Millstätter Genesis 7,18 — Eine verborgene Namensetymologie?

Abstract

The verse in question reads in the manuscript `wie die toten erde got hiez lebentich werden.' This thought is nowhere to be found in the context of an account of creation but belongs to the events accompanying the appearance of the Antichrist. The word-combination `die toten erde' is also unique; `lebendich' corresponds in this case to Gen. 2:7 `in animam viventem' and not to the more frequent Ps. 27:13, which was also translated into MHG. Therefore the manuscript offers a strikingly wilful text. It is a different matter with the wording which Diemer and Piper give in their editions and which has been held so far to be unintelligible: `wie die roten erde got hiez lebentich werden.' Understood in this way, the verse as a chapter heading contains the etymology of the Hebrew name Adam = `red earth, terra rubra,' which was handed down as early as Josephus, then in the Latin Middle Ages and later in German as well, and which outside of etymological lists has its place in the account of the creation of Adam, as in verse 7,18 of the Millstatter Genesis. On the basis of this etymology and its tradition it is to be assumed that the verse probably does not sever the extensive bonds of Early Middle High German literature with Latin texts, but rather that it was handed down in a corrupted form, perhaps because the scribe failed to understand the foreign etymology.