Abstract

This chapter analyzes thirty-eight different sixteenth-century commentaries on Genesis and their medieval Christian and Jewish predecessors, focusing specifically on exegeses of Genesis 1:9–10. These biblical verses recount God's separation of the waters from the earth on the third day of creation. This chapter argues that in contrast to patristic and medieval Christian and Jewish understandings of why water did not flood the earth, sixteenth-century Christian exegeses of Genesis 1:9–10 show that authors offered a wide variety of categorizations for the dry land's existence with the majority insisting that God kept the water from the earth through his supernatural power.

Keywords: Book of Genesis; John Calvin; Martin Luther; Rashi; Jewish exegesis; Maimonides

But if water covered the whole wide world, where would it go in order to leave some of the land exposed? Could it be that water in a rarefied state, like a cloud, had covered the earth, and that it was brought together and became dense, thus disclosing some of the many regions of the world and making it possible for dry land to appear? On the other hand, it could be that the earth settled in vast areas and thus offered hollow places into which the flowing waters might pour; and dry land then would appear in the places from which the water had withdrawn.

Therefore, it is by divine power that the waters do not press in on us. God therefore performs for us to this day and until the end of the world that same miracle, which he performed for the people of Israel with the Red Sea […] For it is most true that the sea is much higher than the earth. Therefore, God to this day orders the waters to hang suspended and holds them by his Word, so that they do not burst in on us, as they burst in [on the earth] during the Flood.