How to Teach Genesis 1.

1-19: John Chrysostom and Basil of

Caesarea on the Creation of the World

Isabella Sandwell

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 19, Number 4, Winter 2011, pp.
539-564 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2011.0048

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/460049

Access provided by USP-Universidade de São Paulo (11 Dec 2018 18:40 GMT)
How to Teach Genesis 1.1–19:
John Chrysostom and
Basil of Caesarea on the
Creation of the World

ISABELLA SANDWELL

John Chrysostom and Basil of Caesarea both preached on Gen 1.1–19 to

similar audiences in the last quarter of the fourth century c.e. Both were
followers of Nicaea and both claimed to carry out literal forms of exegesis and
yet Chrysostom’s pastoral and moral concerns and Basil’s interest in science
and philosophy meant that their preaching on the early books of Genesis was
radically different. This article will explore the differences between the two
in order to assess which would have been more successful at teaching the
newly created world and thus at bringing about audience understanding of the
difficult text of Genesis. It will use ideas drawn from cognitive psychology to
define what counts as understanding and good teaching in order to provide a
new approach for making such assessments of ancient preachers.

Commentary and preaching on Genesis’s creation narrative proliferated in

the fourth century. It was the subject matter of numerous treatises and ser-
mons, with Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, John
Chrysostom, and Augustine all writing commentaries or homilies on it, and
was seen as especially suitable for uneducated converts.1 It seems to have

An initial period of research for this article was carried out during a four-week visit
to the Centre of Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University in autumn
2006, which was funded by the British Academy. Further research towards the arti-
cle was carried out during a four-month Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship held in Spring
2009 and I thank Dumbarton Oaks, its directors, and staff for providing the time
and space for carrying out this research.
1. On the association with baptism and Lent, see Hagit Amirav, Rhetoric and
Tradition: John Chrysostom on Noah and the Flood, Traditio Exegetica Graeca 12

Journal of Early Christian Studies 19:4, 539–564 © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press
540    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

been a particularly important scriptural text in late antique Christianity,

perhaps because of the central role of creation narratives in debates with
Greeks and heretics, perhaps because of the emphasis placed on God as the
creator of all things in the opening lines of the statements of faith formu-
lated at Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381.2 Due to the extensive
preaching and teaching on Genesis, it seems likely that large numbers of
Christians would have come into contact with it, even when they could not
read it themselves.3 What would audiences of this preaching and teaching
have learned about Genesis and what methods did ancient preachers use
to teach them? This paper will analyze the preaching of Basil the Great
and John Chrysostom on Gen 1.1–19 in order to answer these questions.
John Chrysostom delivered his homilies on Genesis at Lenten time some
time during his career as a priest in Antioch (386–397 c.e.) or as bishop
of Constantinople (397–407 c.e.). Their provenance is usually assigned to
Antioch and the date to 388, but there is no conclusive evidence for this.4
Chrysostom carries out a full exegesis of Genesis in these homilies, the first
thirty-two before Easter and the last thirty-five after Easter.5 I shall focus
on Hom. in Gen. 2–6 on Gen 1.1–19, the account of God’s creation of

(Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 50; Frans Van de Paverd, St. John Chrysostom: The Homi-
lies on the Statues, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 239 (Rome: Pontificio Instituto
Orientale, 1991), 89–90. On teaching Genesis to new converts, see Augustine, On
the Catechism of the Uneducated 3, 6 (trans. S. D. F. Salmond, NPNF, vol. 3 (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1887). On hexaemeral literature in and before the fourth
century, see Frank E. Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature: A Study of the Greek
and Latin Commentaries on Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912).
2. See Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of
Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven, CT and
London: Yale University Press, 1993), 148; Frances M. Young “‘Creatio ex nihilo’: A
Context for the Emergence of the Christian Doctrine of Creation,” Scottish Journal
of Theology 44 (1991): 151.
3. See Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, CT
and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 141. See also, Frances M. Young, Biblical
Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 17, and Robert C. Hill, Reading the Old Testament in Antioch, The
Bible in Ancient Christianity 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 49.
4. On the dating, see Cyril Crépey, “Les homélies sur la Genèse de Jean Chrysos­
tome: Unité de la série, succession, provenance et datation,” Revue des études augus-
tiniennes et patristiques 55 (2009): 73–112. On the problem of assigning provenance,
see Wendy Mayer, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom. Provenance, Reshaping the
Foundations, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 273 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale,
2005). Mayer concludes that the only homily in the series for which there is any kind
of evidence for Antiochene provenance is Homily 12 (470).
5. Robert C. Hill, St. John Chrysostom Homilies on Genesis 1–17, The Fathers of
the Church 74 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 5.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    541

the physical world up to and including the creation of the sun, stars, and
moon; Hom. in Gen. 1 simply acted as an introduction to the homilies
and will not be discussed here.6 In Antioch, Lenten preaching took place
Monday through Friday in an evening service in the weeks before Easter;
the situation was probably similar in Constantinople.7 The audience of the
homilies probably consisted of the large crowds who came in especially
for the Lenten season and were not regular attendees.8 They were prob-
ably of mixed educational levels and social orders ranging from the lower
level of paid laborers, craftsmen, and traders to the wealthy upper classes.9
Slaves might also have attended with their masters; women were present
but were most likely segregated from the men in some way.10
Basil’s nine homilies on Genesis’s narration of the creation of the world,
the Hexaemeron, were probably delivered in the later years of Basil’s
career when he was bishop of Caesarea, with 378 being the date favored
by scholars.11 While Chrysostom covered the whole of the text of Gen-
esis in his lengthy series, Basil, like many others, focused exclusively on
the creation narrative.12 In this essay, I shall discuss Hex. 1–6, which, like

6. I use Hill’s translation throughout. For the Greek text, see PG 53 and 54. On
the manuscript tradition and that it is likely that the Greek text in Migne bears a
reasonable relation to the words spoken by Chrysostom, see Walter A. Markowicz,
The Text Tradition of St John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis and MSS Michi-
ganenses 139, 78 and Holkhamicus 61 (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1953).
7. Van de Paverd, Homilies, 161–91 (190 for the situation in Constantinople)
8. Isabella Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews and Chris-
tians in Antioch, Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007), 189.
9. Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 65–87, and Wendy Mayer, “John
Chrysostom: Extraordinary Preacher, Ordinary Audience,” in Preacher and Audi-
ence: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletic, ed. Mary B. Cunningham
and Pauline Allen, A New History of the Sermon 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 103–37.
10. Wendy Mayer, “The Dynamics of Liturgical Space: Aspects of Interaction
between St. John Chrysostom and his Audiences,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 111
(1997): 108.
11. For summaries of the arguments about the date, see Raymond Van Dam,
Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia, PA: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 108–9, and Agnes C. Way, St. Basil, Exegetic
Homilies, FOTC 46 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
1963), ix–x. For the original arguments, Jean Bernardi, La predication des pères
cappadociens (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 42–46, and Emmanuel
Amand De Mendieta, “Les neuf homélies de Basile de Césarée sur l’Hexaéméron,”
Byzantion 48 (1978): 366–67.
12. I use Way’s translation throughout. For the Greek text, see Basile de Césarée.
Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron, ed. Stanislas Giet, SC 26 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1950).
542    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Chrysostom’s Hom. in Gen. 2–6, take us up to the creation of the sun,

moon, and stars. Basil’s preaching on the creation narrative proved so
influential in antiquity that it became the standard text on the topic with
Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus taking it as largely authori-
tative and Ambrose of Milan using it as a direct model for his homilies on
Genesis.13 The Hexaemeron, like Chrysostom’s homilies on Genesis, seems
to have been delivered sometime during the Lenten period of fasting. As
in Antioch and Constantinople, the frequency of the preaching increased
in the Lenten season and Basil seems to have delivered his Hexaemeron
over one week: the first four sermons were delivered morning and evening
over two consecutive days, the fifth sermon was delivered on the next day,
and the final four sermons were again delivered morning and evening over
the final two days of the same week.14 Again, we are probably looking at
a period of preaching with larger than normal Lenten audiences.
Because Basil engages with philosophical discussions about the nature
of the cosmos and the created world, it can seem that his homilies on the
early books of Genesis would have been too difficult for ordinary Chris-
tians and thus that his audiences must have consisted of more educated
people.15 However, Basil himself tells us that “many workers of handi-
crafts, who with difficulty provide a livelihood for themselves from their
daily toil, are gathered around us.”16 The picture of a diverse audience of
less educated Christians, including women and youths as well as crafts-
men, is also supported by Gregory of Nyssa, who argues that the few flaws
later writers identified in Basil’s discussion of creation can be explained
by the fact that he was addressing this kind of uneducated audience.17 It
is thus likely that Basil’s audience, like Chrysostom’s, was a mixed, urban
audience containing some members of the educated elite but also many
ordinary craftsmen, women, and younger people.
This paper compares how each author taught his respective audience
about Gen 1.1–19, starting with some characteristic features of their gen-

