Latin Translation of Basil's Hexaemeron

Contents

Reading pages: 0.1–1.11 · 2.1–2.8 · 3.1–3.10 · 4.1–4.7 · 5.1–6.1 · 6.2–6.10 · 6.11–7.6 · 8.1–8.8 · 9.1–9.6

1. 0.1Eustathius dedicates his Latin version of Basil's Hexaemeron to the one who asked him to make it, excusing his lack of eloquence.
2. 1.1Basil's first homily opens by commending Moses, the author of Genesis, as one who spoke with God face to face, and asks for hearers worthy of the subject.
3. 1.2Against the Greek philosophers who ascribe the world to matter, atoms, or chance, Moses names God at once as the maker who gave the world a beginning.
4. 1.3The world's circular motion does not prove it eternal: what began in time will end, and the philosophers who made the world coeternal with God became fools.
5. 1.4Astronomers who measure the stars minutely failed to see that God made the world and will judge it, and mock the Christian hope of its renewal.
6. 1.5Before the visible world God made an invisible order of spiritual beings; time began with this world, and 'beginning' has several senses.
7. 1.6'Beginning' fits all its senses: the first day of time, the Word as craftsman, the world's purpose, and the instantaneous, timeless act of creation.
8. 1.7'Made' shows the world is the work of a craftsman acting by will, not an involuntary emanation; heaven and earth imply the elements between them.
9. 1.8Scripture's simple words about heaven and earth suffice; inquiring into the earth's substance or what holds it up leads to endless questions.
10. 1.9Every proposed support of the earth needs another; the pious answer is that all is held together by the Creator's power, the ends of the earth being in his hand.
11. 1.10Some philosophers explain that the earth stays still because it lies at the centre where heavy things gather; if so, the wonder belongs to the Creator, and faith outweighs proofs.
12. 1.11The philosophers refute one another about the substance of heaven; Christians follow Moses and praise the infinite Creator from the beauty of what he made.
13. 2.1The earth was 'invisible and unformed' because it lacked its vegetation and lay hidden under the waters in darkness.
14. 2.2Against those who read 'invisible and unformed' as uncreated matter, God did not merely shape pre-existing material but created matter together with its form.
15. 2.3God made matter and form together; the earth was invisible because water, which Moses leaves unmentioned, covered it, and unformed because it had not yet produced its plants.
16. 2.4The darkness over the abyss is not an evil power, as Marcionites, Valentinians and Manichaeans claim, but darkened air over deep water; evil is not a substance but a disposition contrary to virtue.
17. 2.5Evil comes from free will, not from nature or outside; the primeval darkness was a mere shadow cast by the newly made heaven, which shut out the light of the spiritual world.
18. 2.6The Spirit borne over the waters is the Holy Spirit, who, as a Syrian teacher explained, brooded over them like a hen to give them life.
19. 2.7God's command created light, which filled the air and made the world beautiful; his 'word' is the impulse of his will, and he called light good for its beauty and its usefulness.
20. 2.8Evening and morning make one day of twenty-four hours; Moses says 'one day' rather than 'first' to point to the single, unending eighth day, the Lord's day of the resurrection.
21. 3.1Opening the third homily, the preacher asks the working men who want a short sermon to give a little time to God, who repays it richly.
22. 3.2God does not speak with a voice as humans do; Scripture shows God 'speaking' to point to the Word, the Only-begotten, who worked with him in creation.
23. 3.3Against the philosophers who allow only one heaven, the church confesses more than one, as Paul speaks of a third heaven; the firmament differs from the first heaven.
24. 3.4Water can rest on the firmament, which may be flat above though vaulted below; 'firmament' means a strong, solid body; 'God said' and 'God made' point to the Father and the working Son.
25. 3.5The great mass of water was created in proportion to the fire it would feed and resist, so that neither element destroys the other and the world endures.
26. 3.6The great rivers of the known world show how abundantly God stored water against fire, until the end when fire will dry up the deep.
