The Liber Genealogus

Notes
The Liber Genealogus is an anonymous Latin work of Late Antique
Christian scholarship which summarizes that genealogical material in
the Bible which Christians believe to be the ancestry of Christ, adding
chronological material from the time of Christ onwards for another
four centuries.[*]Its siglum in Fischer's Verzeichnis der Sigel: Kirchenschriftsteller
(since republished as Gryson, Roger. Rpertoire gnral des auteurs ecclsiastiques
latins de l'antiquit et du haut moyen ge (Freiburg: Herder, 2007)) is AN gen. Its
number in the Clavis Patrum Latinorum is 2254.
At first glance, it appears to be a kind of handbook for bible study.It
shares most of its text with a shorter work that has also been printed
under a different title, the Origo Humani Generis. It has been
customary to regard the two as separate evolutions of a single work
written in or before 427 CE, perhaps in North Africa or in Gaul. [*]See
my bibliography for the critical editions by Lagarde, Frick and Mommsen and for the
two recent discussions of it (short titles Romains and Interpretatio) by Inglebert.
Maureen Tilley in her The Bible in Christian North Africa calls it the Liber
Genealogicus, but I have not seen any other writer using that spelling..
The work has a long history of publication in print. One source, the
Codex Taurinensis, was published at Paris by Christoph Pfaff in 1712
(Google Books). Mansi's 1761 edition offered readers a recension
from Lucca (Google Books). In 1892, a German scholar, Carl Frick
republished the Pfaff text with a learned introduction in Latin,
entitling it the Origo Humani Generis, while another German, Paul de
Lagarde, published his own fully annotated transcription of the Lucca
and Turin texts (he called them M and C) together in a single print
article.
In the same year, both were trumped by Theodor Mommsen, who
collated both of the previous texts along with two other recensions,
merged them into a unified critical text and issued it as past of his
Monumenta Germaniae Historica series. Whereas Frick had seen the
Origo, which is shorter, as a prior work, Mommsen considered it, with
good reason, to be a later abridgement of the Liber. From that
perspective he concluded that it was not entitled to separate
consideration.
Mommsen was the grandest scholar of his generation but his decision
to merge four texts in this way was in some respects unfortunate.
The unified text made it difficult for the reader to detect the earliest
stratum, interpolated and contaminated as it was by later generations
of editors. To overcome this difficulty, I have extracted the primitive

text of 427, matched it against the St Gall manuscript, and republished it integrally on this website.
In 1922, the French scholar Paul Monceaux reverted to a preMommsen view, proposing that the Origo, which leaves out all the
events after the birth of Christ while adding ethnographic material,
was the earlier work. With the weakest of arguments, Monceaux
dated the Origo to about 397. He contended that the Liber then grew
from it, appearing in a series of recensions, initially within the
secessionist North African church of the Donatists and then among
Catholics, over the next 60 years.[*]Monceaux proposed that the Origo began
as a Latin adaptation of Hippolytus's world chronicle and that it may have been
composed in Gaul or Italy, followed by a now lost Donatist version composed in about
406. In essence, he argues (a) that the 438 version is not a child of the 427 version, but a
sibling, and (b) that they are silent about an event of 411. Hence they must be based on
a lost parent composed before 411 (Monceaux, P. Histoire littraire de l'Afrique
chrtienne depuis l'origines jusqu'a l'invasion arabe. Paris: 1901-23, vi. 250-251).
A recent examination, by Richard Rouse and Charles McNelis, has
raised cogent questions about Monceaux's assumptions, suggesting
that the Liber of 427 probably is the earliest appearance of the
document. Another recent account by Herv Inglebert has tended to
support Monceaux's view, while leaving the question of the
document's evolution open. Rouse, Richard, and Charles McNelis. North
African literary activity: A Cyprian fragment, the stichometric lists and a Donatist
compendium. Revue d'histoire des textes 30 (2000): 189-238. Inglebert, Herv. Les
romains chrtiens face l'histoire de Rome. Collection des tudes augustiniennes . Srie
Antiquits, ISSN 1158-7032. Paris: Inst. d'tudes Augustiniennes, 1996. Neither the
shortness of a recension, nor the fact that it is transmitted to us in the oldest available
codex can be seriously used to argue that it is the most ancient recension. Inglebert also
questions Monceaux's shaky argumentation for the 397/406 dates, but leaves the issue
open.
If we bring the Great Stemma into the overall picture, as I outline
below, we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that the Liber of 427 is
indeed the earliest of the texts and that the Origo was inspired by the
Liber, reworking the content and deliberately omitting the material for
the period after Christ's birth. I would therefore agree with the
finding by Rouse and McNelis, but for different reasons which I am
about to explain.
As to the unsolved riddle of the authorship of the Liber, all we can say
with any certainty is that the 427 author must have belonged to the
Donatist church of North Africa, a schismatic Christian group, since
the text criticizes Catholic persecution of Donatists.