13. Way, St. Basil, vii–viii, and Robbins, Hexaemeral Literature, 53–63.
14. Van Dam, Becoming Christian, 108–9.
15. See Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, Transformation of the Classical Heri-
tage 26 (Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1994), 319, that
the level of learning of the homilies might suggest their address to a specialized group
of people rather than a general lay audience.
16. Hex. 3.1 (SC 26:190; trans. Way, 37). See Richard Lim, “The Politics of Inter-
pretation in Basil of Caesarea’s Hexaemeron,” VC 44 (1990): 361–63.
17. Gregory of Nyssa, Liber in Hexaemeron (PG 44:65a–b), with Van Dam, Becom-
ing Christian, 108, and Markos A. Orphanos, Creation and Salvation According to
Saint Basil of Caesarea (Athens: Gregorios Parisianos, 1975), 40–41.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    543

eral approaches before moving on to the more specific question of how they
taught about the nature of the newly created world described in Genesis
and finishing with an assessment of how successful they might have been
based on cognitive approaches to understanding.

BASIL AND CHRYSOSTOM TEACHING GEN 1.1–19:

EXEGETICAL METHOD AND DOCTRINAL LESSONS

In some ways Basil and Chrysostom adopted similar methods when

preaching Genesis to the ordinary audiences they addressed. In terms of
exegetical method, both preachers explicitly denounced allegorical modes
of interpretation, suggesting that they used literal modes instead. In Hom.
in Gen. 22, Chrysostom characterizes allegorical interpretations of Gen
6.2, which interpret the phrase “sons of God” to refer to angels rather
than humans, as “blasphemous” and “fanciful.”18 Similarly, Basil derides
those who interpret according to the “spiritual sense” and “with recourse
to allegories” in favor of a more literal sense on a number of occasions.19
This adherence to the literal mode of interpretation is not surprising for
Chrysostom, who received his Christian education in Antioch under Dio-
dore of Tarsus and was, as Amirav has shown, fully versed in traditions
and methods common to all the Antiochene exegetes.20 The situation is not
so straightforward for Basil because, as Young has noted, it can be hard
to categorize the Cappadocian fathers as either allegorists or literalists.21
Scholars usually accept that Basil adopts a more literal mode of exegesis in
the Hexaemeron, but there is less agreement as to why he does this. Fialon
has explained the situation in terms of Basil’s development as an exegete:
the Hexaemeron was written later in his career than his more allegorical
exegesis of the Psalms and shows his growing independence from Origen
and Eusebius of Caesarea.22 Lim, however, argues that the literal exegesis

18. Hom. in Gen. 22.6 (PG 53:187c; trans. Hill, 72), as Amirav, Rhetoric and
Tradition, 37 n. 20, observes.
19. Basil, Hex. 2.5 (SC 26:163; trans. Way, 29) and Hex. 3.9 (SC 26:234–36; trans.
Way, 51–52). Cf. Natale J. Torchia, “Sympatheia in Basil of Caesarea’s Hexameron:
A Plotinian Hypothesis,” JECS 4 (1996): 360; Pelikan, Christianity and Classical
Culture, 29–30; Orphanos, Creation and Salvation, 42.
20. Hill, Reading, 6–7, 136–39, 143–44, 153, 158; Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradi-
tion, 4–8, 38, 85–88.
21. Frances M. Young, “The Rhetorical Schools and Their Influence on Patristic
Exegesis,” in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick,
ed. Henry Chadwick and Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 195–96, and Biblical Exegesis, 186.
22. For a summary of Fialon’s arguments, see Way, St. Basil, ix.
544    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

of the Hexaemeron does not represent a permanent change in Basil’s mode

of exegesis, but rather a temporary adoption of the literal method because
he was speaking to ordinary audiences who could be led into heresy by
the freedom of interpretation allowed by allegory.23
Before going further we need to define what we mean by literal and
allegorical modes of exegesis. In recent years, there has been some debate
as to whether the old distinction between allegorical exegesis emanating
from Alexandria and literal exegesis emanating from Antioch stands up
and, if it does, how the difference between the two can really be defined.24
The most typical way to differentiate Antiochene exegesis from allegori-
cal exegesis is to point to its “historical” character, i.e. its concern to read
OT texts as describing events that really happened to the Jewish people
and to early humans.25 Antiochenes are also said to be “literal” or even
literalist in their exegesis due to their careful focus on the words and story
of the biblical text and what they explicitly and obviously said.26 The fac-
tual sense developed from these two methods could become the basis for
expounding “more elevated ideas,” but the latter should never contradict
or undermine the former.27 Allegorists, in contrast, were far less interested
in historical events described in the OT in and of themselves than in what
they foreshadowed in the Christian future and how they could be imbued
with Christian meaning.28 For allegorists, OT texts could be false in their
description of facts and events while still telling spiritual truths; as a result,
they very quickly jumped from the text and the events it described to alle-
gorical interpretations of them.29 This basic distinction still stands, even if
we accept all the qualifications made to the distinction between allegorical
and literal exegesis in recent scholarship.30
According to these definitions, both Chrysostom and Basil can be said
to be engaged in literal exegesis because they treat the narrative of Genesis
as a description of God’s actual creation of the material world rather than

23. Lim, “Politics of Interpretation,” 352, 358–64.

24. Young, Biblical Exegesis, 161–216, and David S. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian
Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), 29–30. See also, Young, “Rhetorical Schools.”
25. Hill, Reading, 137–38, 141, 142; Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch, 29, 31–32.
26. Hill, Reading, 135, 136, 150–51; Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition, 4–6.
27. Hill, Reading, 137–38, 154, 158, 165, 198. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch,
32–36.
28. Hill, Reading, 137; Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch, 28–29; Amirav, Rheto-
ric and Tradition, 39.
29. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch, 27; Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition, 4–5.
30. Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition, 4–8, 33–42; Wallace-Hadrill, Christian
Antioch, 31–51.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    545

as an allegorical description of the spiritual world or the Christian future.

