week, without anything indicating that they must be taken in a different sense. Thus the first days are the model, the type of the days which must succeed them until the end of the world.

The division of time into six days followed by a day of rest was therefore established in memory of the six days of creation. God willed that man should forever celebrate the memory of that first week in which his infinite perfections were manifested outwardly; and the learned Bailly informs us, in his History of Ancient Astronomy, that among the peoples of the East the practice of reckoning by weeks divided into seven days went back to time immemorial.² Now, we ask, would the Holy Spirit have made use of the same term, twice in the same sentence, in two such different senses, and that precisely when it was a question of emphasizing the fulfillment of a precept by a solemn similitude, and that without the context warning us of it? In truth, if, by an impossibility,

he had wished to deceive us concerning the extent of the days of Genesis, he could not have gone about it better.

SECOND OBJECTION

Moses ends his account with these words: Istæ sunt generationes cæli et terræ quando creata sunt in die quo fecit Dominus [These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created, in the day when the Lord made]:³ such is the origin of heaven and earth; it is thus that they were created on the day when God made them. Now, the word day is employed here for epoch, since it embraces the six days: this meaning therefore applies naturally to the days of which Moses spoke shortly before.

REPLY

In conformity with the rules cited above, let us question the preceding texts; they will give us the true meaning of this one. We read there that God blessed the seventh day because on that day he had ceased to produce all the works which he had created in order to form them: Benedixit diei septimo quia in ipso cessabat ab omni opere suo quod creavit ut faceret [He blessed the seventh day because on it he ceased from all his work which he had created in order to make it].⁴ And what had he created in order to be formed? Moses tells us: heaven and earth. Igitur perfecti sunt cœli et terra, et omnis ornatus eorum [Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their adornment].⁵

He created them first, in order to adorn them afterward: Creavit ut faceret [He created in order that he might make]. “The Hebrew word Bara which is found in the first verse,” says Abbé du Contan de la Morlette, “must be understood of a creation properly so called. To be convinced of this, it suffices to compare this verse with that in which one reads: Bara laasoth, creavit ut faceret, ut ordinaret [Bara laasoth, he created in order that he might make, that he might order]. God created matter in the beginning and drew it from nothingness, in order to communicate new forms to it on the following days.

“The opposition which exists between Asah and Bara teaches us all this. Asah, which means to make, to form, supposes a preexistent matter upon which the agent operates; Bara, which signifies to create, supposes none: Bara laasoth, creavit ut faceret, ut ordinaret [Bara laasoth, he created in order that he might make, that he might order]. He first created matter in the beginning in order to order it, in order to adorn it afterward in the space of six days.⁶”

It follows from this distinction, established by Moses between creation and formation, that these words: In Die quo fecit Deus cælum et terram [In the day when God made heaven and earth], express, not any epoch whatever, but the six days of Genesis, during which God formed the beings which he had created on the first day. Verse 17 of Exodus (ch. XXXI), where Moses repeats the same words, leaves no doubt about his thought: “For God made heaven and earth in six days.⁷” “It is evident,” says Bishop Frayssinous, “that here the word day signifies the six

days themselves of creation.⁸” But let us not fail to observe that this sense is given to it by the entire context.

Let us further remark upon the limited scope and the weakness of the observation which is opposed to us. Indeed, the sacred historian employs this word dies one hundred and twelve times in the book of Genesis, and he always employs it in its natural meaning. Thus one reads there: Et post multos dies [And after many days] … facti sunt dies Adam octingenti anni [the days of Adam became eight hundred years] … obtinuerunt aquæ terram centum et quinquaginta diebus [the waters prevailed over the earth for one hundred and fifty days] … primo die mensis apparuerunt cacumina [on the first day of the month the summits appeared], etc., etc. The passage cited by our adversaries would be the only one in which the word dies was taken for time. But here again, by putting this word in the ablative preceded by the preposition in, Moses indicates clearly enough that he wishes to speak of the time when God formed heaven and earth, as we read elsewhere: In diebus illis, in illo tempore, in illo anno: in those days, at that time, in that year.

