Old Saxon Genesis
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.
Manuscript, dating and provenance
Palatinus Latinus 1447 is a computus and is assembled from several components, the earliest of which have been dated to around 813 and are shown by internal evidence to have been originally produced at the St. Alban's Abbey in Mainz.[1] The Old Saxon material must have been written down later than an astronomical calculation dated to after 836, and the Genesis fragments are in three different hands which have been assigned on palaeographic evidence to the third quarter of the 9th century.[2]
Both Genesis and Heliand appear to be in an artificial literary language,[3] and hence can be placed in the context of a relatively brief period between about 819 and approximately the death of Louis the Pious in 840, when the native Saxon poetic tradition had waned and the Carolingians sought to interest the recently and forcibly converted Saxons in Christian stories. Genesis must be the later of the two, because it alludes to Heliand.[4] Its composition has been located by some scholars at the Abbey of Fulda, a Frankish centre on the edge of Saxon territory, and by others at the Abbey of Werden, in the centre of the Saxon area.[5]
Hypothetical reconstruction and discovery
In 1875, preparatory to publishing an edition of the Heliand, Eduard Sievers argued in a monograph on it and the Anglo-Saxon Genesis that lines 235–851 of the Anglo-Saxon work were originally a separate poem, which he named 'Genesis B' to distinguish it from the remainder, Genesis A, and that this was an Anglo-Saxonised version of a lost Old Saxon poem corresponding to the Genesis poem referred to in the Latin preface to the Heliand.[6] His inference, made on metrical and linguistic grounds, was confirmed in 1894 when Karl Zangemeister, the professor of Classics at the University of Leipzig, found and identified the fragments on a visit to the Vatican Library.[7] Photographs were made and the first edition of the Old Saxon poem, by Zangemeister with Wilhelm Braune and with an introduction by Rudolf Kögel, was completed by the end of the year.[8] Sievers did revise his original hypothesis that the same poet was responsible for both Heliand and Genesis.[9]
Text, Anglo-Saxon poem and possible sources
The manuscript preserves three fragments:
- a speech by Adam from after the Fall
- a segment concerning Abraham and Sodom
- a segment concerning Cain and Abel.
These correspond respectively to lines 790–817a, 151–337, and 27–150 of the Anglo-Saxon Genesis B.[10]
Stylistically, Genesis even more than the Heliand shows that it is the product of a written tradition: although it retains features of Germanic oral heroic poetry such as alliteration and formulaic diction, it is discursive and uses long, connected clauses, and the language shows signs of developing towards the use of particles rather than case endings. Anglo-Saxon poetry had a longer written history beginning with the retaining of oral poetry, and the Anglo-Saxon translator of Genesis B has tightened up the loose connections by using more subordinate clauses.[11] The metre is also less varied than in the Heliand.[12] In some places, Genesis B has been further revised in the manuscript to make it more Anglo-Saxon in syntax, word forms, and (late West Saxon) spelling.[13] Metrically and grammatically, the Anglo-Saxon poem shows few signs of being a translation.[14]
The poem diverges from the story of the Fall as told in the Vulgate. Adam is tempted by a demon in the guise of an angel, not by a "serpent" as in the Bible, and Eve plays a much more active role: Adam is tempted first and refuses, and the tempter tells her to persuade him by telling him the forbidden fruit bestows divine powers; she instead proves it to him by recounting a blissful heavenly vision.[15][16] Although it has been suggested that the vision derives from a Germanic source—the relationship of the lord to his war-band or comitatus—the likeliest source appears to be Jewish apocryphal texts and the writings of Pope Gregory the Great[17] or other contemporary biblical interpreters,[18][19] including the Heliand.[20] It also reflects the theological crisis in the Carolingian Empire in the mid-9th century over free will and predestination, focussing on Gottschalk of Orbais.[21] However, the poem also reflects Germanic concepts in the role of Eve as advisor to her husband, in the feud element of the Fall, and in the mention in Genesis B, presumably present in the Old Saxon original and also present in the Heliand, of Satan employing a hæleðhelm or helm of disguise.[22]
References
- ^ Alger N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon 'Genesis B' and the Old Saxon Vatican 'Genesis', Madison, Wisconsin / London: University of Wisconsin, 1991, ISBN 9780299128005, pp. 11–12.
- ^ Doane, pp. 12–13.
- ^ Doane, pp. 44–46.
- ^ Doane, p. 46.
- ^ Doane, pp. 46–47.
- ^ Doane, p. 7; Eduard Sievers, Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis, Halle: Niemeyer, 1875, OCLC 2221124 (in German)
- ^ Karl Breul, "Eduard Sievers", The Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature 1.3 (1898) 173–75, p. 174.
- ^ Doane, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Doane, p. 7.
- ^ Doane, p. 13.
- ^ Doane, pp. 89–90.
- ^ Seiichi Suzuki, The Metre of Old Saxon Poetry: The Remaking of Alliterative Tradition, Cambridge / Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 2004, ISBN 9781843840145, p. 365.
- ^ Doane, pp. 50–51.
- ^ Peter J. Lucas, "Some Aspects of "Genesis B" as Old English Verse", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, Volume 88 (1988) 143–78, p. 172.
- ^ Andrew Cole, "Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall: The Dialogi of Gregory the Great and the Old Saxon Genesis", in Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr., Kees Dekker and David F. Johnson, Mediaevalia Groningana new series 4, Paris / Sterling, Virginia: Peeters, 2001, ISBN 9789042910546, pp. 157–88, pp. 158–59.
