To Autolycus 2.16–2.30

On the fifth day the living creatures of the waters came into being, and through them too the manifold wisdom of God is shown. For who could count their multitude and their endlessly varied offspring? Moreover, the creatures that came from the waters were blessed by God, so that this too might be a sign that human beings would receive repentance and forgiveness of sins through water and the washing of regeneration: all who come to the truth, are born again, and receive a blessing from God. But the sea monsters and the birds that eat flesh are an image of the greedy and the lawbreakers. For though the water creatures and the birds are of one nature, some of them remain in their natural state and do not harm those weaker than themselves, but keep the law of God and eat of the seeds of the earth; while others transgress the law of God by eating flesh, and harm those weaker than themselves. So too the righteous, keeping the law of God, bite no one and harm no one, but live holy and righteous lives; while robbers, murderers, and the godless are like sea monsters and wild beasts and flesh-eating birds, for by their strength they devour those weaker than themselves. The brood of water creatures and creeping things, then, though it shared in God's blessing, received no distinctive property of its own.

On the sixth day, when God made the four-footed creatures, the wild beasts, and the creeping things of the land, he passed over their blessing in silence, reserving the blessing for the human being, whom he was about to make on the sixth day. At the same time the four-footed creatures and the wild beasts were made as a type of some people who do not know God, who are godless and set their minds on earthly things and do not repent. For those who turn from their lawless deeds and live righteously fly upward in soul like birds, setting their minds on things above and pleasing the will of God. But those who do not know God and are godless are like birds that have wings yet cannot fly up and reach the heights of the divine. So such people are called human beings, but they set their minds on what is low and earthly, weighed down by their sins. Wild beasts (θηρία) are so called from their becoming savage (θηριοῦσθαι). They were not made evil or venomous from the beginning, for nothing was made evil by God from the beginning, but all things were good, and very good; it was the sin of the human being that made them evil. When the human being transgressed, they transgressed with him. Just as, when the master of a house does well, the servants too necessarily live in good order, but when the master sins, the slaves sin with him, so it happened with the creatures of the human being: when he, their lord, sinned, his servants sinned with him. When, then, the human being returns again to his natural state and no longer does evil, they too will be restored to their original gentleness.

As for the making of the human being, his creation is beyond human power to express, although the divine Scripture gives only a brief account of it. For when God says, “Let us make the human being according to our image and likeness,” he first shows the dignity of the human being. God made all things by a word and regarded them all as secondary works; but the making of the human being alone he considers an eternal work worthy of his own hands. Moreover, God is found as if he needed help, saying, “Let us make the human being according to our image and likeness.” But he said “Let us make” to no one else than to his own Word and his own Wisdom. When he had made him and blessed him, to increase and fill the earth, he subjected all things to him as subject to his hand and his servants. And he commanded him to take his food from the beginning from the fruits of the earth, from seeds and herbs and the fruit of trees; and he ordered the animals to share the human being's diet, so that they too might eat of all the seeds of the earth.

So God, having finished the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them on the sixth day, rested on the seventh day from all his works that he had made. Then holy Scripture sums up, saying: “This is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth, when it came into being, on the day God made the heaven and the earth, and every green thing of the field before it came to be, and every plant of the field before it sprang up; for God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the earth.” By this it has shown us that at that time the whole earth was watered by a divine spring and had no need of a man to work it; the earth brought forth all things of itself at the command of God, so that the man would not have to toil at working it. And so that the formation of the human being might also be made known, and not seem to people a question impossible to answer, since God had said “Let us make the human being” but had not yet shown how he was made, Scripture teaches us, saying: “And a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth; and God formed the man, dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” That is why most people call the soul immortal. After forming the man, God chose for him a place in the regions of the east, excelling in light, radiant with brighter air, and with the loveliest plants, and there he put the man.