A brief comparison with how Origen’s homilies on Genesis deal with one
particular line of the text will clarify this. One of the problems with Gen-
esis’s account of the creation of the world is that, if read as a literal account
of the material world, as it purports to be, it can seem contradictory and
unclear. This is the case, for example, with the way a literal account of
Genesis seems to describe the creation of two heavens; the heaven from
the “heaven and earth” of Gen 1.1 and the firmament that is called heaven
in Gen 1.6–7. Literalists like Basil and Chrysostom have to deal with the
problem of how two actual heavens relate to one another, but allegorists
can simply diffuse the problem by suggesting that the heaven and the
firm­ament represent not two heavens but something else entirely.31 This is
precisely what Origen does. After briefly discussing the physical nature of
the heaven in Gen 1.1, he describes it as “spiritual, . . . our mind, which
is also itself spiritual, that is, our spiritual man which sees and perceives
God,” while the firmament which is called heaven described in Gen 1.6–7
is “corporeal” and “our outer man, which looks at things in a corporeal
way.”32 For Origen, the creation narrative should be read as an allegory
for the creation of the spiritual world, and, in particular, for the spiritual
and material parts of human beings.33 Both Chrysostom and Basil also
refer to the existence of the spiritual world at the time of the creation of
the material world, but they are much more interested in the idea that
Genesis describes creation of the material world. For Basil, the spiritual
world was created before the material world, “a certain condition older
than the birth of the world and proper to the supramundane powers, one
beyond time, everlasting, without beginning or end.”34 He understands
the relationship between the spiritual and the material world by talking
of the material world as a “place of training and a school for the souls of

31. I shall explore Basil and Chrysostom’s different answers to the problem in the
next section.
32. Origen, Hom. in Gen. 1.2 (trans. Ronald E. Heine, Origen: Homilies on Gen-
esis and Exodus, FOTC 71 [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1982]).
33. For more on Origen’s view of the spiritual and material world, see Origen,
Princ. 1.3.3. Throughout the homilies, Origen tends to see the newly created world
and cosmos as allegory for humanity and human nature, on which, see Morwenna
Ludlow, “Origen as Preacher and Teacher: A Comparison of Exegetical Methods His
Writings on Genesis and the Song of Songs,” in Delivering the Word: Preaching and
Exegesis in the Western Christian Tradition, ed. John Lyons and Isabella Sandwell
(Equinox: London, forthcoming).
34. Hex. 1.5 (SC 26:104; trans. Way, 9).
546    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

men” preparing them for the spiritual world.35 However, Basil nowhere
suggests that Genesis should be read as a description of spiritual creation
rather than as a description of material creation.36 Chrysostom too men-
tions the creation of the spiritual world, but he does not really go into
it any detail. For him, the important point is that Genesis is a text that
teaches about the creation of the material world because it was addressing
childlike and unspiritual Jews; to hear about the creation of the spiritual
world his audiences must look at NT texts, which were written for more
advanced audiences.37
Chrysostom and Basil’s preaching on Genesis also shared a concern
to pass on some basic theological and doctrinal lessons about God. The
first lesson that they wish to teach is that the created world, and Genesis’s
description of its formation, should lead people to belief in God’s existence
and awe at his power and creative ability. As Basil says,
Let us glorify the Master Craftsman for all that has been done wisely and
skillfully; and from the beauty of the visible things let us form an idea of
Him who is more than beautiful; and from the greatness of these perceptible
and prescribed bodies let us conceive of Him who is infinite and immense
and who surpasses all understanding in the plenitude of his power.38

The second main lesson, which Basil and Chrysostom connected to the
first as an example of God’s power, is that God created the world out of
nothing in opposition to Greek philosophers and heretics who say that
matter pre-existed or was self-generating.39 Finally, while asserting human
ability to know of God’s existence and power from his creation, both also
asserted that the nature of God and his power were incomprehensible to

35. Hex. 1.5 (SC 26:104–6; trans. Way, 9).

36. Basil’s views of the relation between the spiritual and material worlds are more
complex than I am able to do justice to here. The influence of Origen on Basil deserves
further discussion; some of his ideas about the creation of the spiritual world and
the material world as a training ground can be attributed to Origen. At the moment,
however, I want simply to show the contrast between Origen and Basil’s preaching
on these matters. For further discussion of all these issues, see, Pelikan, Christian-
ity and Classical Culture, 259–61, Robbins, Hexaemeral Literature, 44–45, 52, and
Orphanos, Creation and Salvation, 17–19, 64–68.
37. Hom. in Gen. 2.9 (PG 53:29c–d). Here it is worth noting a slight distinction
between Chrysostom and Basil: for Basil, material creation itself was a training ground
for humans; for Chrysostom, it is the text of Genesis describing the material creation
that has a special educational status. Origen’s influence on Chrysostom’s view of the
creation of the spiritual world is evident too (see Orphanos, Creation and Salvation, 17).
38. Basil, Hex. 1.11 (SC 26:134; trans. Way, 19); cf. Chrysostom, Hom. in Gen.
2.6 (PG 53:28d).
39. The references are too numerous to mention in both authors.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    547

humans.40 Thus the way God created matter out of nothing, and all the
philosophical problems that this raised, became a prime example of the
limits of human reason for both Basil and Chrysostom. Humans could
never understand how God created matter so they should stop trying and
simply accept it on faith. As Chrysostom says,
. . . let us heed what is said and part company with our own reasoning.
Scripture after all says: “The thoughts of mortals are deceptive and their
thinking unreliable” (Wis 9.14). Let us accept what is said with much
gratitude, not overstepping the proper limit nor busying ourselves with
matters beyond us; this is the besetting weakness of enemies of the truth,
wishing as they do to assign every matter to their own reasoning, and
lacking the realization that it is beyond the capacity of human nature to
plumb God’s creation.41

As well as the general similarities in Chrysostom and Basil’s exegeti-

cal technique and doctrinal teachings, there are two general differences
that should be noted. First, Chrysostom devotes a much greater time to
addressing his audience on moral and pastoral matters at the start and
end of each homily compared to Basil—often almost half in total of each
of Chrysostom’s homilies is devoted to addressing his audiences on their
demeanor, encouraging them in their Lenten fasting or other similar mat-
ters. The overtly moral character of Chrysostom’s preaching and his con-
cern with the edification of his audience has often been noticed and has
led to the suggestion that Chrysostom was far more interested in this than
in exegetical and theological matters.42 This could never be said of Basil.43

40. For Chrysostom, see his sermons On the Incomprehensibility of God (ed.
Jean Daniélou, Anne-Marie Malingrey, and Robert Flacelière, Jean Chrysostome. Sur
l’incompréhensibilité de dieu. Homélies 1–5, SC 28 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970];
ed. Anne-Marie Malingrey, Jean Chrysostome. Sur l’égalité du Père et du Fils: Contre
les anoméens homélies 7–12, SC 396 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1994]); cf. Richard
Lim, Public Disputation, Power and Social Order in Late Antiquity, Transforma-
tion of the Classical Heritage 13 (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California
Press, 1995), 171–77. For Basil, see Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, 53
and Lim, Public Disputation, 156.
41. Hom. in Gen. 2.5 (PG 53:28b–c; trans. Hill, 32); cf. Hom. in Gen. 3.5–6 (PG
53:34b), 4.6 (PG 53:41d), 5.9 (PG 53:49d). For Basil on the limits of reason and the
need for faith, see Hex. 1.3 (SC 26:100), 1.8–9 (SC 26:122–24), 1.10 (SC 26:104),
1.11 (SC 26:104–5).
42. Young, “Rhetorical Schools,” 192, and Hill, Reading, 78, 119, 186–87. Com-
pare with Amirav, Rhetorical Traditions, which emphasizes Chrysostom’s skill at using
exegetical traditions in the Genesis homilies.
43. Although it has been argued that he takes greater account of his audience as
his hexaemeral preaching develops, sermon by sermon (Van Dam, Becoming Chris-
tian, 105–31).
548    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Second, Basil is much more willing to engage with non-Christian views

of creation, even if just to refute them properly. With little elaboration,
Chrysostom only makes passing reference to accounts of the creation of
the world found among Greeks, Manichaeans, and heretics along the
following lines: “Even if Mani accosts you saying matter pre-existed, or
Marcion or Valentinus, or Greeks, tell them directly. . . .”44 Basil, in con-
trast, gives detailed accounts of Aristotle and Plato’s arguments that matter
pre-existed and was co-eternal with God before denouncing them.45 Basil
also often used scientific explanations derived from Greek philosophy in
his account. Thus, for example, throughout his preaching, ideas about the
four elements (water, fire, earth, and air) are crucial to his explanations
of the newly created world.46

CHRYSOSTOM AND BASIL TEACHING GEN 1.1–19:

TEACHING ABOUT THE NEWLY THE CREATED WORLD

The main, explicit subject matter of Genesis was description of the world
newly created by God, even if this was a somewhat oblique and sometimes
contradictory description. This means that asking what knowledge of the
scriptural text Chrysostom and Basil passed onto their audiences means
asking what knowledge those audiences are likely to have gained of the
newly created world as a result of listening to their preachers and how
far the two preachers helped them to make sense of Genesis’s rather dif-
ficult narrative.47 That Chrysostom and Basil both used literal methods of

