Angelomus of Luxeuil

English

It is worth asking why this volume is called Genesis in particular, since many things are recorded in it which are known not to pertain to generation — unless it be that the Hebrews have the custom of imposing the names of books from their openings, as Exodus and many others are named. Whence Bresith in Hebrew is not undeservedly rendered Genesis in Latin: because in its very opening the creation of heaven and earth, and the generation of men and living creatures, is narrated.

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

Latin

PL 115, col. 111A · pd

Notes

Jerome's last remark on the verse, promoted to the first question of a commentary. Angelomus keeps the Hebrew custom of naming books from their first words and draws from it a conclusion Jerome did not: that Bresith is properly rendered Genesis, because what stands at the opening is generation. The Latin bench thus ends by treating the crux word as the title of a book rather than as a word in a sentence. The rabbinic bench never loses the sentence, because for it the word governs what follows — either the Torah, by which God created, or, in Rashi's plain sense, the clause 'when God began to create'.

Threads

• → echoes · Jerome
  Jerome's closing remark, that the Hebrews name volumes from their opening words, becomes the first question of Angelomus' commentary and acquires a conclusion Jerome did not draw: that Bresith is therefore rightly rendered Genesis.
• ← contests · Chalcidius
  What a Latin knew about the Greek versions in the fourth century and what he knew in the ninth. Chalcidius names Aquila and Symmachus, quotes each on Gen 1:1–2, and marks off a fourth reading as coming from the Hebrews through Origen. Angelomus at Luxeuil has the etymological question — why bresith in Hebrew is rendered Genesis — and no versions at all to check it against. The philological apparatus does not develop over those five centuries; it is lost.