27. 3.7The waters above the firmament protect the world from the burning ether; the philosophers who deny that the sun consumes water contradict their own account of the salt sea.
28. 3.8The firmament is called heaven, a word Scripture also uses for the air from which rain and snow fall; the philosophers' contradictory theories refute themselves.
29. 3.9Against allegorists who read the upper and lower waters as good and evil spiritual powers, the waters are real water, and creation praises God in the sense that its contemplation leads rational beings to glorify him.
30. 3.10God called the firmament good not for its look but for its purpose in the whole; the sermon ends with a prayer that hearers see the Creator in his works.
31. 4.1As city crowds feast on theatre and races, Christians are called to the far greater spectacle of God's works in heaven, earth, air and water.
32. 4.2The command to gather the waters is not superfluous: the natural downward flow of water itself began from God's word, which established the order of nature.
33. 4.3God's first command still drives the rivers and holds the sea within its shores, as the sand restrains it and the Red Sea does not flood lower-lying Egypt.
34. 4.4The 'one gathering' is the single great Ocean into which all waters were brought, for which God then made room; lakes and marshes are lesser gatherings, and the many named seas are parts of the one.
35. 4.5God says 'dry land' before 'earth' because dryness is earth's defining property; each element has its own quality and is linked to its neighbours in a circle of shared qualities.
36. 4.6God judged the sea good not for its beauty but for its usefulness: it is the source, through hidden veins, of the springs that water the earth.
37. 4.7The sea is good as the reservoir of rivers, the source of rain, the defence of islands and the road of commerce; still more beautiful is the church, whose praises sound like the sea.
38. 5.1God's command to the earth to sprout became a lasting law of nature; plants came before the sun so that no one would worship the sun as the source of growth, and all were made for human benefit.
39. 5.2Plants without seed reproduce from the root, each 'according to its kind'; grass and flowers remind us, with Isaiah, how quickly human strength, wealth and power wither.
40. 5.3The growth of grain and the design of the wheat stalk show the Creator's wisdom; poisonous plants are not a fault in creation, for they feed some creatures and serve medicine.
41. 5.5Blighted grain is still grain, while tares, like heretics mixed into the church, have their own origin; at creation the earth brought all plants to ripeness at once, before sin brought toil.
42. 5.6All trees appeared at once, the rose then without thorns; the vine and the olive teach the soul, grafted into the church, to grow upward in love and bear the fruit of good works and mercy.
43. 5.7Trees differ in roots, bark and fruit, can be improved by cultivation, and even need the help of wild trees, lessons of hope for sinners and of zeal for Christians who see virtue among outsiders.
44. 5.8The shapes of leaves suit the fruits they protect, and one moisture drawn from the roots becomes wood, leaf, resins, wine, oil and countless tastes, all showing the Creator's wisdom.
45. 5.9The variety of tastes, colours and scents and the different habits of evergreen and deciduous trees should lead from wonder to love of the Creator; the tamarisk pictures the inconstant.
46. 5.10Like a spinning top set in motion by one blow, nature keeps producing by God's first command until the end of the age.
47. 6.1The sixth homily invites hearers as fellow contestants to tour the 'city' of creation, where they learn of the fall, man's dignity, and from the visible sun the beauty of the Sun of righteousness.
48. 6.2The sun and moon were made only on the fourth day so that no one would worship them; 'God said' and 'God made' show two persons, and the lights are vehicles for the light created first.
49. 6.3Light and the body of the sun are distinct, as the burning bush and the moon's phases show; the lights divide day from night, the moon ruling the night when full.
50. 6.4The lights serve as signs of weather useful to sailors, travellers and farmers, and finally as signs of the end of the world.
51. 6.5Astrologers twist 'for signs' into a doctrine of fate, but their reckoning requires a precision in timing births that no one can achieve.
52. 6.6Astrologers derive character from the animals the signs are named after, which makes the heavens depend on beasts and is absurd; their arguments are spiders' webs.
