Alcuin

English

Question 30. What is: 'But the earth was invisible and unordered' (ibid., from the Septuagint version)? — Answer. Invisible because of darkness; unordered because of shapelessness.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 100, col. 519D · pd

Notes

The whole crux compressed into eight words for the schoolroom, and the most interesting thing about it is the parenthesis: 'ex vers. LXX'. Alcuin knows he is expounding a lemma that is not in the Bible his pupils carry, and says so. He splits the pair between the two answers the Latin bench will keep — invisible has to do with light, unordered with form — and gives no reason for either. Angelomus takes this answer over word for word two generations later and puts it inside a discussion of Jerome's text, where it becomes a gloss on 'the other translation'.

Threads

• → transmits · The Seventy
  Alcuin's question carries its own source-note, '(Ibid. ex vers. LXX)': he knows the lemma he is glossing is the Septuagint's and not the text his pupils read.
• ← echoes · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  'Invisa propter obscuritatem, Incomposita propter deformitatem' is Alcuin's answer to Interrogatio 30 word for word, unattributed, with 'invisa' for 'invisibilis' — and Angelomus has moved it inside a discussion of the Vulgate's lemma, where it glosses 'the other translation'.