44. Hom. in Gen. 2.10 (PG 53:29d; trans. Hill, 34).

45. Hex. 1.2–3 (SC 26:92–102), 2.2 (SC 26:92–102). See also Hex. 2.4 (SC 26:154–
56), where he devotes much time to explaining the misguided dualistic ideas of the
Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichaeans, who claim that the darkness referred
to in Gen 1.2 is evil or an evil power.
46. Hex. 1.5–8 (SC 26:104–24), 3.5–6 (SC 26:212–20); cf. Orphanos, Creation
and Salvation, 56–57.
47. While literal methods of exegesis were designed by ancient exegetes primarily
with the goal of explaining the events described in Scripture and showing how they
could make sense, modern scholars are far more interested in analyzing and categoriz-
ing the methods themselves. Modern scholarship thus shows a shift in interest from
ancient concerns from the explananda, in the case of Genesis its account of the newly
created world, to the methods of explaining it. I want to shift the emphasis back the
other way by exploring Basil and Chrysostom’s preaching of Genesis not for their use
of exegetical traditions, but for how they seek to explain the newly created world.
Some people in the two preachers’ audiences may well have been sitting there, noting
when they used particular exegetical techniques and how this related to established
traditions of exegesis, but many, I would argue, would simply have wanted to under-
stand what the world that Genesis described was like.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    549

exegesis and were trying to teach the same doctrinal lessons when discuss-
ing the first lines of Genesis might lead us to expect that their teachings
about the newly created world would be very similar. This is not the case.
If we start with Chrysostom, it is clear that his emphasis on moral
issues and pastoral care means that he simply has less time in each sermon
for explaining what the newly created world was like by elaborating on
the text of Genesis. However, it seems to me that more is going on than
Chrysostom responding to the constraints of time. Although elsewhere
Chrysostom does accept the obscurity of the OT, here in the Homilies on
Genesis he constantly emphasizes the clarity and precision of the words of
Scripture.48 The homilies are full of passages that state, “He created things
in sequence and provided us with clear instructions about created things
through the tongue of the blessed author, so that we might learn about
them precisely and not fall into the error of those led by purely human
reasoning.”49 For Chrysostom, Scripture was already perfect and needed
no additions. This meant that he had very little interest in expanding on
what Scripture said to explain what the newly created world was like to
his audiences. When he does seek to explain something more fully than
Scripture, this is usually confined to explanations that the text of Genesis
itself makes necessary. Thus the line “darkness was over the deep” (Gen
1.2) prompts him to say that God had created the water, “the deep,” when
he had created heaven and earth: Genesis had not described the creation
of water individually, “but teaches us which items were produced together
by mentioning heaven and earth and passing over the rest.”50 However, it
is only because Genesis itself mentions “the deep” that he feels the need
to add this and he waits to make the addition until Genesis brings it up.
Instead of helping his audiences to understand Genesis’s description of
the newly created world, Chrysostom focuses on teaching the key ­doctrinal

48. See his Homilies on the Obscurity of the Old Testament (ed. Sergio Zincone,
Giovanni Crisostomo. Omelie sull’ oscurità delle profezie, Verba Seniorum n. s. 12,
[Roma: Edizioni Studium,1998]; trans. Robert C. Hill, John Chrysostom: Old Testa-
ment Homilies. Volume Three: Homilies on the Obscurity of the Old Testament and
on the Psalms [Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Press, 2003]).
49. Hom. in Gen. 3.12 (PG 53:35d; trans. Hill, 44–45); see also Hom. in Gen.
5.12 (PG 53:51d; trans. Hill, 72): “For the particular purpose of correcting later
human folly, Sacred Scripture gives us a precise description of everything according
to the order of creation so as to offset the absurdities of people speaking idly from
their own reasoning.” Robert C. Hill, “Akribeia: A Principle of Chrysostom’s Exege-
sis,” Colloquium 14 (1981): 32–36, discusses how Chrysostom uses the concept of
precision in his preaching.
50. Hom. in Gen. 3.3 (PG 53:33b; trans. Hill, 40).
550    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

lessons of the early lines of Genesis. Most of the time he simply states the
existence of each part of material world as it was created, but then quickly
moves on to the lesson it provides about God. So, for example, when
discussing Gen 1.2, which stated that “the earth was invisible and unfin-
ished,” Chrysostom tells his audience that the word was created in this
way so that humans did not “treat the earth with respect beyond its due”
and did not “attribute the earth’s gifts to it but to the one who brought
into existence from nothing.”51 He shows no interest at all in elaborating
on what this invisible earth might have looked like or what made it invis-
ible.52 Chrysostom’s privileging of the doctrinal lessons of Genesis and of
moral and pastoral issues can also be seen in the way he uses scriptural
references in Hom. in Gen. 2–6. He uses most of the references to other
biblical texts that appear in the first six homilies on Genesis to show God’s
power and incomprehensibility, to say something about his audience or to
say something about the differences between OT and NT audiences.53 He
rarely uses reference to other passages from Scripture to help his audience
understand what the text of Genesis says about the nature of the newly
created world.54 Finally, the focus of Chrysostom’s attention and inter-
est in the Genesis homilies can be seen in his use of analogies. He makes
skillful and frequent use of analogies from everyday life, especially those
of the human craftsman and of human craft, to explain the way God acts
and his pre-eminent power, but rarely uses analogies to explain the world
newly created by God.55
Basil’s preaching on the early lines of Genesis is very different. Basil’s
interest in natural science and in the scientific theories drawn from Greek
philosophy made it inevitable that he would be interested in the nature of
the newly created world and how it can be explained. The much smaller
amount of time that he devotes to pastoral issues than Chrysostom also
means that he has more space to devote to discussing the text of Gen-
esis and what it means. However, the time, care, and attention that Basil

51. Hom. in Gen. 2.12 (PG 53:31a–b; trans. Hill, 36); see also Hom. in Gen. 2.7
(PG 53:29a), 3.6–9 (PG 53:34b), 5.8–9 (PG 53:50c–51a).
52. Although when he goes on to discuss Gen 1.2 in the following homily, he says
that “the deep” was what made the earth lacking in shape (Hom. in Gen. 3.3 [PG
53:33b; trans. Hill, 40]).
53. See Hom. in Gen. 2.11 (PG 53:30b), 2.14 (PG 53:34c–d), 3.7–8 (PG 53:31d),
respectively.
54. The one exception being his discussion of the creation of the sun, moon, and
stars in Hom. in Gen. 6 where he uses Ps 19.5–6 to help his audience understand
what the newly created sun looked like (Hom. in Gen. 6.10 [PG 53:57d]).
55. Hom. in Gen. 2.6 (PG 53:28c–d), 3.13 (PG 53:36a–b), 4.11 (PG 53:43d).
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    551

devotes to talking about the newly created world are still striking when
compared to Chrysostom. One explanation for this is that, while Basil
does give great authority to Scripture, he talks about it as incomplete and
needing some addition from the preacher in a way that Chrysostom does
not.56 In Hex. 2, he tells us that “the narrative [of Genesis] made omissions
to accustom our mind to ready understanding and to permit the rest to be
deduced from slight resources.”57 Or, on the failure of Genesis to explicitly
mention Christ despite the fact that he was there with God taking part in
the creative act, he says, “[I]t indicates silently Him to whom He gives the
command and to whom he speaks, not because it begrudges us the knowl-
edge but that it might inflame us to a desire by the very means by which it
suggest some traces and indication of mystery.”58 A particularly striking
example of this can be seen in his discussion of the way the elements were
created at the same time as heaven and earth. He says of the elements “do
not look for a detailed account of each [in Genesis], but understand those
passed over on silence through those which are set forth.”59 As he says,
“Therefore, even though he says nothing about the elements, fire, water
and air, nevertheless, by the judgment of your intelligence, reflect, in the
first place, that all things are compounded with others, and that you will
find water and air and fire in the earth.”60 While Chrysostom only con-
ceded that God had implicitly included the creation of water in the creation
of heaven and earth when the text of Genesis itself made this absolutely
necessary by mentioning “the deep,” Basil established the creation of all
the elements right at the start of his preaching without needing to wait to
see if or when Genesis would make mention of their existence necessary.

