Did St. Augustine err in reading Genesis to teach an instantaneous creation?
A viewer asks, given that Pope Gregory the Great taught from Genesis 2:4 that heaven and earth were created instantaneously as unformed matter, whether St. Augustine erred in his interpretation and in translation.
Answer
Heaven and earth being created instantaneously is fine, because Genesis 1:1 says "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and the Hebrew has two direct-object markers, "et," showing the heavens and the earth were made simultaneously, the earth a little seed inside a mass of water. Augustine's error was to make all of creation instantaneous, the plants, sun, animals and man, and then to say the six days are only the angels contemplating the creation, which is a ridiculous interpretation. He got there partly because he knew neither Greek nor Hebrew: he read Sirach 18:1 in the Vulgate as "simul," simultaneously, when the original Greek koine only meant "in common," that is, everything was made by God. So he abandoned the literal reading he could not work out and went allegorical, following the Alexandrian school, whereas Genesis 1 is a historical text, as all the Fathers said.