Several other texts of Scripture are also reported in which the word day is taken for an indeterminate time, for any epoch, such as this one: “Before the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day.”⁹ Without any doubt, the word dies is often taken in Scripture in this sense; but then, as we have observed, the context indicates it clearly. Thus, in

the passage of Saint Peter which is adduced, it is evident that the prince of the apostles speaks in a figurative sense, since it concerns the eternal rewards and punishments which God will distribute on the day of judgment. He says in the preceding verse: “The heavens and the earth which now exist are carefully kept by the same word, and are reserved to be burned by fire on the day of judgment.¹⁰” One therefore cannot invoke this text or other texts of this kind in order to claim that Moses, whose language is that of a historian, did not give the word dies its simplest and most natural sense.

THIRD OBJECTION

This third objection turns upon the sense which must be given to the words mané and vesperé, so often repeated by Moses with the word day. Some affirm that, by these words evening and morning, Moses wished to say simply the beginning and the end of a period.¹¹ Others find in them a proof that Moses did not wish to speak of days of twenty-four hours, since he does not say that a day was made from morning and evening, but from evening and morning; now, between evening and morning there is a night and not a day.¹²

The latter are greatly surprised on seeing to what extent the most natural, most literal sense departs from this translation: and the evening and the morning was the day; for “the word hereb, which is rendered there by evening, really signifies disorder, confusion; just as the opposed word boher signifies to arrange, to put in order. These two words vesperé and mané must therefore be translated thus: there was confusion, there was order.¹³”

The former believe they demonstrate that the word dies presents only the idea of light, that it is the name given by Moses to light, and that consequently the words mané and vesperé can indicate only the revolution of an indeterminate space of time.¹⁴

It would take too long to enumerate here all the tortures which the Hebrew text has been made to undergo in order to escape the literal interpretation of the Vulgate. One would truly say that the seventy Greek translators, authors of the version which bears their name, did not know Hebrew, and that Saint Jerome, author of the Vulgate approved by the Council of Trent as being the best translation of the sacred books, knew neither Greek nor Hebrew.

Far from us be the irreverent thought of disputing in the least the knowledge of the Hebrew language possessed by these learned writers; but we

shall nevertheless permit ourselves to observe that, in order to grasp properly the thought of the sacred historian in the original, it is not enough to have studied this language, to know how to read and understand it; one must also know its genius, its syntax, its idioms or Hebraisms; and, frankly, this knowledge can be acquired only by a special and constant study throughout one’s whole life; and there are few men who have had the taste and the leisure to devote themselves to it.

Among those whose perfect competence in this matter no one would dare deny, there are two of recognized and incontestable authority. We shall report their testimony in reply to the difficulty proposed.

The first is Abbé Glaire, dean and professor of Holy Scripture at the faculty of theology of Paris, author of several very remarkable works on the Old and New Testaments. Like all those who translated the Bible before him—Abbé de Vence, Carrière, Le Maistre de Sacy, etc.—he translates the first chapter of Genesis thus:

“God said: let there be light, and there was light. God, seeing how beautiful the light was, separated it from the darkness and called it day, after having given the darkness the name of night. Thus passed the evening and the morning of this first day … thus passed the evening and the morning of the second day … thus passed the evening and the morning of the third day … thus passed the evening and the morning of the fourth day … thus passed

the evening and the morning of the fifth day … thus passed the evening and the morning of the sixth day.¹⁵”

Throughout the translation, there is never any question of period, revolution, beginning and end, or disorder and arrangement, but solely of day, evening, and morning, in conformity with the usage of the Jews, who date the beginning of the day from evening.

