Revisions on Genesis 1:14-19, plus Leo Strauss
The fourth day: sun and moon and stars. And Leo Strauss reads the creation story.
I’ve spent Holy Week with a cold, but I’m happy to announce two more translator interviews that I’ve completed and just await editing: Matthew Dean, translator of contemporary Chinese political philosophy, and Chris Andrews, translator of Roberto Bolaño and César Aira.
My revisions here are similar to my revisions to the previous verses. For the fourth day of creation, the main problem of translation is to distinguish between מָאוֹר and אור, luminary and light. In the first day God creates אור, and on the fourth day God creates the sun and moon and stars. Ultimately, I chose to translate מָאוֹר and אור both as light because מָאוֹר appears as plural and so Lights is sufficiently distinct.
These verses reminded me of a lecture on Genesis Leo Strauss delivered in 1957. It has a marvelous opening: "Revelation is a miracle. That means, therefore, that before we we even open the Bible we must have made up our minds as to whether we believe in the possibility of miracles." From there Strauss works through the apparent difficulties with the creation story: e.g., only on the fourth day does God create the sun and moon and separate day from night. How, then, are there days before the creation of the sun? Plants and animals precede the sun too.
All of Strauss’ commentary on creation is interesting and difficult—and if you’d like a copy of the lecture, please email bibletranslation@substack.com, and I’ll send it to you—but let’s look specifically about how he resolves this difficulty about the sun’s creation on the fourth day.
He reads the creation story as having two parallel parts: days one through three, which begin with the creation of light and end with the double creation of earth and plants, and days four through six, which begin with the creation of the sun and end with the double creation of animals and man. The principle of the first part is separation and distinction; the second, local motion. He sums it up thus:
It seems then that the sequence of creation in the first chapter of the Bible can be stated as follows: from the principle of separation, light; via something which separates, heaven; to something which is separated, earth and sea; to things which are productive of separated things, trees, for example; then things which can separate themselves from their courses, brutes; and finally a being which can separate itself from its way, the right way. I repeat, the clue to the first chapter seems to be the fact that the account of the creation consists of two main parts. This implies that the created world is conceived to be characterized by a fundamental dualism; things which are different from each other without having the capacity of local motion and things which in addition to being different from each other do have the capacity for local motion. This means the first chapter seems to be based on the assumption that the fundamental dualism is that of distinctness, otherness, as Plato would say,1 and of local motion.
He quotes from God’s commentary on creation in Deuteronomy 4:15-19 to say that the sun and moon and stars are created on the fourth day in order to depreciate them lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou sees the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.
That the world is created is known by the fact that God speaks to Israel on the Horeb; that is the reason why Israel knows that sun and moon and stars do not deserve worship, that heaven must be depreciated in favor of human life on earth, and ultimately, that the origin of the world is divine creation… What I am suggesting then is this — the crucial thesis of the first chapter, if we approach it from the point of view of Western thought in general, is the depreciation of heaven. Heaven is a primary theme of cosmology and of philosophy.
There’s a lot to read in his qualifying phrase if we approach it from the point of view of Western thought in general and much more to say about Strauss’ essay. Perhaps I could host a seminar, and we could all read it together. Let me know if you’d be interested in joining such a thing.
In the meantime, here is the revised translation:
He said, "Lights
in Sky
of Heavens
for cutting
day
from night
signs for
seasons
days
years
Lights
in Sky
of Heavens
to light
Earth”
God made
two Great Lights
Great Light
for Day
Small Light
for Night
and Stars
God put them
in Sky
of Heavens
to light
Earth
to command
Day
Night
to cut
Light
from Dark
God saw
that was fine
An evening, a morning
fourth dayIf you know someone who would be interested in what I’m doing, please:
Like nearly everything he wrote, this lecture is another attempt to wrestle with the theological political problem and the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem. But I’m not sure what’s really going on in Strauss’ apparent reconciliation of Genesis and Plato here. Later he says, “The account of the world given in the first chapter of the Bible is not fundamentally different from philosophic accounts; that account is based on evident distinctions which are as accessible to us as they were to the biblical author. Hence we can understand that account; these distinctions are accessible to man as man.” (I’m not so sure about that… especially in light of what Strauss calls later “the crucial thesis of the first chapter”.) The lecture ends with another Bible/Plato comparison: “The sacred book, the Bible, may then abound in contradictions and in repetitions which are not intended, whereas a Greek book, the greatest example is the Platonic dialogue, reflects the perfect evidence to which the philosopher aspires; there is nothing which does not have a knowable ground because Plato had a ground. The Bible reflects in its literary form the inscrutable mystery of the ways of God which it would be impious even to attempt to comprehend.”