Thanks to everyone who responded to my question, both on- and off-list.
I've passed your information on. Thanks particularly to Elizabeth
MacLachlan for the book reference. This should deal with the other
questions that cropped up - what was understood by this oddity, did
mediaeval theologians build a multi-layered allegorical interpretation
on it? And was theological support for this tradition so strong that
Michelangelo, living at a time when, as Richard Landes writes, they
probably knew better, felt unable to ignore it?
It does seem more likely to me that the tradition stems from a mistaken
translation than from a visual error - an attempt to depict rays of
light being seen as horns. That would seem too great a coincidence,
given that a possible linguistic confusion also exists.
However, did the error stem from a true mistranslation of the Hebrew
word at the outset or was it introduced later in the chain? Is it
possible to mistake the meaning of the Hebrew in this way? Or does the
error come from the Vulgate Latin and arise from a misreading of
_coronata_, meaning haloed, for _cornuta_, meaning horned? A simple
copying error in fact.
Did Jerome translate directly from the Hebrew original, or from a Greek
intermediary? Or did he have access to both and simply use the Greek
translation as a guide? I'm assuming, since nobody has mentioned it,
that this error does not exist in the Greek.
Regards,
--
Avril
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