56. Adam Kamesar, “The Evaluation of the Narrative Aggada in Greek and Latin
Patristic Literature,” JTS 45 (1994): 37–71, has some interesting discussion of the “fig-
ure of silence” as understood in classical literary theory and among patristic authors.
Some of his suggestions might explain why Chrysostom, working more directly in
the Antiochene tradition than Basil, was more hostile to filling in what Scripture had
“passed over in silence.” It could be argued that Chrysostom was simply more “lit-
eral” in his approach than Basil in his greater emphasis on the precision of Scripture
and his refusal to add to what Scripture says, and that this can explain the differences
between the two. However, I do not think this is a satisfactory solution as it does
not tell us why Chrysostom chose to be so “literal” in his reading of Gen 1.1–19.
Patristic writers did not adopt particular modes of exegesis thoughtlessly or without
reason simply because it was the tradition to which they were accustomed, but rather
because they wanted to achieve a particular effect on their audience.
57. Hex. 2.3 (SC 26:150; trans. Way, 25).
58. Hex. 3.2 (SC 26:194; trans. Way, 39).
59. Hex. 1.7 (SC 26:118; trans. Way, 13).
60. Hex. 1.7 (SC 26:118; trans. Way, 13).
552    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Thus in his second homily, when Basil explains why the earth was “invis-
ible and unfinished,” he already has the elements at hand to explain that
this was because it was covered with water.61 In fact, it is this inclusion of
the elements in the first act of creation that allows him to go on to make
a number of scientific explanations about the just-created world through-
out his account of Genesis.
While Basil’s discussion of any line of Genesis will usually include refer-
ence to the key doctrinal messages of Genesis about God’s existence and
amazing power, Basil also devotes large parts of his homilies to under-
standing the features of the newly created world being described. Every
line of Genesis receives full and detailed discussion in his homilies, and
he uses every means to fill out the gaps in Genesis to clarify exactly what
it means and exactly how the newly created world should be envisaged.
Thus while Chrysostom rarely used scriptural references for this purpose,
Basil often did. He used quotations from Isaiah to help explain the nature
and form of the heavens,62 from Proverbs, Colossians, and Matthew to
show that spiritual beings lived in the light and thus that the darkness
mentioned at the initial stage of the creation of the world was simply a
shutting off of this light with the barrier of the heavens,63 from Psalms
to help us understand the nature of the firmament, and from Ecclesiastes
and Jeremiah to illuminate the nature of the seas.64 Explaining what the
created world was like was also one of the goals to which Basil turned his
use of Greek philosophy and natural science, especially the use of ideas
about the four elements mentioned above.65 As well as using analogies of
the craftsman to explain God’s existence and creative ability, as Chrysos­
tom had done, Basil thus also made extensive use of analogies from the
natural world, natural science, and daily experiences to help explain to
his audiences what the world newly created by God was like.66 As Rous-
seau says of Basil, “once priority was given” to faith and Scripture, “all

61. Hex. 2.3 (SC 26:150–52; trans. Way, 25), on Gen 1.2.
62. Hex. 1.8 (SC 26:120; trans. Way, 14).
63. Hex. 2.5 (SC 26:164; trans. Way, 30).
64. Hex. 4.3 (SC 26:252–54; trans. Way, 58).
65. There are numerous other examples throughout his preaching.
66. Van Dam, Becoming Christian, 105–31, comments on the way Basil’s use of
analogies from daily life would have made his preaching easier to understand. Basil’s
use of craftsman analogies to describe God can be seen on numerous occasions: Hex.
1.2 (SC 26:94–96), 1.7 (SC 26:112–14), 3.10 (SC 26:238–39), 4.1 (SC 26:246). Unlike
Chrysostom Basil realizes that this could actually be problematic as it could lead to
the assumption that God, like human craftsmen, created things out of pre-existing
matter (Hex. 2.2 [SC 26:148]).
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    553

other sources of knowledge could be harnessed . . . the world of nature

was chief among those sources.”67
We thus have two different preachers who had very different approaches
to teaching about the newly created world. This must have meant that
their audiences took away very different lessons about this world. To
help us gain a clearer understanding of Basil’s and Chrysostom’s different
teaching methods and the different impact they would have had on their
audiences, we will now look at some examples of the different ways they
tackle specific aspects of Genesis’s description of the newly created world.
Let us start first with their discussion of Gen 1.6–8, “God made the fir-
mament, and God divided the water which was below the firmament from
the water which was above the firmament.” When Chrysostom turns to
this line in his fourth homily, he refuses to discuss the question of the mate-
rial from which the firmament was made or how it came into existence,
Now what would you say this means, the firmament? Water has congealed,
or some air that has been compressed, or some other substance? No sensible
person would be rash enough to make a decision on it. Instead it is better
to be grateful and ready to accept what is told us and not reach beyond the
limits of our own nature by meddling in matters beyond us.68

He also says nothing about the body of water that was placed above the
firmament, something that one would think would call for explanation
as it is rather counter-intuitive.69 Some in Chrysostom’s audiences might
associate water above the heavens with the rain coming from the sky and
so find some way to understand it. However, Chrysostom’s lack of discus-
sion of this point could leave people in his audience with an image of the
world that was hard to understand.
The naming of the firmament by God raises another issue that Chrysos­
tom does not deal with satisfactorily. By this point in the text of Genesis
the creation of heaven has now been mentioned twice—once in the very
first line of Genesis (“In the beginning God created heaven and earth”)
and now again in the creation of the firmament that was named heaven.
Chrysostom does not provide any explicit recognition of the problem
that this is the second description of the creation of heaven, instead only
hinting at it, stating, “How is it, you will say, some people want to claim
many heavens were created?,” and in fact denies that they got this idea

67. Rousseau, Basil, 323. See also Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture,
100, 104.
68. Hom. in Gen. 4.7 (PG 53:41d; trans. Hill, 55).
69. Hom. in Gen. 4.8 (PG 53:42a), on Gen 1.7.
554    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

from Scripture.70 In so doing, he seems to be suggesting that the account

of the creation of the firmament is, in actual fact, just a more detailed
account of the creation of heaven, but he does not make this very clear and
a listener would have to be paying very close attention to get the point.
He then distracts his audience from the problem in Genesis by talking of
those who use Ps 148.4 (“Praise him, heaven of heavens”) to argue that
there are many heavens. For Chrysostom, this is a problem of translation
from the Hebrew, which always spoke of “the heavens” in the plural;
when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the reign of Ptolemy,
the translators did not understand this Hebrew usage and so mistakenly
maintained the plural.71 This is all very interesting, but it has nothing to
do with the problem that the text of Genesis itself seems to describe two
heavens without explaining the relationship between them.72
Comparison with Basil is informative. Basil tackles the problem of the
relationship of the original heaven to the firmament called heaven directly,
saying, “we must examine whether this firmament, which was also called
the heavens, is different from the heavens created in the beginning, and
whether, in short, there are two heavens.”73 Having outlined various
unacceptable proposals put forward by philosophers as well as some put
forward by other Christians, he then states his view that “the firmament
is a different [heaven] from that created in the beginning, one of a more
solid nature and furnishing a special service for the universe.”74 He then
refers to Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods 1.10.25, although with no
explicit citation), Paul (2 Cor 12.2), and the Psalmist (Ps 148.4, the same
passage that Chrysostom spent so much time rebutting to back up his
claim). Where Chrysostom was elusive and unclear in his explanation of
the firmament, Basil is straightforward, answers directly the questions
raised by Genesis, and provides the necessary extra information needed