Bruno Krusch has offered a weak argument, summarized by

Monceaux, that a Gallic author, Q. Julius Hilarianus, might have been
the author:
Quant l'auteur, c'est sans doute Q. Julius Hilarianus, dont nous possdons
deux petits traits crits en 397, le De duratione mundi et le De ratione
Paschae. La tradition manuscrite semble favorable cette attribution. Le
Taurinensis contient la fois le De ratione Paschae d'Hilarianus et le Liber
genealogus. En outre, le De ratione Paschae a t pill par l'auteur du Liber
Paschalis, de 455, qui, dans le Codex Lucensis, prcde le Liber genealogus.
[*]Monceaux, 250

However this argumentation is not convincing, and the broad

consensus remains that the name of the Liber author is irredeemably
lost.
The Liber presents the same two parallel ancestries as the Great
Stemma, but in text rather than graphic form, accompanied by short
analytical comments.
Its three principal editions are now denominated G, F and L from the
manuscript groups that contain them. In Mommsen's combined
edition, the Origo carries the siglum T: [*]The sigla were chosen by
Mommsen and refer to the locations of the type manuscripts: St Gall, Florence, Lucca
and Turin.
il faut distinguer G, l'dition donatiste de 427, F, l'dition donatiste de 438,
et L, l'dition catholique de 455-463. Le Liber genealogus se prsente avant
tout comme une liste des gnalogies bibliques du Christ. Il s'agit donc d'un
rsum d'histoire biblique, qui utilise parfois des apocryphes comme III
Esdras, dans lequel viennent s'intercaler des remarques diffrentes selon les
ditions G, F, L. [*]Inglebert, Romains, 599.

Ayuso's and Fischer's assumption, that the Stemma is simply a

graphic adaption of the linear text that had already existed in the
form of the Liber Genealogus, has prevailed for a while as the
conventional wisdom.[*]Ayuso, Extrabiblicos. Fischer, Algunas.
The reverse hypothesis, that the Liber author may have been guided
in his research, data arrangement and writing by a stemma drawing
has been a constant focus of my research and I have concluded that,
on the balance of probabilities, some kind of diagram, probably the
Great Stemma, did indeed serve as the basis for the Liber. The
reasons for this finding, which is surprising in the light of all the
previous scholarship, are set out below.
Because the documents are clearly linked, I have accordingly noted
Mommsen's section numbers of the matching names and passages
from the Liber Genealogus,throughout my collation of the Great

Stemma text, subdividing Mommsen's numbers with my own

subsection numbers.
We can readily see from this comparison that the two works cover the
same ground and cover it in roughly the same fashion. They proceed
from the extended genealogies laid out in Genesis, taking the reader
onwards to the ancestries set out in the books of Ruth, Samuel, Kings
and Chronicles. Both connect these to the genealogies claimed for
Christ in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Five points about their
broad similarity will suffice:

The overall data order in the two documents matches: the Liber
presents the names in an order that resembles the left-to-right,
top-to-bottom order of the Great Stemma: first setting out all
the descendants of Jacob, then doubling back and repeating the
names Judah, Perez and Hezron (Liber 360, 361) to explore the
Davidic line in detail, then tracing Christ's ancestry according to
Matthew, then doubling back to complete the line according to
Luke.
The Levites appear twice: the sons of Levi appear in the main
stream leading to Christ, but they also appear again in a
recapitulation. In the Liber, this appears after the genealogy
terminates with Christ. In the codex form of the Great Stemma,
the Levite appendix uses free space on the codex page devoted
to the ancestry chain from Esrom to Boaz (or Jesse). This
supplement continues the Levite genealogy down to the children
of Aaron and Moses. I have argued elsewhere that this passage
was originally attached to a timeline.
Genealogies of the children of king Saul, of Eli and of Samuel
also appear. Like the Levites, these rulers are significant for the
chronological underpinning of the content, but their family
relationships do not form a part of Christ's genealogy.
Two further supplementary genealogies are included in both
works, although they have neither a bearing on Christ's ancestry
nor on the chronography. These are an ethnic "map" of the
Horites (Gen 36: 20-30) in stemmatic form and an account of
the ancestry and friends of Job the Patient. But other biblical
genealogies, for example the post-exile genealogies in the books
of Ezra and Nehemiah, are not included.
An approximate contemporaneity between the Great Stemma
and the Liber is attested by the Vetus Latina forms of the biblical
proper names, which were current at the time of writing, before
the diffusion of Jerome's Vulgate translation these names are
generally Latin transliterations from the Septuagint Greek Old
Testament.

