Genesis A (or Elder Genesis) is an Old English poetic adaptation of the first half or so of the biblical book of Genesis. The poem is fused with a passage known today as Genesis B , translated and interpolated from the Old Saxon Genesis.
Genesis A (and B) survive in the Junius Manuscript, which has been held in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford since 1677.
The sole manuscript containing Genesis A is incomplete, with a number of leaves missing. This means that, as we have it today, there are gaps (lacunae) in the poem. Paul G. Remley has estimated the number of missing lines thus: [1]
| text | lines |
|---|---|
| Genesis A | 1-168 |
| lacuna | 62 |
| Genesis A | 169-205 |
| lacuna | no detectable textual loss |
| Genesis A | 206-34 |
| lacuna | 70 |
| Genesis B | 235-441 |
| lacuna | 116 |
| Genesis B | 442-851 |
| Genesis A | 852-2045 |
| lacuna | no detectable textual loss |
| Genesis A | 2046-381 |
| lacuna | 20 |
| Genesis A | 2382-418 |
| lacuna | 61 |
| Genesis A | 2419-512 |
| lacuna | 18 |
| Genesis A | 2513-99 |
| lucuna | 36 |
| Genesis A | 2600-806 |
| lacuna | 19 |
| Genesis A | 2807-2936 |
The total length of the combined Genesis A and B poems when the junius Manuscript was complete was therefore around 3339 lines.
Genesis A begins before Biblical Genesis—not with the creation of the world but with the creation of Heaven and the angels and with Satan's war on Heaven. [2] Then the poet describes the days of creation, culminating with the creation of Adam and a description of the Garden of Eden. [3] After this, the poem scholars call Genesis B resumes the story of Adam in the Garden, [4] while also going back to the war on Heaven Genesis A already discussed. [5] Following the material from Genesis B, the poem is a fairly close translation of the Biblical book of Genesis up to and including the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22.13).
Scholars consider the poem in the Junius manuscript of separate authorship than Genesis B, though both are presented concurrently in the Junius Manuscript. [6] Charles Leslie Wrenn even considers Genesis A to be a composite work. [7]
Scholars such as Wrenn once considered the work to be partially written by Cædmon, [7] though as far back as Laurence Michel in 1947 there were critics: he calls the attribution based on "circumstantial evidence" and that any connection "may be laid to the prevalence of well-known pious introductory formulas". [8]
The editions and translations of Genesis A include:
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.
The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.
The Old English poem Judith describes the beheading of Assyrian general Holofernes by Israelite Judith of Bethulia. It is found in the same manuscript as the heroic poem Beowulf, the Nowell Codex, dated ca. 975–1025. The Old English poem is one of many retellings of the Holofernes–Judith tale as it was found in the Book of Judith, still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. The other extant version is by Ælfric of Eynsham, late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon abbot and writer; his version is a homily of the tale.
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry, along with the Vercelli Book in Vercelli, Italy, the Nowell Codex in the British Library, and the Junius manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The book was donated to what is now the Exeter Cathedral library by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 130 or 131 leaves, of which the first 7 or 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 leaves are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest and perhaps oldest known manuscript of Old English literature, containing about a sixth of the Old English poetry that has come down to us.
The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means healer in Old Saxon, and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic epic. Heliand is the largest known work of written Old Saxon.
Franciscus Junius, also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
Genesis B, also known as The Later Genesis, is a passage of Old English poetry describing the Fall of Satan and the Fall of Man, translated from an Old Saxon poem known as the Old Saxon Genesis. The passage known as Genesis B survives as an interpolation in a much longer Old English poem, the rest of which is known as Genesis A, which gives an otherwise fairly faithful translation of the biblical Book of Genesis. Genesis B comprises lines 235-851 of the whole poem.
Christ and Satan is an anonymous Old English religious poem consisting of 729 lines of alliterative verse, contained in the Junius Manuscript.
