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is lacking. It can, however, be seen from KrR I 21 ff.
that their source, which was closely related to EF,
contained a passage corresponding to L 7-17 which
must have been omitted in E. This agreement with
A must, then, be secondary.
In A 39-40 (B 37) it is said that Adam had advised
Seth “at hann skylldi signa sik marki þui er Bethel
h(et)” (the last word could alternatively be expanded
in the present tense “heitir”), thus also E 58-59,
F 27, KrR I 71. In L 40 the symbol is called “thau”‘
in other Latin texts “tlieta”, “tetha” or “theta vel
thau”7 (thus in Meyer’s text). Still other texts have
corrupt forms such as “teca”, “theca”, “crucis”,
“recto”, or omit the word altogether, but the form
“Bethel” is not found in any of the Latin texts
above mentioned. It is tempting to conjecture that
“theta (tetha) vel” has been corrupted to “bethel”,
a word familiar from the Bible, where, liowever,
it is a place-name8. The fact that A and EF have
this error in common is difficult to explain. It is
possible that Latin texts containing this error existed
and in this case the Latin sources for A and EE
must have been closely related, or perhaps A and EF
have been translated from the same Latin source.
A jjerhaps more reasonable possibility is that a MS
of the translation which survives in E and E and
which is the basis of KrR was compared with a MS of
the AB group and that the reading “bethel” was
adopted from there, perhaps originally as a marginal
note which was inserted in the text of a later copy.
7. thau or theta is the Old Testament precursor of the cross, cf.
Ezekiel 9. It was really the name of a Hebrew letter which
originally had the shape of a cross, corresponding to Greek and
Roman T, cf. Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens VIII
col.749ff. and Lexikon fiir Theologie und Kirche IX, 1964,
col. 1306 f.
8. Bethel is named several times in the Bible, cf. Dictionnaire
de la Bible I, 1926, col. 1672 ff.