We find, on close study, a multitude of fine-detail commonalities

between the documents which include:

The Joachimite hypothesis to explain Christ's ancestry.

An array of uncanonical names, some of which are not attested
in any other ancient work.
The division of a single name, Manahat (Gen. 36:23), into two
names, Macha and Cath.[*]First noted by Frick, 144, note 23: sunt potius
quinque, sed ex uno (Manahat) duos (Macha et Cath) fecit. Fischer's Vetus Latina
Genesis 378 suggests this arose as a dittography in the Greek, where a syllable
was repeated like this, , so that a single name separated into two. The
error is unique to the Great Stemma and Liber Genealogus and could perhaps
originate from a defective manuscript, or recension, of Genesis which is no longer
extant..

Striking as they are, these similarities could perhaps be explained

away by supposing that there might have been a common fund of
biblical names, both scripturally attested and unattested, kept alive
by oral tradition within some now unidentifiable community of Late
Antique exegetes and scholars.
So much of the ancient documentary record has been lost that a
21st-century scholar must, in all honesty, allow for the possibility that
these features do not mark the views of a single author or school, but
were perhaps a form of received wisdom in an entire region, or a
period, which we can no longer pinpoint.
This could not however be said for several similarities that indicate
careful, word-for-word copying from models which must have
constituted a distinctive book evolution. [*]Zaluska makes a similar point,
but she cites three variations involving the omission of six names which I believe
indicate not just a shared tradition but also an evolutionary fork within it: Les deux
textes terminent chacun cette gnalogie de faon apocryphe en introduisant la fin
Joachim, pre de la Vierge, ce qui leur permet d'affirmer que la ligne est bien celle de
Marie. En outre dans le parcours des gnrations, ils partagent trois variantes
importantes qui entranent l'omission de six noms par rapport la liste "canonique".
Ces analogies sont trop significatives pour tre simplement le fait du hasard et doivent
correspondre au moins une tradition commune. Zaluska, Feuillets. Zaluska does not
give the six names from the Lucan list, but apparently means (1) Melea, (2) Maath,
Nagga and Esli, (3) Amos and Matthathia.
1. The Great Stemma shares with the Liber Genealogus a
commentary which interprets the genealogies in the light of verse 5:5
of the New Testament Book of Revelation and asserts that Luke the
evangelist's genealogy, from Nathan, in fact conducts to Mary, not
Joseph. Both comment that these parallel biological descents are
explained in Revelation with a lion symbolizing Solomon and a root
symbolizing the obscure royal son Nathan.[*]Gen 49:9 associates the tribe

of Judah with a lion cub; Isaiah 11:1, 10, echoed in Rom 15:12, establishes the phrase
"root of Jesse". In translation, this exegesis says:
Whereas the evangelist Luke traces the origin of Mary back to Nathan, the
evangelist Mathew traces that of Joseph back to Solomon, demonstrating an
ancestry from the tribe of Judah. Thus it is clear that these two are
biologically descended from a single tribe, leading down to Christ, so that
what was written might be fulfilled, "Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah,
the root of David, has prevailed," whereby the lion is Solomon, the root is
Nathan.

The two passages bear quoting in full in Latin. First the Great
Stemma:
Sicut Lucas evangelista per Natan ad Mariam originem ducit, ita et Matheus
euvangelista per Salomonem ad Ioseph originem demonstrabit id est ex
tribu Iuda, ut apparet eos de una tribu exire et sic ad Christum secundum
carnem pervenire. Ut compleatur quod scriptum est, "Ecce vicit leo de tribu
Iuda radix David," leo ex Salomone et radix ex Natan.

As Ayuso and Zaluska note, the text in the Liber Genealogus is almost
identical. It is printed as follows in Mommsen's edition of the Liber
Genealogus:[*]Ayuso, Extrabiblicos, ...; Zaluska, Feuillets, 241.
Cuius Lucas evangelista ad Mariam originem demonstravit, similiter etiam et
Salomonis Matheus evangelista ad Ioseph originem demonstrat, ut appareat
eos de una tribu exire et sic ad Christum venire (pervenire), ut compleatur
quod scriptum est: "Ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda radix David," leo ex
Salomone et radix ex Nathan.[*]simplified from Mommsen, no. 543.

