An issue where a Hippolytan link is uncertain involves the omission of the second Kenan. This is an ancestor inserted by most texts of the Septuagint Genesis (and consequently by the Gospel of Luke) between Arpachshad and Shelah after the Great Flood.[*]Gen 10:24, Luke 3:36.
Julius Africanus (Chronography, T16) (see Gelzer I,89 and Wallraff 29-39) had rejected Luke's text, LXX Gen 10:24 and 11:12-13 and preferred a Hebrew tradition attested by Josephus (Antiquities, lib. I, 6.4) that omits Kenan. Eusebius also preferred to rely on the Hebrew tradition and followed Julius Africanus.
This omission is carried over into our manuscipts of the Great Stemma, thus deliberately breaking with the established Lucan text. At first glance, one might think this reflects the Eusebian revision of the Great Stemma, but the omission is also found in the G recension of the Liber Genealogus.
It is however difficult to make the case that Hipplytus is the source of this feature since several texts drawing on the work of Hippolytus include Kenan (Cainan). More research is required on this point. [*]This is a point of conflict with the manuscripts in the Hippolytan tradition including the Liber Generationis ("... vicit Cainan ann. CXXX et genuit ..."), the Chronicon anni p. Chr. 334 ("... Cainan CXXXI genuit Sala"), the Excerpta latina Barbari ("Cainan centum treginta") and the Liber Chronicorum ("Cainan fuit annorum CXXX...") The Book of Jubilees, a Jewish scriptural work which also contains the Second Kenan, plainly had no influence here on the Great Stemma. All versions of the Liber Genealogus makes the jump from Arpachshad (63) to Shelah (201) without any intermediary. The LG explicitly terms Shelah the nepotes of Shem.
Two time-spans, covering the history of Rome, (the duration of them monarchy and the duration of the republic) are difficult to link to either Hippolytus or Eusebius. The Roman section is not described in the G recension of the Liber Genealogus and one suspects the section was added later than 427. But where does the material come from? The numbers of years offered by the extant manuscripts of the Great Stemma either represent an autonomous tradition or have been seriously corrupted during their transmission into the early medieval period. This numbers and possible ways to interpret them are discussed on a separate page.[*]It remains a matter of debate whether the Stemma originally agreed or not with the Canons on the age of the world up to the time of the birth of Abraham. Eusebius regarded all history prior to Abraham as uncertain and merely stated the pre-Abraham span in global fashion as a period of 2,242 years. An editor of the Great Stemma, has modified the Methusaleh time span given by the Septuagint and would seem to arrive at a new total of 2,262 years from Adam to the birth of Abraham, a plus of 20 years. However this does not seem to have been the intention of the Great Stemma's author.
A contradiction which would have implied that Methusaleh survived the Great Flood (which would be odd, since he was not one of the eight people reputedly aboard Noah's Ark) is cured in some recensions of the Great Stemma by altering the year of Lamech's begetting from Methusaleh's 167th to his 187th year.[*]LXX Genesis 5:25 gives the number 167.
nonnulli namque XIIII annis post diluvium Matusalam vixisse perhibentur quod omnino falsum est ... nam ante octuagesimo sexto annos diluvii Matusala mortuus est
A few other chronographers such as Julius Africanus also give the crucial age as 187. Julius Africanus may have based his view on this difficult aporia (illogicality) on a variant of the Septuagint text.[*]Wallraff, Chronographiae, 35.
The position of the Great Stemma in its ur-form is not however clear. The Epsilon recension does not contain this text, and the Liber Genealogus is entirely silent about this aporia. Indeed, this contradiction was one of the points that had prompted Eusebius of Caesarea to avoid any calculations of pre-Abrahamic time. It seems to me most likely that the Great Stemma author was silent on this matter in the proto-version, and that the gloss on the topic is the work of a later editor during the document's transmission.
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