The second testimony is that of Chevalier Drach, the most celebrated Hebraist in Europe, a former rabbi and honorary librarian of the Propaganda in Rome. Independently of the Hebrew language, which has been the object of his studies since his childhood, he also possesses the other Oriental languages; he has just worked on the reprinting of Origen’s Hexapla, which contains, as is known, the Bible in six languages. In the frequent relations which we have had the honor of having with him, we several times brought the conversation to the days of Genesis, taking care to cite the arguments of those who regard them as so many periods, and here was his reply: “The system of epochs which Catholics have embraced in order to escape the troublesome objections of unbelieving geologists is untenable in every respect. The word dies, in Hebrew yom, signifies day, and not epoch, unless the context indicates that it must not be taken

in its natural sense. Now, in the first chapter of Genesis, the entire context indicates that it must be taken in its literal sense, by designating the very parts of the day, by saying: it was evening, it was morning, according to the usage of the Hebrews, who marked an entire day by these two expressions: evening and morning. Moses therefore employed the two accepted terms to designate the same idea: it was evening, it was morning, one day: Mané et vesperé, dies unus [Morning and evening, one day].

“The verse where it is said is objected,” he continued: Istæ sunt generationes cæli et terræ, quando creata sunt, in die quo fecit Deus cælum et terram [These are the generations of heaven and earth, when they were created, in the day when God made heaven and earth]. Here, evidently, it is said, the word dies is indeed taken for a time or epoch, since it embraces all the creations. Those who employ language so affirmative prove that they are strangers to the Hebrew language. Indeed, in Hebrew the word creare, bara, has only one meaning, that of creating, of drawing from nothingness; whereas the word facere, in Hebrew asah, likewise signifies to make and to fashion. Now, the ancient synagogue itself had remarked that Moses, in the account of creation, employed the verb creare only three times; he used it: 1. to designate the creation of primary matter, of the formless elements of the globe, contained in these words: In principio Deus creavit cælum et terram [In the beginning God created heaven and earth]; 2. to designate the creation of the animals, because of the breath of life which is in them and which is distinct from matter: creavitque Deus cete grandia et omnem animam viventem [and God created the great sea creatures and every living soul]; 3. to designate

the creation of man in the image of God. But when it is a question of the other formations, the sacred historian employed the word facere, which means to fashion, to form, because on those days God fashioned the formless matter which he had created on the first day. The words in die quo therefore relate to that day on which God created heaven and earth in principio [in the beginning].

“Here is further what the rabbis say in the Talmud and the Médrasch: ‘The light of the first day was nothing other than the brilliant brightness of the Messiah; it shone for the space of one of our days; then disappeared, to return the following day.’ Despite all this, men eager to give us ingenious and learned systems have pronounced from the height of their authority that what is in question here is nothing less than six revolutions, each of I know not how many thousands of years. This idea appears untenable to me: for me, a day is a day.¹⁶”

FOURTH OBJECTION

Our days of twenty-four hours are regulated by the movement of the earth around the sun. Now, how could Moses have assimilated the days of creation to our solar days, since the sun was created only

on the fourth day to spread light and mark the days, the nights, and the times?

REPLY

One might perhaps, in order to reply to this objection, confine oneself to saying that, even if our days of twenty-four hours were not regulated, measured by the movement of the earth around the sun, that would not prevent time from existing; and add that it would have been easy for Moses, by virtue of divine inspiration, to determine a duration of time corresponding to the first three days of creation, as though this duration had been measured after the pattern of the following days, that is to say, after the creation of the sun.¹⁷ But this reply would not appear satisfactory to everyone, and we would not wish to seem to seek to evade a difficulty which led a man such as Origen to pronounce himself strongly against the literal sense of the Mosaic account. It is the same difficulty, moreover, which caused Saint Augustine to incline toward the idea of a creation accomplished in a single cast, as we shall show in its place. One understands the embarrassment of the one and the other when one transports oneself to the centuries in which they lived and thinks of the astronomical systems then adopted. But one

is surprised to encounter it among modern writers. Here is the manner in which this difficulty is presented in the Studies on Christianity by Mr. Nicolas, who regards it as insoluble and makes of it the principal argument of his opposition to the literal interpretation.