While this text might perhaps be a quotation from a now-lost

theological author in the patristic period, it is more likely that it is the
central statement of purpose composed by the Great Stemma's
author: the inclusion of the passage is deliberate and explains what
the documents are meant to signify. Its association of the lion with
Christ's male ancestry and the root with his female ancestry may also
associate with some system of Antique symbolism. This would
doubtless reward further attention. More detail.[*]While Eusebius of
Caesarea is the source of the Stemma's chronographic framework, he preferred a
different account of the genealogy contradiction.
2. A curious distortion of the data from the biblical book of Judges
suggests both works share a connection to a distinct and irregular
family of biblical manuscripts. This concerns the judge Shamgar at
Judges 3:31. The New English Translation of the Vaticanus or B text
of the Septuagint at this point reads:
And after him arose Samegar son of Dinach and he struck down the
allophyles, fully six hundred men, with a bull's ploughshare. And indeed he
too delivered Israel.The Vetus Latina translation is known from Augustine, who quotes it

(Quaestionum in heptateuchum libri septem, Iudicum, 25): Et post eum surrexit Samegar filius
Aneath, et percussit alienigenas in sexcentos viros, praeter vitulos boum: et salvavit Israel. This
was duly compiled by Sabatier into his Bibliorum Sacrorum Latinae Versiones Antiquae but
where the passage was located in the VL text that Augustine used is unknown. A complete Vetus
Latina text, in the Codex Lugdunensis, has the passage at its normal position in Judges 3:31: Et
post illum surrexit Semigar, filius Anath, et percussit ex alienigenis ad sescentos viros extra
vetulos, et salvos fecit et ipse filios Istralel. This codex was rediscovered in the 1890s and
published by Ulysse Robert.

There is nothing else. There is no mention of Shamgar/Samegar

actually ruling, let alone for how long, but by a Jewish tradition of
learning which is mentioned by Moore, Shamgar was counted as a
judge and was reckoned to have ruled for a matter of months only,
and therefore not to have earned a predicate of years.[*]Moore, Judges,
104 note: The midrash explains that he died in the first year of his office.
This conception was to continue for centuries. Even a much later
work, the Chronicon Alexandrinorum, dated to about 630, reproduces
the feature: Shamgar is found there as a judge (Semega iudicum)
(line 236).[*]Mommsen, MGH AA, 9, p 117. See also: Albrecht, Stefan. "Chronicon
Paschale" in Encyclopaedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. Dunphy, Graeme. Leiden:
Brill, 2010, 387-388.
By the second century, this peculiar tradition undergoes two further
changes: firstly, Shamgar is allowed a full year of his own in the
historical calculations, and secondly, the Shamgar passage moves to
a new place in the sequence. The latter transformation is evident in
some of the Septuagint manuscripts of Judges: the sentence normally
found at Judges 3:31 shifts to a position after Judges 16:31, with the
name Shamgar altered to Samera.[*]The whole Shamgar issue is summarized
in a note by Nestle, Eberhard. "Samgar". Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft, 32 (1912) 152. Nestle quotes the Liber Genealogus (calling it the
vandalische Chronik and the Origo Humani Generis), and states that the position shift is
characteristic of the Lucian family of Septuagint manuscripts, referring specifically to
the Codex Zuqninensis rescriptus.
Why this happened we cannot say, but in the early Christian
chronology compiled by Theophilus of Antioch for his Apologia ad
Autolycum we read:
Then Samson judged them 20 years. Then there was peace among them for
40 years. Then Samera judged them one year; Eli, 20 years; Samuel,
12 years ...[*]This is Schaf's translation, now on the CCEL website, found in Book III,
chapter XXIV.

Within 50 years of Theophilus writing, both Hippolytus of Rome and

the scholar Julius Africanus have both recognized this One Year of
Samera as a confirmed period of Jewish history. Hippolytus returned
Shamgar to the early position, but we do not know at which position
in the sequence Julius Africanus placed the year.[*]The position remains

unresolved in Wallraff, Chronographiae, T40, and Gelzer's attempt at a solution (cited