The words of the sacred history in Scripture run as follows: “And God planted the garden in Eden, toward the east, and put there the man whom he had formed. And God made every tree spring up out of the ground, beautiful to look at and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowing what may be known of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden; from there it divides into four heads. The name of the first is Pheison; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Evilat, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good, and there are the carbuncle and the green stone. And the name of the second river is Geon; it flows around the whole land of Ethiopia. And the third river is the Tigris; it is the one that flows opposite Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man whom he had formed and put him in the garden to work it and to keep it. And God commanded Adam, saying: From every tree in the garden you may eat for food; but from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat; on the day you eat from it you shall surely die. And the Lord God said: It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make for him a helper corresponding to him. And God formed further out of the ground all the wild beasts of the field and all the birds of the heaven, and brought them to Adam; and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. And Adam gave names to all the cattle and all the birds of the heaven and all the wild beasts of the field; but for Adam there was found no helper like him. And God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh in its place. And the Lord God built the rib that he had taken from Adam into a woman, and brought her to Adam. And Adam said: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And the two were naked, Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed.”

“Now the serpent was more cunning than all the wild beasts on the earth that the Lord God had made. And the serpent said to the woman: Why is it that God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We may eat from every tree of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God said, You shall not eat from it, nor touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: You will not surely die; for God knew that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasing to the eyes to look at, and beautiful to contemplate; and she took of its fruit and ate, and gave some also to her husband with her, and they ate. And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the evening, and Adam and his wife hid from the face of God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called Adam and said to him: Where are you? And he said to him: I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I am naked, and I hid. And he said to him: Who told you that you are naked, unless you have eaten from the tree, the only one I commanded you not to eat from? And Adam said: The woman whom you gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And God said to the woman: What is this you have done? And the woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the wild beasts on the earth; on your breast and your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he will watch for your head, and you will watch for his heel. And to the woman he said: I will greatly multiply your pains and your groaning; in pain you shall bear children, and your turning shall be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said: Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree, the only one I commanded you not to eat from, cursed is the ground in your labors; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of your field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for earth you are, and to earth you shall go.” Such are the words of holy Scripture about the history of the human being and of paradise.

You will say to me, then: “You say that God must not be contained in a place; how can you now say that he walked in the garden?” Listen to what I say. The God and Father of all things cannot be contained, and he is not found in a place; for there is no place of his rest. But his Word, through whom he made all things, who is his Power and his Wisdom, taking on the role of the Father and Lord of all, came into the garden in the person of God and conversed with Adam. For the divine Scripture itself teaches us that Adam said he had heard the voice. And what else is the voice but the Word of God, who is also his Son? Not as the poets and mythographers speak of sons of gods born of intercourse, but as the truth describes him: the Word who was always innate in the heart of God. For before anything came into being, God had him as his counselor, since he was his own mind and understanding. But when God willed to make what he had planned, he begot this Word as uttered, the firstborn of all creation; not that he himself was emptied of the Word, but he begot the Word and is always in converse with his Word. So the holy Scriptures teach us, and all the Spirit-bearers, among whom John says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” showing that at first God was alone and the Word was in him. Then he says: “And the Word was God; all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The Word, then, being God and born of God, is sent by the Father of all, whenever he wills, to some place; and when he comes he is both heard and seen, being sent by the Father, and he is found in a place.

God, then, made the human being on the sixth day, but made known how he was formed only after the seventh day, when he also made the garden, so that he might be in a better place and a distinct region. That these things are true, the facts themselves show. How can one fail to observe the pangs women suffer in childbirth, and how afterward they forget the pain, so that God's word might be fulfilled, that the human race should increase and multiply? And what of the condemnation of the serpent, how loathsome it is, creeping on its belly and eating dust, so that this too might be a proof to us of what was said before?

