NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

The creation of luminous bodies.day; thus they are given the name of “amphiskii,” 1589 (shadowed-on-both-sides ). All thesephenomena happen whilst the sun is passing into northern regions: they give us an idea ofthe heat thrown on the air, by the rays of the sun and of the effects that they produce. Nextwe pass to autumn, which breaks up the excessive heat, lessening the warmth little by little,and by a moderate temperature brings us back without suffering to winter, to the time whenthe sun returns from the northern regions to the southern. It is thus that seasons, followingthe course of the sun, succeed each other to rule our life.“Let them be for days” 1590 says Scripture, not to produce them but to rule them; becauseday and night are older than the creation of the luminaries and it is this that the psalm declaresto us. “The sun to rule by day…the moon and stars to rule by night.” 1591 How doesthe sun rule by day? Because carrying everywhere light with it, it is no sooner risen abovethe horizon than it drives away darkness and brings us day. Thus we might, without selfdeception, define day as air lighted by the sun, or as the space of time that the sun passes inour hemisphere. The functions of the sun and moon serve further to mark years. The moon,after having twelve times run her course, forms a year which sometimes needs an intercalarymonth to make it exactly agree with the seasons. Such was formerly the year of the Hebrewsand of the early Greeks. 1592 As to the solar year, it is the time that the sun, having startedfrom a certain sign, takes to return to it in its normal progress.9. “And God made two great lights.” 1593 The word “great,” if, for example we say it ofthe heaven of the earth or of the sea, may have an absolute sense; but ordinarily it has onlya relative meaning, as a great horse, or a great ox. It is not that these animals are of an immoderatesize, but that in comparison with their like they deserve the title of great. Whatidea shall we ourselves form here of greatness? Shall it be the idea that we have of it in theant and in all the little creatures of nature, which we call great in comparison with those likethemselves, and to show their superiority over them? Or shall we predicate greatness of theluminaries, as of the natural greatness inherent in them? As for me, I think so. If the sunand moon are great, it is not in comparison with the smaller stars, but because they havesuch a circumference that the splendour which they diffuse lights up the heavens and the871589 “Simili modo tradunt in Syene oppido, quod est super Alexandriam quinque millibus stadiorum, solstitiidie medio nullam umbram jaci; puteumque ejus experimenti gratia factum, totum illuminari.” Pliny ii. 75. cf.Lucan., Phars. 507, “atque umbras nunquam flectente Syene.”1590 Gen. i. 14.1591 Ps. cxxxvi. 8, 9.1592 The Syrians and Macedonians had also an intercalary thirteenth month to accommodate the lunar tothe solar cycle. Solon is credited with the introduction of the system into Greece about 594 b.c. But the Juliancalendar improved upon this mode of adjustment.1593 Gen. i. 16.317