Recensions of the Great Stemma

Notes

[This version, last edited 2012.04.07, was online mid-April 2012 and is referred to in a forthcoming publication by Jose Carlos Mart�n. It has been replaced by an updated version.]

As documents were transmitted from Antiquity by copyists, they were, from time to time, more thoroughly edited and brought up to date.[*]Als Vorlagen zum Abschreiben dienten meist junge Handschriften, die eigens dafür bearbeitet wurden: hier entstanden die eigentlichen Lesarten und Textmischungen, nicht beim Abschreiben selbst. Für diese Bearbeitung besorgte man sich manchmal Texte aus wichtigen Zentren, gelegentlich auch alte Handscriften. (Fischer). Textual critics term these "editions" recensions.

In Les Feuillets Liminaires, Zaluska proposed that there were five different recensions of the Great Stemma. She gave these the sigla Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Sigma. Later, another recension, which I call Epsilon, emerged.

The following is a simple stemma codicum to show how I hypothesize the main recensions as being related to one another:

Ur-Stemma on a large single sheet, where the genealogy is separate from the accompanying timeline. Hippolytan chronology. Late Antique, pre-427. Eusebian revision with a timeline, overlaid with Eusebian calculations. Association with Ordo Annorum Mundi begins. Spanish archetype, which muddles the Southern Kingdom wives, omits the Abraham-Levi section of the timeline, divides the stemma into codex pages. Epsilon, 16 pages, omits more sections of the timeline, adds Gog and Magog legend, but remains the closest to the archetype.
Lost Delta parent, radically reformats the graphic style of the stemma but keeps the text largely intact, bar some interpolations. Delta One (Ac), retains most parent features, 7 pages.
Delta Two (Ca) converts to a Vulgate text (says Zaluska, not checked)
Partly lost "Isidore-influenced" model, largely preserved in Ro, in 14 pages, with T-O mappamundi on separate page. With interpolations from the Vulgate Old Testament and the works of Isidore. Plainly drafted well after Isidore's death in 636. Alpha: T-O merged (in G: page 6). Some manuscripts lose material from the model? Sigma, revised with Alpha as source.
Beta: T-O merged (in J: page 5). With additional interpolations. Le�n version (two mss.) 10 pages.
Gamma, adds material directly from Jerome, occasional Vulgate emendations.

The characteristics of the recensions are:

[Beta:] rex prefuit Israheli unigeniti septem annis ... et posuerant cum eo in monumento gladior petrineos de quibus circumcidit filios Israhel in Galgalis
[Liber Genealogus, recension G:] iudicavit Israel annis XXVII ... et posuerunt cum eo in monumento cultellos petrinos circumcisionis Israhel, devictis XXIIII regibus
[Vetus Latina (Lyons):] ibi posuerunt cum illo in monumento in quo saepellierunt illum gladios petrineos de quibus circumcidit filios Israhel

The points of difference among the manuscripts are so numerous that they can only be comprehensively understood through line-by-line study of the tabular transcription. A few salient features that distinguish the recensions from one another include:

[to be continued]



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