27 In the beginning God created1 the heaven and the earth. But when the earth did not come into sight2, but was covered with thick darkness, and a wind moved upon its surface3, God commanded that there should be light4: and when that was made, he considered the whole mass, and separated the light and the darkness; and the name he gave to one wasNight, and the other he called Day: and he named the beginning of light, and the time of rest5, The Evening and The Morning, and this was indeed the first day. But Moses said it was one day; the cause of which I am able to give even now; but because I have promised to give such reasons for all things in a treatise by itself, I shall put off its exposition till that time. After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts, and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth6, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews. On the third day he appointed the dry land to appear, with the sea itself round about it; and on the very same day he made the plants and the seeds to spring out of the earth7. On the fourth day he adorned the heaven with the sun, the moon, and the other stars, and appointed them their motions and courses, that the vicissitudes of the seasons might be clearly signified. And on the fifth day he produced the living creatures, both those that swim8, and those that fly; the former in the sea, the latter in the air: he also sorted them as to society and mixture, for procreation, and that their kinds might increase and multiply9. On the sixth day he created10 the four-footed beasts, and made them male and female: on the same day he also formed man11.

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FOOTNOTES

1 Josephus uses the verb ἔκτισεν, “founded,” “built,” “brought into being,” for the Hebrew word ברא (Gen. 1:1), rather than the LXX’s ἐποίησεν, “made,” since the former implies more clearly creatio ex nihilo, whereas the latter implies creatio ex aliquo.

2 Josephus, like Philo ( De Opificio Mundi 7.29), follows the LXX’s rendering of ובהו תהו (Gen. 1:2) as ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, “unseen and unformed.”

3 Josephus is here trying to avoid the anthropomorphism implied by the word מרחפת (Gen. 1:2), which the LXX partially eliminates by saying that the breath of God “was borne” upon the water. The connotation of the word מרחפת is not merely hovering but also brooding, with the image that the world-egg was hatched, as it were, from fluid chaos. Josephus, presumably because he feared that such an image would be regarded as equivalent to the Orphic account of creation, avoids it by using a word that implies only that the breath sped rapidly over the surface of the earth.

4 Franxman (38), significantly, notes that for all the opportunity he had to do so throughout his paraphrase of Chapter 1 of Genesis, Josephus never once directly quotes God. Goold (1961:176) notes that Pseudo- Longinus’ (9.9) citation of Genesis has a surprisingly close parallel at the very beginning of Josephus’ Ant.

5 Note the double chiasmus: light (A), darkness (B); night (B), day (A); evening (P), morning (Q); light (Q), cessation (P). Josephus has omitted reference to Gen. 1:5, that declares that “there was evening and there was morning, one day,” a passage that presents difficulties because the Jewish day did not end at sunrise (and so it is not possible to understand this clause as meaning that the evening and the morning formed the first day), and because it is hard to understand how there could be evening before the day on that light was created. Josephus avoids these problems by omitting this difficult statement altogether and by noting merely that God named the dawn of the light morning and its cessation evening, as does the Bible.

6 Josephus here adds information to the meager and even telegraphic account of the Bible, in order to make it more intelligible to his Greek audience, so that they will understand more fully the processes described there. Thus the Hebrew in Gen. 1:6, that says “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,” is obscure. Josephus, seeking to avoid the charge of obscurity made by some Romans (cf., e.g., Juvenal 14.102), explains that what God did was to set the heavens above the universe and to congeal ice about it. He thus explains the origin of rain, that in the biblical account is left unexplained. That the heavens contained water is also seen in the Agada, that interprets the word heaven ( שׁמים) as a combination of two words, מים שׂא (“carries water”) ( Midrash Gen. Rabbah 4.7). Note that Josephus does not mention the firmament. Franxman (41 n. 11) remarks that Josephus’ description of the second day is very close to the language and phrasing of the LXX of Job 38.

7 Cf. Philo ( De Opificio Mundi 12.40): “After a fashion quite contrary to the present order of Nature, all were laden with fruit as soon as ever they came into existence.” Note that Josephus omits the biblical statement here, as elsewhere in his paraphrase of chapter 1 of Genesis, that God saw that what He had created was good, perhaps because this would raise the question as to why there is evil in the world.

8 Fearing that his readers might regard as mythical the great sea-monsters (the Leviathan and its mate, according to rabbinic tradition, .Abodah Zarah 3b) mentioned in the Hebrew account of creation (Gen. 1:21), a view that would certainly be held by the Epicureans in his audience, Josephus says merely that God created the creatures that swim.  

9 Josephus omits the blessing (Gen. 1:22) that God gives to the creatures of the sea and the sky and that is parallel to the blessing (Gen. 1:28) that God gives to the human race, since this is in the form of a commandment, that would hardly be applicable to fish and birds.

10 The fact that Josephus uses the word δημιουργεῖ (“creates,” “composes”) when he speaks of God’s creation of four-footed creatures, whereas the Bible (Gen. 1:24) says, “Let the earth bring forth the living Hebrew text (Gen. 2:2), that states that God finished His work on the seventh day, since this would imply that God worked on the seventh day and would contradict the immediately following clause that God rested on the seventh day. The LXX avoids the problem by reading that God finished His work on the sixth day; and, indeed, according to rabbinic tradition ( Megillah 9a), this is one of the changes that the translators of the LXX adopted under divine inspiration. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen. 2:2 avoids the problem by asserting that the work of creation was completed by the seventh day.

11 The rabbis realized the problem inherent in the use of the plural “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26), and they explain that before creating man God took counsel with the angels ( Midrash Gen. Rabbah 8.3-7). Philo ( De Opificio Mundi 24.72) inferred from this passage a plurality of creators, just as Plato ( Tim. 41C, 42E) spoke of the creator as having collaborators. The classical Christian commentators generally found in the use of this plural an allusion to the Trinity. But, as the eleventh-century Jewish commentator, Rashi, notes, the use of the singular verb in the next verse, “And God created man,” shows that there was only a single creator. Nonetheless, in the list of the changes ( Megillah 9a) that, according to the rabbis, the translators of the LXX were inspired by God to make, we note that this verse is changed to “I shall make man,” presumably to prevent the reader from concluding that more than one Power created man. Elsewhere ( Apion 2.192) Josephus states that God performed His work of creation without assistants, for He has no need of them. Here, too, he avoids this problem and the consequent misunderstandings by reporting simply that “on this day He also fashioned humanity.” Moreover, the classical Jewish commentators were well aware that God’s words (Gen. 1:26) “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” had anthropomorphic implications, and they sought to soften these by explaining that “after our likeness” means “with discernment and understanding” (Rashi) or that it refers to those respects in that man’s soul is similar to God (Ibn Ezra and Naḥmanides). Josephus avoids this difficulty by omitting the phrase completely and by simply reporting that God formed man. Jervell (1974:197-204), commenting on Josephus’ description of the creation of man (Gen. 1:26-31), notes that Josephus represses both here and elsewhere the biblical statement that man was created in the image of God. He contends that this omission is not due to Josephus’ having a different biblical text but rather to his strong view that God Himself is not describable and to his strictness about images.