But I maintain that, if he had had the patience (to use his own
expression) to listen to the writings of Moses and the prophets, he
would have had his attention arrested by the circumstance that the
expression “God made” is applied to heaven and earth, and to what is
called the firmament, and also to the lights and stars; and after these,
to the great fishes, and to every living thing among creeping animals
which the waters brought forth after their kinds, and to every fowl of
heaven after its kind; and after these, to the wild beasts of the earth
after their kind, and the beasts after their kind, and to every creeping
thing upon the earth after its kind; and last of all to man. The
expression “made,” however, is not applied to other things; but it is
deemed sufficient to say regarding light, “And it was light;” and
regarding the one gathering together of all the waters that are under
the whole heaven, “It was so.” And in like manner also, with regard to
what grew upon the earth, where it is said, “The earth brought forth
grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind and after its likeness, and
the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind,
upon the earth.” He would have inquired, moreover, whether the recorded
commands of God respecting the coming into existence of each part of the
world were addressed to one thing or to several;[712] and he would not
lightly have charged with being unintelligible, and as having no secret
meaning, the accounts related in these books, either by Moses, or, as
_we_ would say, by the Divine Spirit speaking in Moses, from whom also
he derived the power of prophesying; since he “knew both the present,
and the future, and the past,” in a higher degree than those priests who
are alleged by the poets to have possessed a knowledge of these things.
Footnote 712:
τίνι ἢ τίσιν.