- ^ Thomas D. Hill, "Pilate's Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve: An Old Saxon Source for the Old English Genesis B", The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 101.2 (2002) 170–84, pp. 171, 173.
- ^ Cole, pp. 159–60, 187.
- ^ Doane, pp. 95–96.
- ^ Thomas N. Hall, The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon "Genesis B" and the Old Saxon "Vatican Genesis". by A. N. Doane. Review, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94.5 (1995) 556–59, p. 558.
- ^ Hill, p. 181.
- ^ Doane, pp. 102–06.
- ^ Hill, pp. 178–79, 183.
Editions
- Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Zangemeister and Wilhelm Braune. Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung, aus der Bibliotheca palatina. Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher 4 (1894) 205–94 (with facsimile). Heidelberg: Koester, 1894. OCLC 10626142 (without facsimile) (in German)
- Otto Behaghel. Heliand und Genesis. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 4. 1903. 9th ed. rev. Burkhard Taeger. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984. ISBN 9783484200036 (with Heliand) (in German)
- Alger N. Doane. The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon 'Genesis B' and the Old Saxon Vatican 'Genesis'. Madison, Wisconsin / London: University of Wisconsin, 1991. ISBN 9780299128005 (with Genesis B)
- Ute Schwab with Ludwig Schuba and Hartmut Kugler. Die Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Genesis und ihrer altenglischen Übertragung: Einführung, Textwiedergaben und Übersetzungen, Abbildung der gesamten Überlieferung. Litterae 29. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991. ISBN 9783874522168 (with Genesis B and facsimile) (in German)
External links
- Text based on Behaghel's 1948 edition
- v
- t
- e
- Cain and Abel
- Aclima
- Luluwa
- Seth
- Awan
- Azura
- Jumella
- Adam–God doctrine
- Adam and Eve in Mormonism
- Adam in Islam
- Adam in rabbinic literature
- Al-A'raf
- Book of Moses
- Endowment
- Manu (Hinduism)
- Mashya and Mashyana
- Serpent seed
- Tree of Jiva and Atman
- Tree of life (Quran)
- Our Lady of Endor Coven
- Mama's Affair (1921)
- Good Morning, Eve! (1934)
- The Broken Jug (1937)
- The Original Sin (1948)
- The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960)
- El pecado de Adán y Eva (1969)
- La Biblia en pasta (1984)
- The Annunciation (1984)
- Second Time Lucky (1984)
- Adipapam (1988)
- Adam (1992)
- Babs (2000)
- The Last Eve (2005)
- Year One (2009)
- The Tragedy of Man (2011)
- Adam and Dog (2011)
- Tropico (2013)
- Le Jeu d'Adam (12th century)
- The Broken Jug (1808)
- The Tragedy of Man (1861)
- The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
- The Apple Tree (1966)
- Dude (1972)
- Up from Paradise (1973)
- Children of Eden (1991)
- The Creation (1798)
- La mort d'Adam (1809)
- Ève (1875)
- Genesis Suite (1945)
- Lilith (2001)
- Apocalypse of Adam
- Book of Moses
- Book of Abraham
- Books of Adam
- Book of the Penitence of Adam
- Cave of Treasures
- "El amigo de Él y Ella"
- Genesis A and Genesis B
- Harrowing of Hell
- Life of Adam and Eve
- Testament of Adam
- Testimony of Truth (3rd century)
- Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (6th century)
- "Old Saxon Genesis" (9th century)
- "Adam lay ybounden" (15th century)
- Paradise Lost (1667)
- Le Dernier Homme (1805)
- Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904)
- Eve's Diary (1905)
- The Book of Genesis (2009)
- The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (2017)
- Bernward Doors (1015)
- Tapestry of Creation (11th century)
- Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1425)
- Vienna Diptych (15th century)
- The Last Judgment (1482)
- The Garden of Earthly Delights (1504)
- Adam and Eve (1507)
- Paradise and Hell (1510)
- The Creation of Adam (1512)
- The Haywain Triptych (1516)
- Eve, the Serpent and Death (1510s or 1520s)
- Adam and Eve (1528)
- Adam and Eve (1550)
- The Fall of Man (1550)
- Adam and Eve (c. 1550)
- The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (1617)
- The Fall of Man (1628)
- The Four Seasons (1660s)
- The Koren Picture-Bible (1692–1696)
- Paradise Lost (19th century)
- Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1828)
- The First Mourning (1888)
- Adam and Eve (1905)
- Adam and Eve (1909)
- Eve (1931)
- Adam and Eve (1932)
- The Serpent Chooses Adam and Eve (1958)
- "Dese Bones G'wine Rise Again"
- "Adam-ondi-Ahman" (1835)
- "Forbidden Fruit" (1915)
- "The Garden of Eden" (1956)
- "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (1968)
- "Let's Give Adam and Eve Another Chance" (1970)
- "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" (1979)
- The Cainian Chronicle (1996)
- Visions of Eden (2006)
- Snakes for the Divine (2010)
- Doraemon: Nobita's Diary on the Creation of the World
- Island of Love
- The Visitors
- "Adam & Eve" (1992)
- "Probe 7, Over and Out" (1963)
- "Simpsons Bible Stories"
- "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela"
- "Daesong Heavy Industries II: Return to Innocence"
- "Holly Bibble"
- Demon: The Fallen (2002)