L’universo creato e la sua «ecologia» provvidenziale. Sull’interpretazione del Salmo 103 in Eusebio di Cesarea. (original) (raw)

Published in: Elena ZOCCA – Marianna FERRARA (eds.), Pedagogie divine. Studi in onore di Francesca Cocchini (Quaderni di Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni, 31), Dipartimento di Storia, Antropologia, Religioni, Arte, Spettacolo, Morcelliana, Brescia 2024, pp. 43-52.

Contemporary studies on Psalm 103 tend sometimes to regard it as an «ecological psalm». It would be such much more than other psalms of similar nature (as Pss 8 and 148) due to the broader gaze aimed at the different domains of creation, without attributing to mankind a privileged and dominant position. This would prove, among other things, the absence of a reference to the creation of the progenitors within the psalm's revisitation of the Genesis cosmogony. Over against such approach, Eusebius would seem to mirror quite faithfully these characteristics of the psalm, sketching with his interpretation a vision of creation that makes room for a providential “ecology” in which natural elements, animals and human beings coexist in distinct and mutually compatible spaces. In any case, this vision of the universe has its starting point as well as its final one in the idea of a Father who looks with love at creation in all its manifestations.