God, then, made every tree spring up out of the ground besides, beautiful to look at and good for food. For at first there were only the things made on the third day, plants, seeds, and herbs; but those in the garden were made with a distinct beauty and loveliness, since they are even called a planting planted by God. The other plants the world also has, like them; but the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, no other land has had, but only the garden. That the garden too is earth and was planted on the earth, Scripture says: “And God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, and put the man there; and God made every tree spring up out of the ground besides, beautiful to look at and good for food.” The words “out of the ground” and “toward the east” clearly teach us, then, that the garden is under this heaven, under which the east and the earth also lie. Eden in Hebrew is interpreted “delight.” Scripture has indicated that a river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there divides into four heads. Two of them, called Pheison and Geon, water the eastern regions, especially the Geon, which flows around the whole land of Ethiopia, and which, they say, appears in Egypt as the river called the Nile. The other two rivers are plainly known among us, the Tigris and the Euphrates, for they border on our own regions. When God had put the man, as we said, in the garden to work it and to keep it, he commanded him to eat of all the fruits, clearly including the fruit of the tree of life, and commanded him not to taste of the tree of knowledge alone. God moved him from the earth, from which he had been made, into the garden, giving him an opportunity for progress, so that by growing and becoming perfect, and even being declared a god, he might in this way also ascend into heaven, possessing everlasting life. For the human being had been made in between, neither wholly mortal nor altogether immortal, but capable of either; and so too the place, the garden, was made in between the world and heaven as regards its beauty. The command “to work it” means no other work than keeping the command of God, so that he might not disobey and destroy himself, as in fact he did destroy himself through sin.

The tree of knowledge was itself good, and its fruit was good. For it was not the tree, as some think, that held death, but the disobedience. There was nothing else in the fruit but knowledge; and knowledge is good when one uses it properly. But Adam, at the age he then was, was still an infant; so he could not yet take in knowledge worthily. Even now, when a child is born, it cannot yet eat bread; it is first nourished with milk, and then, as it grows older, it comes to solid food. So it would have been with Adam. God did not forbid him to eat of knowledge, then, out of envy, as some think. He also wished to test him, to see whether he would obey his command. And at the same time he wished the human being to remain simple and innocent for a longer time, while he was still a child. For it is a holy thing, not only before God but also before human beings, to be subject to one's parents in simplicity and innocence. And if children must be subject to their parents, how much more to the God and Father of all? Besides, it is unseemly for little children to think thoughts beyond their age; as one grows in years in due order, so one grows in understanding. Again, when a law commands someone to abstain from something and he does not obey, clearly it is not the law that brings the punishment, but the disobedience and the transgression. A father sometimes commands his own child to keep away from certain things, and when the child does not obey his father's command, he is beaten and punished because of his disobedience; it is not the things themselves that are the blows, but the disobedience that brings disgrace on the one who disobeys. So too for the first-formed man, it was his disobedience that brought about his expulsion from the garden; not that there was anything evil in the tree of knowledge, but through disobedience the human being drew upon himself toil, pain, and grief, and in the end fell under death.

In this too God showed the human being a great kindness: he did not let him remain forever in sin. In a way, as a kind of banishment, he cast him out of the garden, so that, having paid for his sin by punishment over a fixed time and having been disciplined, he might afterward be called back. That is why, after the human being was formed in this world, it is written in Genesis, in a mysterious way, as though he had been placed in the garden twice: so that the first placing might be fulfilled when he was put there, and the second is to be fulfilled after the resurrection and the judgment. Moreover, just as a vessel that has some flaw after it is shaped is melted down or remolded so as to become new and whole, so it happens to the human being through death: he is in effect broken, so that at the resurrection he may be found sound, I mean spotless, righteous, and immortal. And when God called and said, “Where are you, Adam?”, he did not do this as if he did not know; but, being patient, he gave him an opportunity for repentance and confession.

But someone will say to us: “Was the human being made mortal by nature?” Not at all. “Immortal, then?” We do not say that either. “Then was he made nothing at all?” We do not say that either. He was made by nature neither mortal nor immortal. If God had made him immortal from the beginning, he would have made him God; and if he had made him mortal, God would seem to be the cause of his death. So God made him neither immortal nor mortal, but, as we said above, capable of both: so that, if he inclined toward the things of immortality and kept the commandment of God, he would receive immortality from him as a reward and become God; but if he turned to the things of death and disobeyed God, he would himself be the cause of his own death. For God made the human being free and master of himself. What, then, the human being brought upon himself through carelessness and disobedience, God now gives him as a gift, through his own love for humankind and mercy, when the human being obeys him. For just as the human being drew death upon himself by disobedience, so whoever wishes can obtain eternal life for himself by obeying the will of God. For God has given us a law and holy commandments; everyone who keeps them can be saved, and, attaining the resurrection, inherit incorruption.

