Genesis

(A, ca. 700; B, mid-ninth century)

   The OLD ENGLISH Genesis is a poem of 2,935 lines, surviving in the Junius manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian library. Based on the first book of the Bible, the poem is divided in the manuscript into 41 sections or fitts. But most significantly, lines 235–851 of the text are written in a different style and tone from the rest of the poem, and are clearly an interpolation of later origin than the rest of the poem.

   The earlier Genesis, usually called Genesis A, is a relatively faithful rendition of the biblical text from the Creation through the story of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.13. Part of the manuscript is missing after the third day of the creation story, after which the text jumps to the creation of Eve. The chief modification in the story is the poet’s addition of the non-biblical story of the fall of Satan and his rebel angels.More than half the text of Genesis A is concerned with the story of Abraham, who at least at some points—the section narrating Abraham’s rescue of his nephew Lot, for example— is described like an Anglo-Saxon warrior. Most scholars, however, have been more interested in Genesis B, the interpolated poem. Genesis B focuses on the story of the fall of the rebel angels (for the second time in the manuscript) and on the Fall of Man. Since the leaves containing the story of the fall in Genesis A have apparently been lost, it seems that the manuscript was “completed” by the insertion of Genesis B. This section is later than the poem into which it has been inserted— probably from the mid-ninth century as opposed to the early eighth century for Genesis A. The 19thcentury German scholar Edward Sievers suggested that Genesis B was based on a continental Old Saxon original—a conjecture that was verified when a fragment of the original Saxon poem was found in a manuscript in the Vatican library in 1894.

   Genesis B begins in the midst of God’s speech to Adam and Eve, instructing them not to eat of the forbidden tree. This is followed by a long flashback describing the fall of Lucifer. Most fascinating about this text is the characterization of Lucifer, who is presented as a tragic fallen warrior who refused to submit to God, still struggling against his defeat while chained in hell. He urges one of his “thains,” another fallen angel, to go to earth and corrupt God’s Creation. In the Old English poet’s version, the devil speaks first to Adam, saying that God has sent him with new instructions, allowing Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree.When Adam is not fooled, the devil approaches Eve. He convinces her that Adam will incur God’s wrath if he does not follow the new commandment to eat of the tree, and out of concern for her mate, Eve eats the apple and persuades Adam to do so. Thus in this poem, in an unusual reading of the story, the Fall is seen as the deception of pure innocence by wicked guile, rather than as willful sin. One question that has fascinated literary scholars has been the relationship of Genesis B with Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton was acquainted with Franciscus Junius, owner of the manuscript, and therefore may have known of Genesis B and its portrayal of Satan. On the other hand, both depictions may have been based on a fifth-century Latin text (the Poematum de Mosaicae historiae gestis libri quinque of Avitus).

   Bibliography

   ■ Godden,Malcolm. “Biblical Literature: The Old Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 206–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

   ■ Greenfield, Stanley B., and Daniel G. Calder. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

   ■ Kennedy, Charles William, trans. Early English Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.

   ■ Krapp, George Philip. The Junius Manuscript. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records I.New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.