70. Hom. in Gen. 4.8 (PG 53:42b; trans. Hill, 55). Compare with the scriptural ref-
erences that Basil finds to support his argument that there were two or more heavens.
71. Hom. in Gen. 4.9–10 (PG 53:42d–43c). Basil was quite capable of using this
kind of linguistic solution to problems in the text of Genesis when it suited him; cf.
Hex. 2.6 (SC 26:168).
72. One way to explain this is to suggest that Chrysostom might not have wanted
to criticize the clarity of the text of Genesis or point out flaws in its description of
the created world. We could then argue that the rather inexplicit and oblique ways
in which he recognizes the problem of the relationship between the two heavens and
between light and the sun might have been designed to answer those who were pressing
for answers to this problem, while at the same time not giving to much attention to it.
73. Hex. 3.3 (SC 26:196; trans. Way, 39).
74. Hex. 3.3 (SC 26:202; trans. Way, 41–42). Note here the amount of space he
devotes to outlining the views of Greeks and heretics.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    555

for clarification of what the text says. The same is true of the way Basil
explains the nature of the firmament and how water could be placed above
the firmament. Whereas Chrysostom tries to skip over these problems,
Basil devotes a number of paragraphs to exploring the issues involved
and to providing explanations for them. He starts by talking about the
shape of the firmament to show that it was possible for water to lie above
it without sliding off: while the firmament may look curved to humans
looking up to it, from above it was flat, “like the stone vaults of baths
and structures of cave-like buildings which, rounded to a semi-circular
form according to their interior appearance, often have a flat surface on
the upper sections of the roof.”75 By using the analogy from human build-
ings familiar to people in the fourth century, and perhaps particularly to
people living in Cappadocia, Basil could help his audience to understand
how the firmament could support water above it.76 After some reference
to other books of Scripture to show that the firmament was solid and
firm in nature (Ps 17.3, 74.4, 150.1; Amos 4.13), and after denying that
the firmament was frozen water as some suggest,77 Basil also tackles the
problem of the separation of the waters and why some water was placed
above the firmament. He first explains this in terms of a need for balance
with the hot, dry nature of the air that exists above the firmament: water
must also be present above the firmament to stop the heat from the ether
getting out of control.78 To help his audience understand how the water
managed to get above the firmament, he refers to processes familiar from
the human world of evaporation of lakes, rivers, and seas: “For this rea-
son there is aerial water, when the upper region is clouded over by the
rising vapors, which the rivers and fountains and pools and marshes and
all the seas send forth, to prevent the hot air from seizing upon and burn-
ing up the universe.”79 A little later, he further shows his audience how to
understand the water lying above the firmament by telling them explicitly
that it was the source of rain and by using a semi-scientific explanation
to show how rain could be produced from this aerial water.80 This makes
it much easier for his audience to relate the water above the firmament

75. Hex. 3.4 (SC 26:204; trans. Way, 42).

76. Van Dam, Becoming Christian, 115.
77. Hex. 3.4 (SC 26:208). He argues that the firmament is one of the features of
the newly created world that cannot be thought of in terms of being made up of one,
or a combination of more than one, of the four basic elements.
78. Hex. 3.7 (SC 26:224–26).
79. Hex. 3.7 (SC 26:224; trans. Way, 48).
80. Hex. 3.8 (SC 26:232).
556    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

to their own experience of rain coming from the sky than it would have
been for Chrysostom’s audiences.
The creation of the sun and the very late position that it has in the text
of Genesis compared to the creation of light provides another revealing
example of the difference between Chrysostom and Basil. In the Genesis
narrative, God does not create the sun until the fourth day, but God had
already created light and the division between night and day on the first
day, thus raising the question of how the light related to the sun, which
to humans seems to light the world and bring the day. Again, Basil deals
with this problem a lot more explicitly than Chrysostom. To start with,
when describing the division of light and dark into day and night on the
first day of creation, he tells his audience explicitly that at this point the
change from day to night did not happen as a result of “solar motion,”
but that this only became the case later after the creation of the sun.81
Then, in his sixth homily, Basil discusses the description of the creation of
two lights “for the illumination of earth” at Gen 1.14 and straightaway
poses the question, “If the creation of light had preceded, why, now, is the
sun in turn said to have been made to give light?”82 He then goes on to
explain that, on the first day of creation, “the actual nature of light was
introduced, but now this solar body has been made ready to be a vehicle
for created light,”83 before using an analogy from his audiences’ daily lives
to explain how this can work: “Just as fire is different from a lamp, the
one having the power to give light, and the other made to show light to
those who need it, so also in this case the lights have been prepared as a
vehicle for that pure, clear, and immaterial light.”84
Again, Chrysostom tackles these problems much less explicitly making
no direct mention of the fact that it is Genesis’s earlier description of the
creation of the light on the first day that means there is something prob-
lematic about the creation of the sun on the fourth. The only hint that
he is aware that there is a problem at all is that he says that the sun adds
additional light inasmuch as it “renders the day brighter,”85 and that “the
Lord wanted to make the daylight more brilliant by the means of this
heavenly body.”86 He does nothing further to help his audience with the
contradiction in the text. His priority is simply to restate his point that

81. Hex. 2.8 (SC 26:176; trans. Way, 33).

82. Hex. 6.2 (SC 26:232; trans. Way, 85).
83. Hex. 6.2 (SC 26:232; trans. Way, 86).
84. Hex. 6.2 (SC 26:234; trans. Way, 86).
85. Hom. in Gen. 6.10 (PG 53:57d; trans. Hill, 83).
86. Hom. in Gen. 6.14 (PG 53:58d; trans. Hill, 85).
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    557

the sun was created late in the creation narrative so that “the Greeks”
did not think it caused the plants to grow—something that should only
be attributed to God’s power.87 Again the message about God takes pre-
cedence over teaching his audience about the nature of the newly created
world. He also said nothing in his discussion of earlier lines of Genesis to
clarify that the sun had not been brought into existence with the creation
of light and was not responsible for the change of night to day.
A final example can be seen in the approach of the two preachers to
Gen 1.10, “Let the water of heaven be gathered into one mass, and let
dry land appear.” When Chrysostom comes to this line in his fifth hom-
ily, he has no discussion at all of what it might mean for the water to be
gathered in “one mass,” whether it really was gathered in one place like
a giant lake with the dry land all around it or how it might compare to
the world people were familiar with where the water seemed to be divided
up into a number of different seas and lakes.88 Basil, in contrast, seems to
feel this is an issue that needs discussing because people in his audience
might ask, “Were the waters ordered to gather together into one place,
since there appear to be many seas, situated very far from one another?”89
To answer this query, he points out that in the world his audience know,
all the seas that seem separate are in fact one and joined together, “as
those who have travelled the earth record.”90 While Basil elaborated on
and filled out the creation narrative given in Scripture in order to make it
make sense, Chrysostom refused to clarify even the most obscure points
in the text of Genesis.

ASSESSING CHRYSOSTOM AND BASIL’S SUCCESS AT

TEACHING GEN 1.1–19: A COGNITIVE APPROACH

It should be clear from this discussion that I am suggesting that Basil

was more successful than Chrysostom at teaching his audiences about the
nature of the newly created world as described in Gen 1.1–19. It seems that
Basil had all the answers for clarifying how the different lines of the text
related to one another and how the newly created world could be visual-
ized. I thus agree with Gregory of Nyssa that Basil should be praised “for
having made the sublime working of the universe and cosmos generally