by Nestle) is not accepted.
The Great Stemma and Liber Genealogus then add yet another layer
of oddity to this tradition by counting both Shamgar, the early
(canonical) warrior, and Samera, his later alter ego, as separate
rulers, each with his own place in the timeline.
Though later chronographers tended to realize that the second Year
of Samera was an error, like many errors, it developed a life of its
own. Gelzer's study of Julius Africanus mentions other works where
this variant rears its head again centuries later, and of course, in the
form of the Great Stemma, it was still being faithfully copied into new
manuscripts in Spain in the high medieval period.
What is more, the Liber Genealogus inflates the first Shamgar's time
period from one to 20 years (paragraph 505 of Mommsen's edition)
while leaving the second One Year of Samera intact (paragraph 521).
We do not know what time spans the Great Stemma author conceived
for Shamgar and Samera, as this data has been deleted by a later
editor, but the Liber is a guide. The Beta recensions of the Great
Stemma, which have been partly corrected using Jerome's Vulgate,
disallow Samera (the latter) and only include Shamgar in his earlier
position in the series.
3. The last of these peculiar commonalities concerns the supposed
judgeship of Puah, the father of Judge Tola. Once again, the history of
Tola is only the briefest of passages. Judges 10:1-2 has an unstable
textual history, but it certainly never ascribes to the father Puah the
character of a judge.
I quote the New English translation of the Septuagint.[*]The English
translation is based on the so-called Alexandrinus or A version. As above, the notation B
here refers to the Vaticanus version.
Thola son of Phoua, son of his father's brother, a man of Issachar, rose to
deliver Israel, and he himself lived at Samaria (B: Samir) in the hill country
of Ephraim. And he judged Israel twenty-three years. And he died and was
buried at Samaria (B: Samir).

In the Liber Genealogus, the account is quite different:

Deinde Fua filius Charram iudicavit eos annis XX. Hic habitabat in monte
Efrem, sub cuius tempus pax abundavit et non fuit bellum in Israel (Then
Phua son of Karran judged them for 20 years. He lived in Mount Ephraim.
During his time peace reigned and there was no war in Israel). Deinde Tole
iudicavit eos annis XX duobus (Then Tola judged them for 22 years).
[*]Ulysse Robert's Vetus Latina bible version is: Et surrexit post illum qui salvum faceret
Istrahel Tholam, filius Ful, filius Charreon, fratris patris eius, vir Isachar, et hic habitabat in

Samaria in monte Efrem (Robert, 132) A fragmentary Vetus Latina version without Charreon
can be obtained from Augustine (Quaestionum in heptateuchum libri septem, Iudicum, 47) and
is quoted by Sabatier (Bibliorum Sacrorum Latinae Versiones Antiquae): Et surrexit post
Abimelech, qui salvum faceret Israel, Thola filius Phua, filius patris fratris ejus, vir Issachar ....

The likely source for the uncanonical name Charran/Charreon can be

detected in several so-called miniscule manuscripts of the Septuagint
which insert the name Karie into the Greek sequence, stating that
Puah was the son of Karie.[*]The miniscule manscripts date from the 9th
century onwards, but in some cases they retain very ancient readings which have been
lost from all the older manuscripts at our disposal. Lagrange (Juges, 186) quotes the
passage thus: ...
. Lagrange says this reading is characteristic of a group denoted as M by Moore,
who describes it (Commentary on Judges, xliv-xlv) as a group whose most constant
members are four Greek codices.
The Great Stemma, in the form we know it today, makes no mention
of Charran, but it does treat Puah and Tola as two successive
judgeships, listing them, Fua iudex, Thola iudex. As noted above, the
Great Stemma does not dwell on time periods or the parentage of
any judge.
How are we to explain the elevation of Puah to the role of a judge? It
seems this cannot be based on any corruption of the running
scriptural text, since the passage is so short, and so simple, that any
reformulation would have had to arise from a complex chain of
mistakes to yield such a completely different sense. It is much more
likely that the corruption would have happened on a page of brief
notes where a reader has failed to correctly decode the positions and
the significance of the different names as set down by a previous
writer.
Puah might have inadvertently slipped from an upper register, of
parents, to a lower register, of judges, if for example, the names had
been noted thus:
Karie

