CHAPTER 5
Commentary epikaleisthai the Name of the Lord: the verb here would normally be taken as in the middle voice, and translated 'to call on the Name of the Lord'. The expression, in fact, is a stock LXX rendering of the common Hebrew qdra' b:Sem YHWH, 'to invoke the Name of the Lord'. But Julius Africanus took the verb as a passive, to yield
'this man hoped to be called by the Name of God'; and other Fathers, among them Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 62) felt they had good reason to follow his translation. First, the reference to mysterious and hitherto unmentioned 'sons of God' in Gen. 6: 2 might now be easily and reasonably explained as descendants of Enosh and Seth. Next, the way was open to understand Aquila's first and very literal rendering of the Hebrew as houtos érxato tou kaleisthai en onomati kuriou as meaning 'this man began to be called by the Name of the Lord', thus showing the piety of Enosh and his sons. But in reality Aquila's kaleisthai en onomati stands for the common Hebrew ligr& beSem, 'to call on the Name'; this was evidently obscure to the Greeks who followed Julius Africanus, but was immediately apparent to Jerome with his knowledge of the original Hebrew.
CHAPTER 5 verse 2 Rabbi Huna in Gen. Rab. 21: 2 notes that Eve may properly be called Adam: see also Midrash Aggadah 20, and later
Midrashim listed by Kasher.! The brevity of the comment conceals a problem, as is often the case in QHG. Jerome presumably intends to rule out the suspicion that God created an androgynous being:
LXX could be taken to imply such a creation by stating of Adam in 5: 1 that God created him, and continuing in 5: 2 with the words
'male and female He made them'. Thus speculation might arise that God had created one being which was male 'and female', i.e. having female parts. Jewish interpreters knew this, and in Gen. Rab. 8: 1
R. Jeremiah ben Lazar actually states that God created Adam as androgynous. Accordingly, this was yet another verse which the Rabbis record as having been altered in the Greek translation prepared for King Ptolemy.* ' See Kasher, Torah Shelemah, 351.
2 See above, comment and notes on 2: 2. TO and PJ are a little vague in their Commentary Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 62) had also noted the one hundred years' discrepancy, and indeed 'the rest,' according to the Syrohexaplar, read 130 years. Augustine, De Civ. Dei 15. 10I1, treated the matter systematically. See notes to verses 25-7 below, which explain why Jerome was concerned with this longstanding problem of chronology.' As often, Origen, Sel. in Gen. 5:
3, displays concerns entirely different from Jerome's: he comments on the meaning of Adam's image and likeness which Seth bears. verse 4 The difference between Hebrew and LXX numbers amounts exactly to one hundred years. Augustine, De Civ. Dei 15.
10, notes and comments on these and other discrepancies.' verses 25-7 For discussion among Christian writers, see especially
Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam 3. 48; and Augustine, De Civ. Dei 15. 10-11, and OG 2. Jerome reiterates the LXX chronology to show the embarrassing result in the case of Methuselah, whose life extended beyond the Flood. But only eight persons survived that disaster (Gen. 6: 18; 1 Peter 3: 20), and all were Noah's immediate family. Once more, as in his comment on 4: 6~7, Jerome admits that LXX are in error; and he demonstrates that the chronology of the Hebrew and Samaritan texts is entirely consonant with other parts of Scripture. He felt it necessary to prove his point in detail, and the message is clear: the Hebrew preserves the truth, while LXX actually create a major chronological and theological problem with their translation. In Vg, therefore, he adopts his version of the Hebrew as set out here.
Jerome's approach to this matter is unique among his contemporaries and predecessors. He notes that if the Hebrew text is adopted, the problem fades away. By contrast, those who held to the LXX were compelled to adopt desperate measures. So Josephus, renderings of 5: 2, and may admit the notion of an androgyne: see Bowker, The Targums, 143.
3 For studies of the differences in chronology between LXX and the Hebrew in this chapter of Genesis, see B. Z. Wacholder, Essays on Jewish Chronology and Chronography (New York, 1976), pp. 106-35; G. Larsson, "The Chronology of the Pentateuch:
A Comparison of the MT and LXX', JBL 102 (1983), 401-9.
4 There was suspicion among Jews that Christians had falsified the text of Scripture: see Rahmer, Die hebrdischen Traditionen, 21-3. But the Samaritan Pentateuch, to which Jerome will allude in his commentary on §: 25-7, also differs from Hebrew and LXX, which Josephus follows in Ant. 1. 82, in the chronology of the period before the Flood. For a convenient, comprehensive display of these discrepancies in tabular form, and detailed discussion of them, sce J. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh, 1912), 134-9.
1. 86, whom Julius Africanus appears to follow (see the fragment preserved in PG ro: 68), and a scribal correction in Codex
Alexandrinus altered the text of LXX to make Methuselah 187 when Lamech was born, such that he could die six years before the Flood!' Augustine approved a solution along these lines, and argued that it could be supported by the best manuscripts, three
Greek, one Latin, and one Syrian: his support for LXX is unwavering, and he even suggests that the Hebrew text has been falsified by the Jews.® Ambrose made a virtue of necessity, seeing in Methuselah's survival of the Flood a type of the Resurrection of Christ.
Now all this is astonishing, considering that Eusebius of Caesarea had made available to the Christian world full details of the Hebrew, Samaritan, and LXX texts of this chapter in his
Chronicon (PG 19: 147-54). As Kamesar has noted, a glance at Eusebius's work would reveal that the figures given by the Hebrew text eliminate all difficulties. But this information was not used.
Kamesar indicates that for earlier Christian authors such as Theophilus (Ad Autolycum 3. 24), and Hippolytus (Chronicon 8.
21, 9. 1, 4-5) there seemed to be no difficulty; but Eusebius himself had suggested that the Jews had altered the Hebrew text in the matter of Methuselah, and from the fourth century onwards the problem came to exercise the minds of scholars, as Jerome asserts.
Their solution, as we have seen, often involved tampering with the text of LXX: Jerome's approach, by contrast, is evidence of his originality." In saying that Methuselah died in the year the Flood began, he agrees with PJ, TN, FTP of Gen. 7: ro, and Gen. Rab. 32: ro that the waters came down after the seven days of mourning for the Patriarch were ended. verse 29 The name Noah, Hebrew noah, suggested to exegetes two Hebrew roots for its origins, first nwh, 'to rest'; and nbm, 'to console oneself', the latter because the Hebrew text differs from LXX, and explains the name as 'this one will comfort us, ynhmnw', not 'this one will give us rest'. While Jerome, like LXX and Origen,
Hom. in Gen. 2. 3, invokes the first root here and in Lib. Heb.
Nom. (pp. 69, 132, 141, 151, 157), he translated the Hebrew in Vg 5 See Wevers, p. 106, first apparatus, and Harl, Bible d'Alexandrie, i. 123-4.
6 Augustine, De Civ. Dei 15. 10-11; QG 2. His special pleading for the integrity of LXX in De Civ. Dei 15. 13 is striking.
7 On this, see Kamesar, 'Thesis', 178-82.