Arrangement 9: Horri
Notes
A sub-stemma of 30 roundels, with fewer in some recensions. Dimensions: 7 wide by 6 tall. Liber Genealogus counterpart: section 17.
Abstracts, from top left: Plutei (blue, composed from two folios, lacking Onan), Foigny bible (green), Roda, Morgan and Gerona Beatuses. Red dots mark moveable Thamna.
Commentary
This section's notable feature is that it has no parent node. The arrangement of the grandsons— in vertical beads— follows a convention which applies in other sections of the Great Stemma.
In some cases the material is spread across two folios with a binding gutter between, as in the Foigny bible (centre right, color green). The Foigny artist, who evidently did not have the two parchment sheets side by side to see, was unable to obtain the correct alignment and the connectors between the roundels are defective.
The Roda manuscript (red brown) lacks one roundel at the right. The Morgan manuscript narrows the group to just five columns instead of seven.
The section is headed in the Roda and Plutei manuscripts with the formula, "hic filii Esau septem qui im montem Seir nati sunt", in the positions marked HFEs. In the Beta recension, this explanatory text is altered to: "hii duces Orreorum qui imperaberunt in terra Seir, id est Esau unde postea montes Seir et regio in qua vessabatur est dicta", in the position marked HDOr.
The reconstruction above shows what seems to have been the original arrangement. The layout of the grandsons— in vertical beads— follows a convention that applies in other sections of the diagram. There is only one elbow, in the third column. As far as one can gauge, only one roundel, Onan, was on the extremity of this elbow.
It is plain from the manuscripts that this Horrite section was interlocked with the preceding Esau section in such a way that Esau's wives occupied the space above the Horrites. The Horrite section would thus have had to begin in row 4 and would have been reached a limit in row 9, necessitating one elbow in the second column. The manuscripts vary over how this bend was made, but it is to be assumed it did not happen in row 8 as that would have been a less efficient use of the available blank space.
The possibility that Thamna could have been placed at top left in a column of her own is discussed at the end of the Esau page.
The progressive degradation of the Horrites section is largely attributable to repeated clumsy efforts to correct its text by consulting the Vulgate, as Załuska has pointed out.[*]Załuska, Liminaires calls it: "l'un des chapitres les plus corrompus de nos tables et de ce fait l'un des plus intéressants pour l'histoire de la transmission" and goes on to explain:. Le mauvais état de conservation tient autant au caractère marginal de ce lignage qu'au fait que la base scripturaire de ce thème, qui est le chapitre 36 de la Genèse, versets 20 sqq, n'est pas tout à fait claire et que l'interprétation qu'en donnent les Septante, suivis par la Vetus Latina, diverge de celle qu'en donne saint Jérôme. Sans entrer dans le détail de ces divergences, notons que d'après Jérôme ce groupe comporte ving-huit noms alors que d'après LXX et V.L. il en compte vingt-neuf, et qu'en outre le Liber genealogus, déjà cité, et qui est l'un des témoins importants de V. L., présente trente noms. De plus les relations familiales entre certains membres ont été interprétées de façon particulière par saint Jérôme. L'analyse des noms conservés par nos tables montre que l'archétype a dû être dressé sur la base de trente noms. Cet archétype a été refondu ensuite à l'aide de la Vulgate indépendamment en β et en σ il a aussi été très fortement corrigé en Ca (δ2).
From the Epsilon hyparchetype, both Plutei and Roda carry over two extra names which are absent from the Vulgate, Chat and Ukan. There have been some swaps in the canonical order (Chor/Eman and Iusca/Ucan). Thamna is no longer the sister of Lotan, but his son.[*]Ce chapitre est intéressant en α: le texte n'a jamais été retouché et il est plein d'erreurs; pourtant les témoins n'ont que vingt-huit médaillons, tout en faisant état des deux noms supplémentaires non retenus par saint Jérôme, une correction superficielle du schéma graphique pourrait peut-être en être responsable (Załuska, Liminaires).
In the Beta group, we see that there must have been a predecessor manuscript in which the entire ensemble was redrawn according to the Vulgate with the Vulgate Latin names. The ancient error whereby Manachat is split in two was finally repaired, Thamna was given back her identity as a sister, and Sebegon acquired a larger family as prescribed by Jerome. That drawing no longer exists, but it must have been relatively lucid, since it allowed the Beta editor to discover equivalences between it and his Alpha model before he created an even more corrupted version of his own.
Clearly the Beta editor did not trust his Vulgate-based model, and chose to re-introduce some of the elements found in the Alpha recension which he took for comparison. This "harmonization" of his two models creates a chaotic result. The Vulgate name Elvam is allowed to stand, but when the editor identifies it with the Vetus Latina name Goloth, he decides to add the Beta's unaccountable attribute "filius Seir" to the name. Where the Vulgate diagram says Acham, the editor cannot find the counterpart in Alpha (Iusca and Ucan) so he simply omits Acham.
The Beta editor's attention also wanders. The three-times-over presence of Dis-n, also confuses him so much that one of the seven main male descents, Disan (father of Us and Aram), slips to the bottom of the ensemble. The overall number of roundels declines to 27.[*]Załuska, Liminaires: Toutes sortes de détails, ainsi que la position des fils de Dison, montrent que les corrections de σ et de β sont indépendantes; en outre en β le texte est très corrompu et ne compte que vingt-sept médaillons.
These patterns are tabulated below to illuminate the changes:
