Book V - Snyder Bible

The Preaching of Simeon Kefa 319
tomed to support and color over those things which seem to
be absurd. And if it please you that I should state some of
themfor I am to some extent acquainted with themI shall
do as you order me. And when Kefa had given him leave, Niceta
proceeded as follows.
Chapter XXX: Cosmogony of Orpheus
All the literature among the Greeks which is written on
the subject of the origin of antiquity is based upon many authorities,
but especially two, Orpheus and Hesiod. Now their
writings are divided into two parts, in respect of their meaningthat
is the literal and the allegorical; and the vulgar
crowd has flocked to the literalbut all the eloquence of the
philosophers and learned men is expended in admiration of
the allegorical. It is Orpheus, then, who says that at first there
was chaos, eternal, unbounded, unproduced, and that from it
all things were made. He says that this chaos was neither
darkness nor light, neither moist nor dry, neither hot nor cold,
but that it was all things mixed together, and was always one
unformed mass; yet that at length, as it were after the manner
of a huge egg, it brought forth and produced from itself a certain
double form, which had been wrought through immense
periods of time, and which they call masculo-feminine, a form
concrete from the contrary admixture of such diversity; and
that this is the principle of all things, which came of pure matter,
and which, coming forth, effected a separation of the four
elements, and made heaven of the two elements which are
first, fire and air, and earth of the others, earth and water; and
of these he says that all things now are born and produced by
a mutual participation of them. So much for Orpheus.
Chapter XXXI: Hesiods Cosmogony
But to this Hesiod adds, that after chaos the heaven and
the earth were made immediately, from which he says that
those eleven were produced (and sometimes also he speaks of
them as twelve) of whom he makes six males and five females.
And these are the names that he gives to the males: Oceanus,