The Senior Common Room had reached the point in the afternoon at which nobody was supposed to be doing anything productive.
Mr Blottisham was reading Genesis.
“Here,” he said triumphantly. “This settles it.”
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
“What does?”
“God creates the world.”
“Yes.”
“By speaking.”
“Yes.”
“Therefore the point is that God has the power to speak things into existence.”
Quillibrace regarded him.
“That is one way of putting it.”
“It is the obvious way.”
“Is it?”
Blottisham looked at the page.
“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ There was light. What more do you want?”
“I want to know why creation is represented as saying.”
“Because God speaks.”
“Why does God speak?”
“To create.”
“Why not simply create?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“Because—”
He looked at the text again.
“Because He wants us to know He created it.”
Miss Stray looked up.
“But the story doesn't say, ‘God created the light and then told us about it.’”
“No.”
“It says He said, and the light appeared.”
Blottisham frowned.
“Yes, but that's only a manner of telling the story.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Perhaps.”
“That sounded suspiciously like agreement.”
“I am agreeing that it is a manner of telling the story.”
“Good.”
“I am asking what that manner makes possible.”
Blottisham sighed.
“More linguistics.”
“Unavoidably.”
Quillibrace pointed to the page.
“The material world is repeatedly represented as the outcome of a verbal process.”
“God speaks, things happen.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“So the narrative gives us a world that is said.”
Blottisham stared at him.
“A world that is said.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like you're claiming the world is language.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“The world is represented as emerging through language.”
Miss Stray added, “And that is rather different.”
Blottisham thought about this.
“But surely there was a world before anyone said anything about it.”
“Certainly.”
“Then language doesn't create the world.”
“No.”
Quillibrace paused.
“It creates a world for cognition.”
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
Miss Stray said, “Not an inventory of things. A differentiated, related, ordered, significant world.”
“A construed world,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham pointed at him.
“But you're smuggling human cognition into Genesis.”
“Of course.”
“Of course?”
“We are reading it.”
Blottisham opened his mouth, then closed it.
Miss Stray smiled.
“The interesting question isn't what the authors secretly knew about language.”
“No,” said Quillibrace. “It is what the surviving text permits us to construe.”
Blottisham looked back at Genesis.
“So you think the story is really about us.”
“No.”
“God?”
“No.”
“Creation?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
“The possibility of a world becoming sayable.”
Blottisham stared at him.
Miss Stray looked at the page.
And for once, nobody spoke.
After a moment Blottisham said:
“I don't think that silence was accidental.”
Quillibrace turned a page.
“I'm relieved to hear it.”
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