THE POEMS OF MS 11 JUNIUS BASIC READINGS IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND CARL T. BERKHOUT, PAUL E. SZARMACH, AND JosEPH B. TRAHERN, JR., General Editors OLD ENGLISH SHORTER POEMS ANGLO-SAXON MANuSCRIPTS Basic Readings Basic Readings edited by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe edited by Mary P. Richards BEOWULF CYNEWULF Basic Readings Basic Readings edited by Peter S. Baker Robert E. Bjork THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANGLO-SAXON OLD ENGLISH PROSE ENGLAND Basic Readings Basic Readings edited by Paul E. Szarmach edited by Catherine E. Karkov THE POEMS OF MS JUNIUS 11 Basic Readings edited by R. M. Liuzza THE POEMS OF MS JUNIUS 11 Basic Readings edited by R. M. Liuzza ROUTLEDGE New York and London Published in 2002 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Copyright © 2002 R. M. Liuzza Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti lized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The poems of MS Junius 11 : basic readings I edited by R.M. Liuzza. p. em. - (Basic readings in Anglo-Saxon England ; vol. 8) ISBN 0-8153-3862-7 (acid-free paper) 1. Caedmon manuscript. 2. English poetry-Old English, ca. 450-1100- History and criticism. 3. Christian poetry, English (Old)-History and criticism. 4. Manuscripts, Medieval-England. 5. Manuscripts, English (Old) I. Liuzza, R. M. II. Series. PR1624 .P64 2001 829' .1 093823-dc21 2001044216 Contents Preface of the General Editors vii Introduction ix R. M. Liuzza Acknowledgments xix List of Abbreviations xxi Confronting Germania Latina: Changing Responses to Old English Biblical Verse 1 Joyce Hill The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11 20 J. R. Hall "The Old English Epic of Redemption": Twenty-Five-Year Retrospective 53 J. R. Hall Some Uses of Paronomasia in Old English Scriptural Verse 69 Roberta Frank Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher: The Fall of Language in the Old English Genesis B 99 Eric Jager Conspicuous Heroism: Abraham, Prudentius, and the Old English Verse Genesis 119 Andrew Orchard Christian Tradition in the Old English Exodus 137 James W. Earl v vi Contents The Patriarchal Digression in the Old English Exodus, Lines 362-446 173 Stanley R. Hauer The Lion Standard in Exodus: Jewish Legend, Germanic Tradition, and Christian Typology 188 Charles D. Wright The Structure of the Old English Daniel 203 Robert T. Farrell Style and Theme in the Old English Daniel 229 Earl R. Anderson Nebuchadnezzar's Dreams in the Old English Daniel 261 Antonina Harbus The Power of Knowledge and the Location of the Reader in Christ and Satan 287 Ruth Wehlau The Wisdom Poem at the End of MS Junius 11 302 Janet Schrunk Ericksen Index 327 Preface of the General Editors Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England (BRASE) is a series of volumes that collect classic, exemplary, or ground-breaking essays in the fields of Anglo-Saxon studies generally written in the 1960s or later, or commissioned by a volume editor to fulfill the purpose of the given vol ume. The General Editors impose no prior restraint of "correctness" of ideology, method, or critical position. Each volume editor has editorial autonomy to select essays that sketch the achievement in a given area of study or point to the potential for future study. The liveliness and diver sity of the interdisciplinary field, manifest in the Annual Bibliography in the Old English Newsletter and in the review of that Bibliography in the Year's Work in Old English Studies, can lead only to editorial choices that reflect intellectual openness. BRASE volumes must be true to their premises, complete within their articulated limits, and accessible to a multiple readership. Each collection may serve as a "first book" on the delimited subject, where students and teachers alike may find a conve nient starting point. The terminus a quo, approximately the 1960s, may be associated with the general rise of Anglo-Saxon studies and a renewed, interdisciplinary professionalism therein; other collections, particularly in literature, represent the earlier period. Changes in publi cation patterns and in serial-acquisitions policies, moreover, suggest that convenient collections can still assist the growth and development of Anglo-Saxon studies. This volume is the first in our series to be devoted to the study of a single manuscript, published in 1655 by Francis Junius and the first of the four great codices of Old English poetry to appear in print. Roy vii viii Preface of the General Editors Liuzza has collected twelve previously published essays to which he has added a detailed update of one (by its author) and an original essay com missioned for this volume. The first three essays deal with manuscript as a whole-one surveying and commenting on past criticism, one advo cating a salvation history of the sort found in Augustine's De cate chizandis rudibus as the manuscript's organizing principle, and a third examining various examples of paronomasia, which provide a vehicle in the four poems for discovering the congruence between language and divine truth. These essays are followed by two on Genesis, two on Exo dus, three on Daniel, and two (including Janet Schrunk Ericksen's origi nal contribution to the volume) on Christ and Satan. Liuzza's informed and succinct summaries of each essay in his Introduction will provide both the novice and the experienced scholar ease of access to the wide variety of essays as well as a sense of how they contribute to one another. The General Editors would like to thank Professor Liuzza for his willingness to organize this volume and add it to the collections already published in the series. Carl T. Berkhout Paul E. Szarmach Joseph B. Trahern, Jr. Introduction R. M. LIUZZA MS Junius 11 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, written around 1000, contains poems on biblical subjects, untitled in their manuscript but called by modem editors Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The manuscript was the first Old English poetic collection to be printed, by its owner Franciscus Junius in 1655;1 Junius believed that the poems were written by Credmon, the inspired poet and innovator of Old English Christian poetry made famous by Bede's Ecclesiastical History iv.24. It is now commonly accepted that the poems in the manuscript are not by Credmon; in fact, each is probably by a different author. Yet the poems were collected and arranged in one manuscript, a fact which allows and encourages us to consider them as a group and raises the pos sibility that the meaning of one poem may be illuminated by the study of its manuscript companions. The physical context of these poems, in other words, may be our best clue to their interpretive context. This col lection, which gathers together 13 essays on the Junius poems, presents an opportunity to read each poem in light of the others. "In many respects we are in no position yet to examine these pieces," Geoffrey Shepherd wrote in 1966; "We do not know enough about Anglo-Saxon literary activities, and we have not yet acquired modem critical techniques adequate for the analysis of their work."2 Shepherd's discouraging opinion was based on the evidence of what he calls "successive recomposition," the reuse of older materials in later texts. The most dramatic example of this is the interpolation of a long fragment of a translated Old Saxon poem (now called Genesis B) into the narrative of Genesis A. Smaller interpolations may have been com-