Annotatio II
”In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” — Genesis 1:1
Philo the Jew — whom Origen, Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine followed in most of their expositions — in his book On the Fashioning of the Six Days, narrating the present passage, says that heaven was made by God to be the most sacred dwelling of the gods, both of those not apparent [to sense] and of those obvious to sense.1 Lest anyone suspect this opinion to incline toward the error of the pagans, who introduce many gods, it must be known that Philo — as appears from the same work of his — understands by the name of “gods” the spiritual, rational, and heavenly substances called by us Angels:2 of which he says some are incorporeal and invisible, but others not without bodies — such as are the stars, which appear to our eyes.