“By the word day employed in the cosmogony of Moses, one may understand epoch, revolution.

“But I say more: one must understand this word in this way, and to see in it an ordinary day would be to overturn the text itself and the sense of Genesis: nothing is easier to demonstrate.”

And as if this expression one must were not yet strong enough, the learned author adds: “Every reflective mind will attach itself to this explanation, not only as permitted, but as willed by the economy of the sacred text.¹⁸”

The illustrious apologist will be surprised when he sees, in the third part of our work, if it falls under his eyes, that, doubtless without knowing it, he treats as unreflective minds the very great majority of the Fathers, doctors, theologians, and interpreters who did not accept his explanation and pronounced themselves in favor of the literal sense.

We admit it, this threat of passing off every opponent as an unreflective mind, this obligation to surrender, imposed in terms so absolute, so

imperious by such an authority, would be of a nature to embarrass us, if Mr. Nicolas had not himself taken care to attenuate its scope by warning his readers that he is not very sure of what he advances on this matter, because he has not made a special study of it: “As,” he says, “I do not wish to take upon myself responsibility for a requirement (it is indeed great enough!) which perhaps arises from the imperfection of our special knowledge, I refer the reader to the learned work of Mr. Godefroy, Cosmogonié de la révélation [Cosmogony of Revelation].¹⁹”

Well and good! There are our consciences reassured; it is neither a geologist nor a theologian who speaks.

But what, then, is this explanation which must close all discussions and satisfy all requirements? Here it is: “It will first be granted to me without difficulty that the word day has the same sense for the six days of creation, and that it is no different for the first than for the second, than for the third, etc. They are six similar days, since the terms which Moses uses for each of them are identical; that is clear.

“Now, it is only on the fourth day that the heavenly bodies are formed, in order, says the biblical text, that they may separate the day from the night, and that they may serve as signs to mark the times and the seasons, the days and the years.

“The three preceding days were therefore not

days of this kind, having their morning and their evening, their separation of day and night, since the heavenly bodies which make these divisions, which separate the day from the night and mark the days and the years, did not yet exist. It is therefore impossible, for these first three days, to take literally these words: and from the evening and the morning the first day was made. And then how are they to be understood, if not: and from the beginning and the end the first epoch was made, or, as Moses says, the first generation?

“But if one is forced to understand the first three days in this way, one cannot escape the conclusion that it must be so for the other three, and that, the six days being, as has been acknowledged, similar, they are not six days but six epochs of some duration.²⁰”

Science replied to this objection by admitting, as alone true, the theory of undulations proposed by Huygens and victoriously defended by Fresnel, that is to say, by teaching that light exists independently of the heavenly bodies, and that the sun is not the focus of light, but a simple agent intended to make the luminous fluid which fills space, and which is called ether, vibrate.²¹ This difficulty was the result of a confusion which was made

between two very different things: the luminous fluid and the sensation of light. The one is distinct from the other; and the luminous fluid can exist without the sensation of light. Now, it is from the movement and repose of the luminous fluid that day and night result for us; it is not the sun which makes them; it can only indicate them; and if the movement of the earth was not yet established then, as some astronomers claim, we must suppose that the luminous fluid was set in motion by some agent, if not by the immediate will of the Creator.

Whether it is the sun or any other cause which makes the luminous fluid vibrate matters little; but what is worthy of remark is that, even after the creation of the sun, on the fourth day, the rays of this heavenly body did not produce the sensation of light, because there was no organized being to receive it. This phenomenon began only on the fifth day, that is to say, after the creation of the animals. And yet, would anyone dare say that the fourth day, when the sun existed, could not be called day because there was no animal upon the earth to receive the light?

There is therefore nothing in science which opposes giving the first three days the same duration as the following ones. Moreover, the sacred text employs the same expressions to designate them as for the other days: they are therefore similar to them.

