Book on the Universe

On the Calculation of Time and Days.

Although the heaven itself (meanwhile, while all things were gradually drawn forth from privation and the potentiality of matter by divine and celestial means, through seven intervals of nature that they call days) had been in motion for countless ages, nevertheless, in truth, the existence of time could never have been possible unless an intellect capable of counting had been included within the heaven, that is, man, for whose sake all things exist, who himself would note the number of the motion. Therefore, the Egyptians talk nonsense, who place many years before the sacred chronology, when they prove nothing happened in those times; the Chaldeans dreamed up much falser things with their 300,000 years, but most of all and most impudently of all, Aristotle, and those who with him posit the eternity of the sensible world, because all things among men must be judged by the arbiters who establish time itself. Nor should fables of massacres be opposed to me. For in the sacred writings, we have memories of time prior to the universal flood. Therefore, we must subscribe to the sacred scriptures. Since time, therefore, is the number of celestial motion observed according to the aspect of the sun or any stars returning from point to point, it is certain that in the first three days of Genesis no time could have been established in that manner. However, since the first intellect capable of counting is Adam, it is also most certain that although there was time during the greater part of the fourth, fifth, and sixth day, it was not calculated except from the evening of the Sabbath, which was at the end of the sixth day. Although it is necessary to go from the beginning to the first day, it could be admitted in a spiritual sense that there were those...