  The conflict between Scriptural sources and the Aristotelian writings on the issue of the primordial state of matter is not so severe, because in the Aristotelian corpus there is no description of the primordial state of matter, and the other sources available to Bonaventure are themselves in disagreement. Augustine, for example, had suggested in his literal commentary on Genesis that the matter of the world could have been made all at once, whereas in his Confessions (Confessiones) he had suggested that there might be an indeterminate and inchoate initial state of matter. This possibiliity was further corroborated by such pagan authors as Plato and Ovid, who had posited a primordial chaotic state of matter out of which the present cosmic order gradually emerged (Plato, Timaeus 52D-53C, 54–55; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 43:5–45:7).