Saint Basil had foreseen this difficulty and had resolved it in these terms:

“Now, without doubt, since the creation of the sun, the day is that air which the sun itself illuminates so long as, remaining in our hemisphere, it shines upon the earth. Night is the shadow of the earth which succeeds the day when the sun hides itself. But then day was made, and when it ceased, night succeeded it in turn, not through the effect of the movement of the sun, which did not exist, but through the projection of that primitive light which filled space and through the subsequent retraction of that same light, and this according to the measure fixed by God.²²”

Saint Ambrose, developing this text: Et vocavit Deus lucem diem et tenebras noctem [And God called the light day and the darkness night], observes that God called the light day and the darkness night in order to distinguish day and night by their proper name. That is why, he says, we must remark that the rising of the light appears to us to open the day before the sun. Indeed, the beginning of the day closes the end of the night, so that a place may be assigned at once to the night and to the day. The sun illuminates, but it is light which makes the day. Thus the sky often covers itself with clouds, to the point of hiding the sun and allowing none of its rays to pierce through, while light makes the day appear and drives back the darkness.²³

Saint Bonaventure is equally formal and equally explicit in his second book of the Sentences. He begins by proving that the light created by God on the first day was a corporeal, material, and not spiritual light, whose principal function was to make day and night. He then replies to this objection, namely, that on this supposition the creation of the sun would have been useless. “No,” he says, “because, although this light made the day in a nature proportioned to the needs of that time, it nevertheless pleased God to render this light fuller, more resplendent through the creation of the sun, in order to embellish and perfect his works.²⁴”

He then asks in what manner this light

made day and night. He cites the opinion of the Fathers on this subject, among others Saint Basil, Saint Gregory, Saint John Damascene, and Bede. The Greek Fathers think that it was emissione et contractione radiorum, by the emission of the rays and their contraction. “During the first three days,” says Saint John Damascene, “day and night were made in conformity with the order of the Lord through the projection and retraction of light.²⁵” And the Latin Fathers said that it was through its own revolution.

Moreover, one will find the same explanation and still others in the Fathers and Doctors whom we shall cite in the third part.

FIFTH OBJECTION

This objection relates to the word unus, which Moses employs to express the first day. This word does not correspond to the second and third day; it is the word primus. Therefore, if Moses had wished to speak of a true day, he would have said: Factum est vespere et mane dies primus [And evening and morning were made, the first day], where it is said: dies unus [one day].

REPLY

No, Moses ought not to have used the word primus.

Indeed, by saying “the first day,” he would have seemed to say that this was the first creation of God; which is false, since the creation of the angels and of the formless elements of heaven and earth had already taken place. Here is the reason by which Saint Ambrose justifies the choice Moses made of the word unus: “It is wisely that Moses said one day, and not the first day; for, according to this order, he was able to name the following days: the second, the third day; but thereby he established that the twenty-four hours of day and night must be designated under the name of day, as if he were saying: twenty-four hours measure the time of one day.²⁶”

Saint Thomas had posed this objection to himself and had resolved it thus:

“One day is spoken of at the first institution of the day, to mark that the duration of twenty-four hours belongs to a single day. That is why, by employing the word unus, Moses wished to determine the measure of the natural day; or else to show that the day is completed by the return of the sun to one and the same point; or again, because after the completion of the week, one returns to the first day, which is the same as the octave. These are the three reasons which Saint Basil adopts.²⁷”

Several other objections drawn from astronomy are also formulated against the literal interpretation of the Mosaic days, such as the following: from evening to morning there is night, and Moses does not speak of it. The meridian not existing, the first day could not be measured. These days could not have had the same duration; therefore they were not ordinary days, etc.

We have already indirectly resolved these difficulties by indicating, according to the holy Greek and Latin Fathers, in what manner the primitive light made day and night. We shall return to them in a forthcoming chapter, in which we propose to establish that all the acts of creation were miraculous and consequently placed outside the laws which now govern the course of the world.

PART THREE

SCRIPTURAL POINT OF VIEW