Puah

Gedeon

Abimelec

Tola
XXIII

Iair
XXII

With Karie at the very top, a reader might assume that the pair KariePuah had been bumped out of line and might inadvertently think that
Puah was part of the main sequence in the bottom row. This is only a
hypothesis, but it is consistent with the resulting errors. The
transformation of Tola's number of years, properly 23, to 22 or 20 is
not in itself odd, since alterations in Roman numerals are among the
commonest scribal corruptions, but the evolution from one to two
distinct numbers in the Liber Genealogus is strange and is difficult to

explain. If the notation above did play a role, perhaps the 22 under
Iair (Jair) has been understood as applying to Tola.
4. My tabulation of the genealogy of Luke shows four groups of
omissions in common: (1) Kenan, (2) Melea, (3) Maath, Nagga and
Esli, (4) Amos and Matthathia. This indicates both the Great Stemma
and the Liber relied on the same Gospel text.
All of the above peculiarities suggest an affinity in spirit and
conception between the two documents. But on the other hand, the
two clearly have different purposes. The Great Stemma offers a
visualization of biblical genealogy and the biblical time-space,
doubtless to assist in counting and calculating with this data. It would
be false to suggest the Great Stemma is a memory aid, but it could
well have had a use in exposition, demonstrating to a student or a
class how two groups of people inhabited the earth before the Flood
and how Christ's dual ancestry was believed to split at the sons of
David.
The Liber Genealogus has a different intention: it is most likely to
have begun as an ekphrasis, or commentary on the great Stemma,
and then to have entered use as a handbook, enabling a student
interested in the genealogy to find the many names in one place
without having to leaf through many scattered books of the bible, and
to find etymological and theological notes on each name.
Beyond this difference in apparent intention, the design of the works
clearly differs. Let us start with the broader divergences:

The Liber and the Origo contain extensive etymological

speculation on the meaning of biblical names, none of which is
reflected in the Great Stemma.[*].
The Great Stemma has extensive chronological material from
Genesis, which is only echoed in the most cursory fashion in the
Liber, but on the other hand it lacks the Liber's precise
calculation of each element of the Judges Period. Indeed it
seems to omit most year data after Abraham.
The Liber (but not the Origo) adds historical material for four
centuries after the time of Christ, whereas the Great Stemma
abruptly stops at Christ's birth.

The above differences all involve supplementary matter, and could

therefore be readily explained as evolutions and reworkings of an
original, more compact Great Stemma text.
But there are certain other divergences which can be detected which
seem to indicate separate development by the two works:

While the G recension of the Liber contains only the most

rudimentary ethnic annotations, a Table of Nations has been
introduced into the later L and T recensions of the Liber that
appears to be largely based on a scheme that can be
documented back to the Liber Generationis II and is thought to
have originated in the mostly lost Chronicon of Hippolytus.[*]The
various nations named are analysed in detail by Inglebert, Interpretatio, 160-2.
The original Great Stemma also seems to have contained very
little ethnological data. A Table of Nations scheme obtained
almost entirely from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville was
introduced into the Stemma's Alpha and Beta recensions.
However the ethnological data offered by Isidore (cribbed from
Jerome, who obtained his data from Flavius Josephus)
contradicts the theories of Hippolytus. In consequence the Alpha
and Beta recensions of the Great Stemma contradict the Liber
Table of Nations at half a dozen points.[*]Differences include: Magog
said to be the father of the Scitus et Gotos in the Great Stemma but of the Celatae
et Galatae in Liber Genealogus 176 Tubal: Iberi (GS) Hettali (LG 192)
Meshech: Cappadoces (GS) Defantes Inlyrii (LG 194) Gomer: Galate (GS)
Cappadoces (LG 170) Aram: Siricorum metropolis Damascus (GS) Itei (LG
81) Lud: Lidii (GS) Lazones (LG 79). All of these are found in the T recension
of the Liber and two are found in F. It is notable that none are found in G..
The Liber, from the earliest G recension, lists King David's 24
priests (1 Chronicles 24: 7-18), four bards Heman, Asaph,
Jeduthun (1 Chronicles 25: 1-4) and Ethan (1 Chronicles 15:19,
also credited as the author of Psalm 89) as well as the 24
champions of David (1 Chronicles 25: 9-31). These 52 names
are not found in the Great Stemma.
The Jerusalem sons of David are listed in the Great Stemma,
but omitted from the Liber which only counts the Hebron and
Bathsheba groups of David's sons.
Nathan the Prophet has a prominent stemma roundel of his
own, emphasizing his separate identity, but is omitted from the
Liber.
The Liber ignores the 12 Minor Prophets, whereas their periods
of activity are noted along the Great Stemma's timeline, much in
the fashion in which the Chronological Canons of Eusebius marks
them with glosses.
The two works are in conflict over their chronology of the
Roman kings, but once again we cannot be entirely certain that
the version we now see in the Great Stemma was part of the
Stemma at its origin.