53. 6.7Astrology destroys free will: it makes the stars or their maker the authors of evil, cannot explain hereditary kingship, and would make laws, judgment, labour and Christian hope meaningless.
54. 6.8The sun's yearly course makes the seasons and the varying shadows of different lands; the lights rule days and years, the lunar year needing an added month.
55. 6.9The sun and moon are called great absolutely, not by comparison: they appear the same from every land and only look small because distance deceives the eye.
56. 6.10The sun's light, flooding the earth at once, proves its size; the waxing and waning moon teaches the instability of human things and warns the soul against inconstancy.
57. 6.11The moon's influence on weather and tides and its equal light on distant cities show its greatness; it is not drawn down by magic, and all these lights are small beside the Creator.
58. 7.1On the fifth day God's brief command filled the waters with every kind of swimming creature, the first beings with sense and breath, suited by gills to their element.
59. 7.2God's command brought forth the seed of every kind of sea creature, shellfish, crustaceans, cephalopods, fish and sea mammals, each breeding true to its kind.
60. 7.3Fish that devour one another picture the greedy rich; the crab's trick and the octopus's disguise warn against fraud and flattery; fish keeping to their own waters teach contentment.
61. 7.4Unlike greedy men who move boundaries, sea creatures keep to their places, and migrating fish obey God's law in travelling to the Black Sea to spawn, a rebuke to disobedient humans.
62. 7.5Animals act by God-given instinct, as the sea urchin forecasts storms, so God surely cares for human beings; like the moray answering the viper, a wife should keep faith with even a harsh husband.
63. 7.6Husbands should lay aside harshness and adulterers take warning; the homily ends by surveying the sea's further wonders and monsters before closing with prayer.
64. 8.1God's word gave the earth power to bring forth animals, not a soul of its own as the Manichaeans claim; land animals have a fuller life than fish, and the camel's grudge rebukes vindictive men.
65. 8.2The soul of animals is their blood and returns to earth, unlike man's; against transmigration, and returning to the omitted birds, which share with fish the motion of swimming.
66. 8.3Birds differ in form, food, social life, migration, tameness and voice, and Scripture classes them as clean and unclean.
67. 8.4Bees live as a commonwealth under a king chosen by nature, who has a sting but does not use it, a lesson in not repaying evil; their honeycomb surpasses geometry.
68. 8.5Cranes keeping watch, storks caring for their aged parents, the resourceful swallow and the halcyon whose brooding calms the sea teach vigilance, hospitality, filial piety, and trust in God.
69. 8.6The faithful turtledove commends widowhood over remarriage; the eagle's neglect rebukes parents who expose or disinherit children; vultures said to breed without mating make the virgin birth credible.
70. 8.7Birds of night and day, bats, owls, cocks, geese, vultures, locusts, bees and water birds each show the Creator's wisdom; owls picture worldly sages blind to the true light.
71. 8.8The silkworm's transformation is a natural pledge of the resurrection; in Lent the hearers should feast their souls on God's word rather than dice and idle talk.
72. 9.1The ninth homily rejects allegory that turns water and animals into other things: Scripture is to be taken as written, and Moses rightly passed over useless questions about the earth's shape.
73. 9.2God's command still drives nature, keeping each kind through its offspring and even producing life from the earth; man, upright and heavenly, must not sink to the level of beasts.
74. 9.3Animals have characters and instinctive remedies and foresight, like the ant storing food, which shames humans into preparing for the age to come; the natural law teaches us good and evil without books.
75. 9.4Nature implants virtues and family love, as Paul's commands to parents and children confirm; lambs know their mothers and dogs reason like logicians and stay loyal, shaming those who keep company with blasphemers.
76. 9.5Fertility, teeth, necks and the elephant's trunk and legs are all precisely fitted to each animal's needs; even venomous creatures have their purpose, as a teacher's rod does.
77. 9.6Faith overcomes harmful creatures; turning to man, 'Let us make man in our image' shows the Son as the Father's co-worker and single image, against Jewish readings (angels) and those who call the Son unlike the Father.