The Latin textual basis of Genesis A

Abstract

Received scholarly opinion regards Genesis A as an Old English versification of the Latin text of Genesis in Jerome's Vulgate revision of the bible. This view has prevailed in modern editions of the poem, which normally print a critical text of the Vulgate Genesis in their apparatus. The textual basis of Genesis A is perhaps ‘vulgate’ in character in so far as the poem renders Genesis readings that were commonly known in Anglo-Saxon England, but the identification of this base text with that of the Hieronymian Vulgate remains an untested hypothesis. Ten years ago A. N. Doane printed a list of readings in the Old English text which show affinity with the ancient versions of Genesis that emerged before the completion of Jerome's translation, readings associted with the Vetus Latina or Old Latin bible. Doane did not, however, challenge the long-standing belief that Genesis A follows a single, lost exemplar that contained in all essentials the text established by Jerome. The present study attempts to survey, without any preconceptions, all the details in the poem that might derive from Latin sources; its intention is to make a first step towards the recovery of the Latin textual basis of Genesis A.