After Adam had been cast out of the garden, he knew Eve his wife, whom God had made for him as a wife out of his rib. God did this not because he was unable to form the man's wife separately, but because he knew beforehand that human beings would name a multitude of gods. Knowing the future, he knew that error, through the serpent, would name a multitude of gods that do not exist; for though God is one, error was already then planning to sow the idea of many gods, saying, “You will be like gods.” So, lest it be supposed that one god made the man and another the woman, he did not make the two of them separately. Moreover, God made the man's wife together with him so that the mystery of God's sole sovereignty might be shown by it, and so that their affection for each other might be the greater. When Adam said to Eve, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” he also prophesied, saying, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”; and this is shown fulfilled in us ourselves. For who that marries lawfully does not set less store by mother and father and all his kindred and his whole household, being joined and united to his own wife and loving her more? That is why some even become liable to death for the sake of their wives. To this Eve, because she was deceived by the serpent at the beginning and became the originator of sin, the evil demon also called Satan, who then spoke to her through the serpent and is still at work to this day in the people possessed by him, cries out “Euan.” He is called “demon” and “dragon” (δράκων) because he ran away (ἀποδεδρακέναι) from God; for at first he was an angel. There is much to say about him, so I pass over the account for now; I have spoken about him elsewhere.

When Adam knew his wife Eve, she conceived and bore a son named Cain. And she said, “I have gained a man through God.” And she bore a second son, named Abel. He became a shepherd of sheep, while Cain worked the ground. The story of these two is fuller, and so is the plan of its interpretation; so the book itself, entitled The Genesis of the World, can teach those who love learning its history more precisely. When Satan saw not only Adam and his wife alive but also that they had had children, since he had not been able to kill them, he was driven by envy; and when he saw Abel pleasing God, he worked in his brother, called Cain, and made him kill his brother Abel. And so death began to journey through this world, and it travels on to this day over every race of human beings. But God, being merciful and wishing to give Cain an opportunity for repentance and confession, as he had with Adam, said: “Where is Abel your brother?” But Cain answered God defiantly, saying: “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” So God, angry with him, said: “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. And now cursed are you from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand; groaning and trembling you shall be on the earth.” That is why, from then on, the earth in its fear no longer accepts the blood of a human being, nor of any animal; which shows that the earth is not to blame, but the human being who transgressed.

Cain too had a son, named Enoch. And he built a city, which he named after his son Enoch. From then began the building of cities, and this before the flood; not as Homer falsely says: “For not yet had a city of mortal men been founded.” To Enoch was born a son named Gaidad, who begot the one called Meel; and Meel begot Mathousala, and Mathousala Lamech. And Lamech took two wives, named Ada and Sela. From then began polygamy, and music as well. For Lamech had three sons, Obel, Joubal, and Thobel. Obel became a man living in tents and raising cattle; Joubal is the one who invented the harp and the lyre; and Thobel became a hammer-smith, a worker in bronze and iron. This is as far as the line of Cain is recorded; the rest of his descendants have been left out of the genealogy and forgotten, because he murdered his brother. In place of Abel, God granted Eve to conceive and bear a son, who is called Seth; from him the rest of the human race has come down to this day. For those who wish to learn and love learning, it is easy to set out all the generations from the holy Scriptures. We have already given a partial account in another work, as we mentioned above: the order of the genealogy in the first book On Histories. All these things the Holy Spirit teaches us, who spoke through Moses and the other prophets; so that the writings of us who worship God are more ancient, and are shown to be truer, than those of all the historians and poets. As for music, some have talked nonsense, saying that Apollo invented it; others say that Orpheus discovered music from the sweet singing of birds. Their account is shown to be empty and vain, for these lived many years after the flood. We have given the account of Noah, whom some call Deucalion, in the book we mentioned; you too can read it if you wish.