We must also not omit to mention that there is a very ancient gloss in
the Great Stemma, probably based on a sermon by Origen,
discussing the theological significance of Lot's incest. This is discussed
in more detail on the theological page. The passage has no
counterpart at all in the Liber. This difference must however be

treated with caution, as one might question whether this is an original

part of the Great Stemma. It is omitted from the Epsilon recension
and it does not seem germane to the document's central purpose.
Indeed, in others of the cases I have mentioned above, one is left in
a certain ambivalence. When were these features introduced? By the
author? Or have they been seamlessly inserted by a later editor and
are we falling into a trap by perceiving them as original?
The question is an important one because I wish to demonstrate that
the Great Stemma is not a set of notes compiled from the Liber, but a
predecessor and an autonomous creative work. One would be left in a
state of doubt about this if it were not for certain fine differences
which are particularly striking. They are found in the core material,
the genealogy, and they involve the kind of obscure detail that would
doubtless be of intense interest to an author, but would scarcely ever
attract the concern of a revisor.
When one considers the array of micro differences set out below,
one's conviction grows that the Great Stemma, the Liber Genealogus
and the Origo Humani Generis were, despite their superficial
resemblance and their doubtless dependence on common sources, by
different authors.
Moreover, even if the works do appear to have emerged from a
common tradition of learning and to quote some of the same
authorities, their authors may even have consulted Vetus Latina or
Septuagint scriptural texts which brought them into mutual conflict:

The list of the sons of Joktan (Genesis 10:28-29) in the Liber is

explicitly counted up 12 persons and ended, whereas the Great
Stemma offers at least 13 sons, as in the Hebrew Genesis, with
the inclusion of Obal.[*]Obal is now canonical, having been standardized as
part of the western church's list by Jerome's Vulgate. The Gttingen Septuagint's
Genesis volume, 139, draws attention to the Great Stemma's inclusion of the 13th
name, though the note text, "Lat Prol geneal in hispan mss," seems to have been
transposed to the wrong place in the critical apparatus. The Gttingen edition
excludes Obal from its standard Septuagint text, while noting the name's steady
presence in a substantial minority of recensions, employing a wide variety of
Greek spellings: , , , , , , , . Fischer,
Genesis, 140 lists several early authorities, including Augustine, which exclude
Obal from the tally and only accept 12 sons of Joktan.. The presence in the
Stemma manuscripts of a 14th son, Iodore, suggests not so
much a scriptural misquote as some confusion in the early
editing process: this item is probably a scribal duplication of the
name of another brother, Hadoram.[*]Aduram and Iodore are
sufficiently different words that an editor would be hard pressed to recognize
them as mere variants of . Fischer's Vetus Latina Genesis takes the

standard Old Latin evolution to be Odorrem, while quoting below it all of the
following variants, to be found in evolutions of the Hippolytus Chronicon: Derra,
Odor, Adorra, Oderba and Odorem. Iodore and the Great Stemma are not cited
until the appendix. The Gttingen Septuagint's Genesis has no Greek spellings
that closely resemble Iodore, but the critical apparatus documents an Armenian
form which it transliterates iodoram (139)..
Certain other names that are integral to the Septuagint are
omitted from the Liber, yet they are worked into most versions
of the Great Stemma: Bozrah (mother of Job), Abishag
(companion of David) , Maacah (wife of David), Naama (wife of
Solomon).
Certain uncanonical names are only found in the Great Stemma
and never in the Liber, among them: Anazra (mother of Noah in
Alpha and Beta); Nicibat (wife of Terah); Oholah and Oholibah
(the names of the harlots in Ezekiel 23) in the roles of daughters
of Lot and Dinah, the wife of Job. More detail.
The Liber contains certain distinctive mistakes not found in the
Great Stemma, several of which are discussed below. For
example, the G recension of the Liber splits the name Iembram
in the Levitic genealogy into two, transmitting it as Iebda and
Baux, probably through scribal error. Its addition of a second
Masiel to the same group probably arose in the same way.
The Great Stemma excludes two forefathers, Nathan and Heli,
from Mary's ancestry in that part of Luke's genealogy which
concatenates Melchi, Levi, Joseph.[*]The Beta text contains a curiously
botched attempt at emendation where Heli is introduced, but Levi is omitted..
This leads one to speculate either (a) that Heli (Luke 3.23) must
have been absent from the Gospel text consulted by the Great
Stemma author, or (b) that the Heli and Levi were excluded in
reliance on the Letter to Aristides of Julius Africanus.[*]Christophe
Guignard delivered an important paper at the 2011 Oxford Patristics Conference
on why names are exluded from the Julius Africanus list. Publication is
forthcoming. The earliest, G recension of the Liber restores both
Nathan and Heli, so that we have there: Melchi, Levi, Nathan,
Heli, Joseph.[*]The text concludes: ... Heli genuit Ioseph, Ioseph genuit
Ioachim, Ioachim genuit Mariam (Liber Genealogus, nos. 607-9). The Origo
editor makes a most curious emendation, since we find this
order in the Origo or T recension: Melchi, Levi, Heli, Joseph.Why
this Nathan was initially excluded, whether through consulting a
deficient gospel text or by scribal error in the transmission of T, I
cannot say, but the matter is in any case not germane to the
point I wish to make here.