Christ I, is a fragmentary collection of Old English poems on the coming of the Lord, preserved in the Exeter Book. In its present state, the poem comprises 439 lines in twelve distinct sections. In the assessment of Edward B. Irving Jr, "two masterpieces stand out of the mass of Anglo-Saxon religious poetry: The Dream of the Rood and the sequence of liturgical lyrics in the Exeter Book ... known as Christ I".
Daniel is an anonymous Old English poem based loosely on the Biblical Book of Daniel, found in the Junius Manuscript. The author and the date of Daniel are unknown. Critics have argued that Cædmon is the author of the poem, but this theory has been since disproved. Daniel, as it is preserved, is 764 lines long. There have been numerous arguments that there was originally more to this poem than survives today. The majority of scholars, however, dismiss these arguments with the evidence that the text finishes at the bottom of a page, and that there is a simple point, which translators assume indicates the end of a complete sentence. Daniel contains a plethora of lines which Old English scholars refer to as “hypermetric” or long. Daniel is one of the four major Old Testament prophets, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The poet even changed the meaning of the story from remaining faithful while you are being persecuted to a story dealing with pride, which is a very common theme in Old English Literature. The Old English, Daniel is a warning against pride and there are three warnings in the story. The Israelites were conquered because they lost faith in God, who delivered them from Egypt, and started worshiping idols and this is the first prideful act. The second and third warnings are about internal pride, shown to Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel's dream interpretations.
The Phoenix is an anonymous Old English poem. It is composed of 677 lines and is for the most part a translation and adaptation of the Latin poem De Ave Phoenice attributed to Lactantius. It is found in the Exeter Book.
The title "(The) Seasons for Fasting" refers to an incomplete Old English homiletic poem, which deals primarily with the observance of fasts on the appropriate dates of the liturgical calendar, but which also attacks the misbehaviour of lax priests. The piece appears to have been composed by a clergyman and directed at a lay audience, addressed as folces manna in line 212, whom he perhaps believed to have been potentially misguided.
Exodus is the title given to an Old English alliterative poem in the 10th century Junius manuscript. Exodus is not a paraphrase of the biblical book, but rather a re-telling of the story of the Israelites' flight from Egyptian captivity and the Crossing of the Red Sea in the manner of a "heroic epic", much like Old English poems Andreas, Judith, or even Beowulf. It is one of the densest, most allusive and complex poems in Old English, and is the focus of much critical debate.
Cædmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede, miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The poem is Cædmon's only known composition.
Genesis is an Old Saxon Biblical poem recounting the story of the Book of Genesis, dating to the first half of the 9th century, three fragments of which are preserved in a manuscript in the Vatican Library, Palatinus Latinus 1447. It and the Heliand, a heroic poem based on the New Testament, a fragment of which is also included in the same manuscript, constitute the only major records of Old Saxon poetry. It is also the basis of the Anglo-Saxon poem known as Genesis B, and Eduard Sievers postulated its existence on linguistic evidence before the manuscript was discovered.
De creatura is an 83-line Latin polystichic poem by the seventh- to eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poet Aldhelm and an important text among Anglo-Saxon riddles. The poem seeks to express the wondrous diversity of creation, usually by drawing vivid contrasts between different natural phenomena, one of which is usually physically higher and more magnificent, and one of which is usually physically lower and more mundane.
Durham, also known as De situ Dunelmi, Carmen de situ Dunelmi or De situ Dunelmi et de sanctorum reliquiis quae ibidem continentur carmen compositum, is an anonymous late Old English short poem about the English city of Durham and its relics, which might commemorate the translation of Cuthbert's relics to Durham Cathedral in 1104. Known from the late 12th-century manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1. 27, Durham has been described both as "the last extant poem written in traditional alliterative Old English metrical verse" and as being placed "so conveniently on the customary divide between Old and Middle English that the line can be drawn right down the middle of the poem." Scholars have dated the poem either to the twelfth century or to some point in the second half of the eleventh century.
This work is generally believed to be a composite of two separate poems . . . The reason for this interpolation is not known. Perhaps the original compiler preferred the version of the story presented in "Genesis B", or perhaps the text of "Genesis A" from which he was working with was missing this section.