87. Hom. in Gen. 6.14 (PG 53:58d; trans. Hill, 84–85).

88. Hom. in Gen. 5.8 (PG 53:50c–d; trans. Hill, 70).
89. Hex. 4.2 (SC 26:250; trans. Way, 57).
90. Hex. 4.4 (SC 26:260; trans. Way, 61).
558    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

intelligible.”91 I want to argue that the reason for Basil’s greater degree of
success is that he understood the problems that Genesis posed to human
understanding and engaged with his audience’s cognitive processes in a way
that Chrysostom did not. To support this argument, a definition of human
understanding against which to measure Chrysostom and Basil is needed,
for which cognitive science can provide. Cognitivists define understanding
as a process in which the new or partial information that humans encoun-
ter, whether in their lives or in spoken or written discourse, is matched or
filled out with material drawn from existing knowledge.92 The purpose of
this matching and filling out is for humans to create in their minds com-
plete and “cognitively negotiable” representations of situations that they
meet or have described to them.93 This might include filling out contextual
features where these are not explicitly mentioned, supplying information
about how natural processes and human motivations normally work in
order to understand the links between events and why people act as they
do, or adding detail to characterizations and descriptions of people and
places.94 Because all this filling out of detail, context, and connections is
based on existing knowledge, understanding something tends to mean
assimilating it to what one already knows.95 This is all true whether it is
a case of understanding information and situations encountered in life or
information and situations encountered in spoken or written discourse.
Basil’s approach to teaching Gen 1.1–19 offers precisely what such a
definition of understanding requires.96 His use of analogies show him relat-

91. De hominis opificio, pref. (PG 44:125).

92. Peter Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction (London and New York:
Routledge, 2002), 122; Joanna Gavins, Text World Theory: An Introduction (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 3–6; Patrick C. Hogan, Cognitive Science,
Literature and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists (New York and London: Routledge,
2003), 34–40; Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals and
Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures (Hillsdale, NJ: Law-
rence Erlbaum, 1977) , 9–10, 67.
93. Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 46–47; Gavins, Text World Theory, 3, 10, 24,
35, 38.
94. Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 46–47; Gavins, Text World Theory, 3, 10, 24,
35, 38.
95. Schank and Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, 67.
96. As Pelikan has shown, Basil’s natural theology, shared with the other Cappa­
docians, meant that he had a relatively positive attitude not only towards natural
science, but also to human mental processes. He shows how human reason, empiri-
cal knowledge, and something that the Cappadocians seem to describe as “common
sense” or “common understanding” are all acceptable means for attaining knowl-
edge of theological issues (see Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, 25–26, 29,
35–37, 64, 95, 99, 101, 176, 191, and 195, on reason and empirical knowledge and
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    559

ing the unfamiliar and incomplete account of Genesis to his audience’s

existing knowledge so that they can fill out its description of the elements
of the newly created world and so gain an understanding of what each
would have looked like and how it would have operated.97 By tackling
the contradictions in the text explicitly and using analogies to show how
different features described in Genesis related to one another, Basil also
enabled his audiences to see how the different elements of the world fit
together so that they could more easily build a complete representation
of the whole of the newly created world. As a result of these two teaching
methods, his audience would have been able to build up a relatively clear
picture of the step-by-step creation of the world and to understand how
the newly created world related to their own in each of its stages. From
Basil’s teaching it would be clear that it was a world that looked like their
own world to quite a large degree, or least worked according to the same
general principles as it.
The members of Chrysostom’s audience, on the other hand, were left to
deal with the confusions in Genesis’s creation narrative by themselves, and
Chrysostom did little to engage with the cognitive processes of his audience.
He refused to use analogies familiar to his audiences to explain individual
features of the newly created world and to explicitly admit to or tackle
the contradictions in the text of Genesis. This would have made it hard
for his audience to relate Genesis’s narrative of the newly created world
to their existing knowledge or to create a clear and coherent representa-
tion of the world as a whole. Instead, they would be left with an image of
a strange, disjointed world with different parts of it floating on their own
and with no way to connect them. In some ways, it would sound like their
own world, but in others, it would seem very different, something alien
and strange. This is illustrated nicely by the one exceptional case where
Chrysostom does use an analogy from daily life to explain the nature of
the newly created world. Near the end of his second homily, Chrysostom

how they can lead to the same conclusions as faith and Scripture, and 62–63, 67,
and 195–96, on “common sense”). In future work, I will explore how far the Cap-
padocians’ positive attitude to human mental processes might show their awareness
of basic human cognitive processes as described by modern cognitive science.
97. Lim has argued that the Cappadocians’ willingness to allow people to specu-
late about the nature of the created world was a way to distract them from engaging
in more dangerous speculation about the nature of God (Lim, Public Disputation,
167–68, with Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 27.9–10). I follow Pelikan’s more positive
view of the Cappadocians’ approach to human cognitive processes (see n. 96 above
for citations).
560    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

uses the analogy of the human building process to describe God’s creation
of heaven and earth. His point, however, is not to make it easier for his
audience to understand this aspect of creation but rather the opposite, to
make it appear even stranger and more impossible and unfamiliar:
Notice how the divine nature shines out of the very manner of creation,
[God] executes his creation in a way contrary to human procedures, first
stretching out the heavens and then laying the earth beneath, first the
roof and then the foundation. Who has ever seen the like? Who has ever
heard of it? No matter what human beings produce, this could never have
happened.98

The ultimate result of Chrysostom’s preaching would be to leave people

with a sense of bafflement and a lack of understanding.
Judging Basil and Chrysostom’s preaching on Genesis from a cognitive
point of view as outlined above gives us a new way into the question of
audience understanding of their preaching. The normal way for scholars
to think about this question in the past has been in terms of the social
status or educational levels of audiences or in terms of familiarity with
the techniques of classical rhetoric and Christian exegetical traditions.99
The cognitive processes described above, in contrast, apply to all humans
whatever their educational levels and social background.100 All audience
members—whatever the level of education and whatever the familiarity
with the rhetorical techniques and exegetical traditions—would, I argue,
have been trying to process Basil and Chrysostom’s teaching on the newly
created world using the cognitive processes I have described above. This
would be true even if they were also trying to process Basil and Chrysos­

98. Hom. in Gen. 2.11 (PG 53:30b; trans. Hill, 35).

99. For the former, see Ramsey MacMullen, “A Note on Sermo Humilis,” JTS 17
(1966): 108–12, and “The Preacher’s Audience AD 350–400,” JTS 40 (1989): 503–
11; Mary Cunningham, “Preaching and the Community,” in Church and People in
Byzantium, ed. Rosemary Morris (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and
Modern Greek Studies, 1990), 29–47; Philip Rousseau, “The Preacher’s Audience: A
More Optimistic View,” in Ancient History in a Modern University. Volume 2: Early
Christianity, Late Antiquity and Beyond, ed. T. W. Hillard et al. (Grand Rapids, MI:
W. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 391–400. For the latter, see Maxwell, Christianization and
Communication, on familiarity with forms of classical rhetoric and public speaking,
and Young, Biblical Exegesis, and Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition.
100. According to modern cognitive science, knowledge and understanding are uni-
versal human mental processes that work in basically the same way for all “cognitively
modern humans” (Gavins, Text World Theory, 1, 6; Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 4,
15, 20; Schank and Abelson, Scripts, Plans and Goals, 37; Mark Turner, Cognitive
Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think About Politics, Economics, Law,
and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 15, 20–21.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    561

tom’s preaching in other ways too, for example, by noticing how their
words fit with existing traditions of exegesis. Once we move away from
seeing the educational levels of audiences as the defining feature of under-
standing, we can see that Basil’s preaching was easier to understand, in the
sense of being easier to process cognitively, even though Basil made much
greater reference to material drawn from classical learning and drew on
some difficult philosophical and natural-scientific ideas.

