"Le meraviglie del giorno": il mondo creato, dal discorso dell'Areopago al primo Esamerone

This paper examines the reception of the Biblical text on the Creation of the world, and its comparison with the basically anti-creationist classical philosophical tradition, in the span of time between St. Paul’s "Areopagus speech" (50 CE, see Acts of the Apostles 17) and the nine Homilies on the Genesis of St. Basil (377 CE). In the light of references to Philo of Alexandria, Origen, and others, the text emphasizes the different contexts and the different aims of the creationist speech, whose acceptance at the end of the 4th century – when Christianity as a “State religion" triumphed – also involves a peculiar valorization of the philological method and paideia of classical origin.