And what are we to make of those rare instances where we can

directly compare how the two authors quote entire sentences of their
Vetus Latina text? Here for example are the two authors' paraphrases
from Genesis 4:2-5, dealing with God's divergent welcome for Cain's
and Abel's sacrifices. The Great Stemma version is at left. At centre is

the G recension of the Liber Genealogus. At right is Fischer's Vetus

Latina:[*]This is the passage which Ayuso failed to correctly quote from Lagarde,
Septuaginta Studien II, 5.
Factus est Abel pastor
ovium, Cain autem
operarius terre. Et
obtulit Abel de
primogenita ovium et
Cain de fructibus terre.
Et respexit dominus in
munera Abel, et super
munera Cain non
respexit.

Abel ... et factus est pastor

Et factus est Abel pastor ovium,
ovium, Cain autem agricola. Et Cain autem operabatur terram.
factus est post dies attulit Cain, Et factum est post dies obtulit
de fructibus terrae hostiam
Cain de fructu terrae sacrificium
deo, et Abel attulit ex
domino. Et Abel obtulit et ipse
primogenitu ovium suarum et de primitiis ovium suarum (et de
ex adipe illarum. Et respexit
adipus earum). Et respexit deus
deus in Abel et in muneribus
super Abel et super munera
eius, in Cain autem et in
eius, super Cain autem et super
hostias eius non respexit.
sacrificia eius non respexit.

Neither author can be using the other's text here as his source. Each
has gone back to his Latin text of Genesis to quote from it directly. It
is striking that the Great Stemma abbreviates the passage, and
preserves the Vetus Latina's literal term for tiller of the soil, operarius
terrae, while the Liber leaves nothing out, but offers a freer
paraphrase and changes the tiller of the soil into an agricola.[*]The
Vulgate text is: Fuit autem Abel pastor ovium et Cain agricola. Factum est autem post
multos dies ut offerret Cain de fructibus terrae munera Domino, Abel quoque obtulit de
primogenitis gregis sui et de adipibus eorum. Et respexit Dominus ad Abel et ad munera
eius, ad Cain vero et ad munera illius non respexit. The notes to Fischer's Genesis, I, 79
quote four uses of agricola in this position, all later than Jerome: Liber Genealogus, a
Pseudo-Augustine, Quodvultdeus and Isidore.
It might, as we have said, be argued that even these complex
differences arose through subsequent editing. After all, none of our
witness manuscripts is closer than 500 years to the period of
authorship of either work. But there are so many divergences in their
underlying conceptions that one tends to believe that it was the
respective original authors who chose to shape the data, each in his
singular way. Each clearly had access to prior material that the other
did not use. One or both authors may perhaps have even directly
consulted and translated Greek works, though apart from the
Chronological Canons of Eusebius, we cannot identify any Greek or
intermediate Latin work that they may have drawn on.[*]Ayuso draws
attention to this point, emphasizing that both the Liber and the Stemma are, at least
indirectly, the fruits of Greek rather than of Latin learning.
We now come to the issue of interdependency. If there is any, it is
hardly likely that the that the Liber Genealogus is the prior work,
since the Great Stemma author would not have simply abandoned the
Heli node.
It is also hard to see why the Great Stemma author would have relied
solely on an analytical textual work as his source. An existing listing

of the succession of judges, kings and prophets might well have

helped to reduce the labour of checking the ancestry chain, but the
author would almost certainly have required constant direct access to
scripture as he worked through the rest of his material, obtaining
vital data on the patriarchs to build the timeline and its synchronisms,
adding comprehensive details about the minor prophets and
discreetly repairing the defects in Matthew's genealogy.
The greater likelihood lies with the proposition that the Great Stemma
or a more primitive predecessor was the prior work, brilliant in its
own way but narrowly focussed, perhaps compiled directly from
scripture, an epitome of Eusebius's Canons and some other
chronological work, whereas the Liber Genealogus is the later,
compound work, bringing a more literary flavour to the data, worked
up from additional analytical documents, including a handbook of
etymologies. Evidence for this is explored on a separate page.