The Seventy

English

But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water.

Brenton 1851 · pd

Greek

LXX Gen 1:2 (Rahlfs) · pd

Notes

ἐπεφέρετο ('was borne upon') is the reading every Latin 'ferebatur / superferebatur' descends from. The Greek already drops the bird: the verb is motion-over, not brooding.

Threads

• ← transmits · Jerome
  Vulgate 'ferebatur' renders LXX ἐπεφέρετο, not the Hebrew merahefet; the Latin bench inherits a Greek verb of motion.
• ← transmits · Jerome
  Jerome renders tohu va-vohu 'inanis et vacua', where the Greek had ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος and the Old Latin 'invisibilis et incomposita'. The two Latin lemmas ask different questions — what the earth looked like, and what it lacked — and both are on the bench from the fifth century on.
• ← transmits · Augustine
  Augustine's lemma throughout is 'terra invisibilis et incomposita', the Old Latin of the Greek pair; he never quotes Jerome's 'inanis et vacua' on this verse, in the Manichaean books, the Confessions or De Genesi ad litteram.
• ← transmits · Basil of Caesarea
  Basil expounds ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος word by word — invisible for two reasons, unordered because not yet fruitful — and Eustathius' Latin keeps the Old Latin pair, so the Greek argument reaches the Latin bench with its lemma intact.
• ← transmits · Alcuin
  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.
• ← cites · Hugh of St Victor
  'sive, ut alia translatio habet, « incomposita »' names the variant in the act of expounding the Vulgate — the first place on this bench where a reader is told plainly that the clause exists in two Latin forms.