 Gersonides’ attitude toward previous astronomers, coupled with his faith in human reason, are reflected in his discussion of creation. Maimonides went to great lengths to maintain that the topic of creation is beyond rational demonstration. Gersonides, on the other hand, devotes many chapters in Milhamot VI to proving that the Platonic theory of creation out of an eternal formless matter is rationally demonstrable. The question of whether the universe was created or had existed from eternity had been treated by Maimonides in an ambiguous manner; scholars still disagree over whether Maimonides ultimately upheld an Aristotelian, Platonic, or scriptural doctrine of creation. Gersonides’ position is unambiguously Platonic. Gersonides argues that the world was created outside of time by a freely willing agent. He must then decide whether the world was engendered ex nihilo or out of a preexistent matter. Arguing that ex nihilo creation is incompatible with physical reality, he adopts a model drawn from Plato’s Timaeus. Gersonides interprets the opening of Genesis to refer to two types of matter. Geshem is the primordial matter out of which the universe was created; not capable of motion or rest, it was characterized by negation and was inert and chaotic. This matter is identified with the primeval waters described in Genesis. Homer is prime matter, in the Aristotelian sense of a substratum always aligned with form. It contains within itself the potentiality to receive forms but is not an ontologically independent entity. Gersonides compares this matter to darkness: just as darkness is the absence of light, this matter represents the absence of form or shape. As noted by Glasner (2015) and Freudenthal (1987), this notion of a body that does not preserve its shape offered several important advantages. First, the space between the spheres, which is subject to continuous change, is filled by the body that does not preserve its shape, and so transmission can be explained by contact. Second, in the context of his theory of creation, this amorphous body is a remnant of the pre-existent entity (thou va-vohu) from which God shaped the world. On this basis Gersonides argues that the world was created out of an eternally preexistent matter.