CONCLUSION

So, are we to finish by noting that Chrysostom was not a very good teacher
of Gen 1.1–19? Despite all I have said, I would argue that the situation is
not as simple as this and that there are two qualifications we can make of
our initial conclusions. First, if we return to the shared goal that Chrysos-
tom and Basil had of using Gen 1.1–19 to teach God’s existence, amazing
power, and creation of the world out of nothing, we can say that, despite
Chrysostom’s failure to teach his audiences clearly about the newly cre-
ated world, he could have been just as successful as Basil at teaching this
larger doctrinal lesson. We could thus summarize the comparison between
Chrysostom and Basil’s approaches to teaching Gen 1.1–19 in the follow-
ing way: Basil sought to teach God’s existence, incomparable power, and
ability to create out of nothing by helping his audiences to understand and
visualize the nature and beauty of the newly created world and in these
ways to lead them to God; Chrysostom, in contrast, sought to teach these
same lessons about God by baffling his audience and by inducing in them
a sense of lack of understanding of Scripture and the world it described
and in these ways to create a sense of wonderment at God.
Second, we can defend Chrysostom’s approach to teaching Gen 1.1–19
by suggesting that it is not so much that Chrysostom failed to engage the
cognitive processes of his audience but that he intentionally chose not to
do so because he was trying to achieve an effect other than understanding.
One of the characteristic features of Chrysostom’s preaching on the early
verses of Genesis is his use of repetition. When he turns from the pastoral
address to his audience to discussion of Genesis in each homily, he always
begins by repeating what had been said up to that point about the cre-
ation of the world before adding discussion of the next verse.101 Near the
beginning of his third homily, he tells his audience that he does this “in
order that the sermon may be clearer to you” and so that they could “fit

101. Hom. in Gen. 3.3. (PG 53:33a–b), 4.5 (PG 53:41c), 5.8–9 (PG 53:50c–51a).
562    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

together, as into one whole, what is said today with what was said yester-
day.”102 In each homily, however, his fitting together “as into one whole”
simply involves Chrysostom repeating the lines of Genesis with only the
most basic causal or explanatory connections made between them. Thus
in one of these initial summaries he states,
Notice here, dearly beloved, the sequence of the teaching. What I mean is
that he first brought to our attention, after the creation of heaven and earth,
the fact that “the earth was invisible and lacking all shape,” and supplied
the explanation for it—namely, it was invisible because it was concealed in
darkness and water. Then at the command of the Lord, light was created
and a separation made between light and darkness; one received the name
day and the other night.103

There are also numerous examples where Chrysostom explains a verse

of Genesis by saying it is just like earlier verses. When describing the cre-
ation of the “firmament” in the water that covered the earth in his fourth
homily, Chrysostom says,
Notice how the Sacred Scripture here too employs the same sequence of
thought. Just as it said yesterday “Let there be light,” and after it was
created added, “Let there be separation between light” and darkness, and
thus the light was called day, so too today it said, “Let a firmament be
made in the middle of the water.” Then, as with the light, so too here it
taught us about the firmament, saying, “for the purpose of keeping one
body of water separate from the other.” And when it had made its use
clear to us, as it imposed a name on light, so too it put a label on the
firmament.104

In these ways, Chrysostom constantly reinforces the exact words and pat-
tern of Genesis as well as its own repetitive nature, and presents the cre-
ation narrative as a self-contained system that could only be understood
by reference back to itself, rather than to any external sources of knowl-
edge or comparison.105 Maxwell has written about Chrysostom’s use of
repetition as a pedagogical tool that helped him teach his audiences.106
The trouble is that it is not clear that repetitive learning really is such a
good educational tool: according to modern educational theory, teaching

102. Hom. in Gen. 3.3 (PG 53:33a–b; trans. Hill, 40).

103. Hom. in Gen. 4.5 (PG 53:41c; trans. Hill, 54).
104. Hom. in Gen. 4.8 (PG 53:42a–b; trans. Hill, 55, my emphasis); see also Hom.
in Gen. 4.11 (PG 53:43c), 5.9 (PG 53:50d–51a).
105. That Chrysostom sees the repetitive nature of Genesis as a beneficial feature,
see Hom. in Gen. 5.14 (PG 53:52c).
106. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication, 104–7.
 SANDWELL / CREATION OF THE WORLD    563

by rote is not the best method for bringing about “meaningful learning”
because it does not engage the existing knowledge of the listener and so
does not have such strong cognitive effects.107 This does not mean, how-
ever, that rote learning might not have powerful effects other than bringing
about understanding. Guy Stroumsa has recently argued of late antique
monastic communities that
reading the Scriptures had a purpose entirely different from that ordinarily
attributed to reading: the transmission of knowledge. The constant
repetition of a text known by heart . . . was not meant to inculcate or
assimilate any new knowledge. This activity, which was known by medieval
monasticism as lectio divina (or sacra pagina), was soteriological in essence:
it was meant as a technical method of concentration of mind, a way of
praying through the Scriptures, so that the word may enter the mind or
heart and expulse or repulse evil thoughts sent by Satan.108

Rather than teaching people about the events and people described in Scrip-
ture, such methods were intended to present Scripture as a kind of charm
to ward off evil or as a form of meditation that could induce a religious
state or attitude in the person reading or listening to it; reading, or being
preached to about, Scripture could induce an effect or experience rather
than teaching a lesson. I would like to suggest that this approach can help
us to understand what Chrysostom might have been trying to achieve with
his preaching on Gen 1.1–19. He primarily wanted his audience to use
memorization and recitation of the words of Genesis as a kind of charm
that could ward off heretics and induce a state of belief.109

107. David P. Ausubel, Educational Psychology: A Cognitive Point of View (New

York and London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1968), 24–26, 107–15, 321–23.
How typical this is of Chrysostom’s approach needs further discussion. I aim to carry
out this out in the future. How does it fit for example with his views of Christian
education in his On Vainglory and the Education of Young Men? How does it relate
to passages of his preaching where he seems to suggest that understanding rather than
rote learning is precisely what he requires of his audiences (see Hill, Reading, 119 and
186, and Maxwell, Christianization and Communication, 88–117)?
108. Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Scriptural Movement of Late Antiquity and Christian
Monasticism,” JECS 16 (2008): 70. The meaning of lectio divina is debated. Stroumsa
follows the meaning of the term that was common from the Middle Ages; see Louis
Leloir, “Lectio divina and the Desert Fathers,” Liturgy 23 (1989): 3–38. Armand Veil-
leux, “Lectio Divina as a School of Prayer among the Fathers of the Desert” (delivered
at the Centre Saint-Louis-des-Français, Rome, November 1995; available in uncredited
English translation at http://users.skynet.be/scourmont/Armand/wri/lectio-eng.htm).
109. See especially Hom. in Gen. 2.10 (PG 53:29d–30a; trans. Hill, 34): “If Mani
accosts you saying matter preexisted, or Marcion, or Valentinus, or the Greeks, tell
them directly, ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth,’” as if this recitation
564    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Chrysostom’s emphasis on moral preaching and Basil of Caesarea’s

interest in science always meant that their approaches to teaching Gen
1.1–19 were going to be different. However, placing cognitive processes at
center stage has helped to show us quite how different and has given us a
new way to think about the question of the audience’s understanding and
thereby to see clearly the very different lessons that two urban audiences
in the eastern part of the Roman Empire would have taken away about
Genesis. On the one hand, the audiences of Basil’s Hexaemeron would
have taken away a reasonable understanding of what the newly created
world looked like and used this knowledge to understand God’s existence
and power; in other words, Basil encouraged them to use their cognitive
processes to understand Scripture. On the other hand, the audiences of
Chrysostom’s early homilies on Genesis would have had only a confused
and disjointed picture of the newly created world, but one that would
have led them into a state of wonderment regarding God’s existence and
power; they were taught to see Scripture as a charm or something that
should automatically impose a state of belief rather than something that
should be understood. That two audiences might have taken away such
different experiences and understandings from preaching on Genesis by
two preachers who shared doctrinal beliefs and modes of exegesis is surely
striking and tells us something about the kind of diversity of knowledge
about, and attitudes towards, Scripture that might have existed among
ordinary Christians in late antiquity.

Isabella Sandwell is Lecturer in Ancient History in the Department of

Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol

could make them flee; also Hom. in Gen. 2.6 (PG 53:28d; trans. Hill, 32): “When
you hear ‘He made,’ concern yourself no further, but with a bowed head believe what
he said.” Basil at one point refers to the way that the first line of Genesis could act
in similar way, by “imprinting on our hearts as a seal and a security, the highly hon-
ored name of God, saying: ‘In the beginning God created’” (Hex. 1.2 [SC 26:94–96;
trans. Way, 6]). However, it is quite clear from his approach to Scripture more gen-
erally that he also thought audiences should understand and be able to cognize the
early verses of Genesis.