At 20:51 09.04.00 -0400, you wrote:
>I suppose I ought to have been clearer about what I am trying to find. More
>than just general references to this particular five-part periodization of
>salvation history, I am interested in the specific outline of the
>generations that George uses--that is, presenting the precise number of
>years each man lived followed by the total number of years for that age--
>and even more particularly the format of laying the septuagint variations
>against the vulgate.
Dear Deeana,
I can give you only very vague directions, because I am again a few hundred
kilometers away from my books and notes, but I will give it a try.
The division of the six ages was widely diffused in the tradition of
Augustine (e.g. _De genesi contra Manichaeos_, PL 34,173ss.) and Bede.
Counting the generations of each age was essential and thus habitual for
the third thru fifth age in order to adjust this division to the threefold
division (or so it was assumed to be divided) of the genealogy of Christ in
the Gospel of Matthew. Counting the generations of the first two ages was
somewhat less habitual but their number came handy in a specific tradition
(started by Augustine in the writing referred to above) paralleling the
ages of the world with the ages of man and finding a special moral
congruency between the number of the each time ten generations and the ages
of infantia and pueritia.
In exegesis, theses counts of generations did not normally include also
attempts at fixing the number of years of each age of the world: but this
kind of chronological computus had its own tradition in chronological
writings, see the chapter on the six ages in Isidore's _Etymologiae_ and,
more importantly, in Bede's chronological writings (CCSL 123) were you find
also a synopsis of differing computations based on differing traditions of
the biblical text (which seems to be what you have in mind). So maybe you
should start with Bede (and with the introduction by his editor Charles W.
Jones).
Yet counting, in addition, the years of each man in the genealogy is a
somewhat different matter and I don't remember if this can be found layed
out in Bede. Others have pointed you already to the _Historia scholastica_
(which in medieval manuscripts was preceded by a _Compendium historiae in
genealogiam Christi_ written presumably by Peter of Poitiers but
unfortunately not reproduced in Migne's print). I also seem to recall that
Richard of St. Victor devoted a special treatise to the OT generations
where he made a more or less successful effort at getting the precise
number of years for each person in this genealogy right. And there is
Joachim of Fiore for whom this computistic problem came to be a major issue
in his general project of a concordantiae litterae between the Old and New
Testament, see the very useful introduction in Randolph E. Daniel (ed.),
_Abbot Joachim of Fiore, Liber de Concordantia Noui ac Veteris Testamenti_,
Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1983 (= Transactions of
the APS, vol. 73, part 8).
I hope I didn't give you too many misdirections writing without having my
usual mental crutches within reach.
Otfried
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