1 Introduction

1.1 The Old English Genesis, the Old Saxon Genesis, and MS Junius 11

This preliminary chapter introduces the Old English Genesis, the Old Saxon Genesis, MS Junius 11, the Cotton Genesis, and the Touronian Bibles, along with some related key notions, provides a rationale for defining the problematics to be explored in this book—particularly the delimitation of the first twenty-two pictures from the remainder—and places the major proposals in perspective by differentiating them from the apparently similar but fundamentally distinct thesis of Raw (1953; 1976).

The Old English Genesis (Krapp 1931; Doane 1991; 2013)—often referred to in earlier literature as the Caedmonian Genesis—is an alliterative poem composed in conformity with the principles of Old Germanic versification (Suzuki 2014a: 9-15; 2014b). It is by no means a simple translation or paraphrase of the Genesis text, but an original work of vernacular poetry to be appreciated on its own terms. It contains 2936 verse lines, the longest Old English poem after Beowulf (3182 lines; Fulk/Bjork/Niles 2008). It begins with the Fall of Angels and ends in the Returning of Isaac to Abraham, thus covering the Book of Genesis from 1:1 to 22:13. Accordingly, the Old English Genesis falls short by half of the whole of biblical Genesis ending in 50:26, but is augmented with extensive additions and elaborations, particularly in the beginning of the poem concerning the Fall of the Rebel Angels, and the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve.

The Old English Genesis is contained in an illustrated manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 (Gollancz 1927; Krapp 1931; Ker 1957: 406-408; Temple 1976: 76-78; Lucas 1980; 1981; Raw 1984; Karkov 2001: 19-32; Lockett 2002; Doane 2013: 1-41; Gneuss/Lapidge 2014: 491-493; Bodleian Library MS. Junius 11). The manuscript is dated to around the year 1000; and it comprises 229 pages. The Junius manuscript is thus a Late Anglo-Saxon product, written predominantly in Late West Saxon, with some admixture of Early West Saxon and Anglian. In addition to Genesis, Junius 11 contains three other biblical poems—Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan—which are arranged after Genesis in that order. Following the frontispiece (p. ii), Genesis occupies pages 1 through 142 of the 229 pages. The first three poems were written by the same scribe, while the last piece, Christ and Satan, was copied by three others. Given that the last poem is referred to as Liber II at the end of the text, the preceding three are generally subsumed under Liber I by extrapolation from and as opposed to Liber II, actually inscribed in the manuscript.

There are altogether forty-eight illustrations, some being full-page miniatures (for exemplification, see below), others half-page pictures. Although numerous spaces for illustrations are provided on pages subsequent to page 88, which hosts the last picture (i.e., the forty-eighth one, Abraham Approaching Egypt), they are left blank (e.g., pp. 99, 101, 102, 103, etc.): there are forty such blank spaces in Genesis, thirteen in Exodus, and thirty-one in Daniel (Karkov 2001: 203-206). All of the completed pictures—forty-eight in number—belong to Genesis, and the other three poems in the same manuscript are totally unillustrated despite space allocations for illustration in Exodus and Daniel (no space is provided in the last poem, Christ and Satan), as noted above. As for actual illustration, two illuminators were involved: the first one worked up to page 68, taking care of the first thirty-eight pictures; the second hand was responsible for the remaining ten. Being a piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry and accompanied by pictures, the Old English Genesis is the only extant illustrated Old English poem.1

In terms of composition, the poem is divided into two parts, Genesis A (verse lines 1-234, 852-2936; pp. 1-12/18, 40/8-142/8; key: page/line in the manuscript) and Genesis B (verse lines 235-851; pp. 13-40/8; Sievers 1875: 6-7). Genesis A is a native (i.e., Old English) original, presumably produced in the eighth century (Doane 2013: 51-55). This predecessor of Genesis A may well be called the Anglian Genesis (section 1.1, Volume 2). In contrast, Genesis B is an Old English translation of the Old Saxon biblical alliterative verse, composed on the continent in the mid-ninth century (ca. 830s; Sievers 1875; Doane 1991; see also below). Thus, the extant Old English Genesis resulted from an interpolation of the translated material. Yet the resultant work apparently would have been intended to be a unitary one for all the obvious differences involved between the two constituents—as demonstrated by Sievers (1875: 7-15)—in matters of style, meter, diction, and most importantly the ways in which the biblical materials are used for story (re)telling.

The Old Saxon Genesis is attested independently, although in fragments amounting in total to 337 verse lines in the edited text (Doane 1991: 232-252; Behaghel/Taeger 1996), shorter than Genesis B in total verse length. In a Latin manuscript containing computus texts (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Palatinus Latinus 1447, fols. 1r, 2r, 2v, 10v), three passage fragments taken from an Old Saxon Genesis—Adam and Eve (see below), Cain and Abel, and Abraham and Sodom—are added to blank spaces of the manuscript, of which verses 1a through 26a (in terms of the edited text) correspond to 790a-817a in the Old English Genesis (= Genesis B). For details, see Doane (1991: 13-28) and section 3.17.1, Volume 2. It is assumed for now, and eventually made most plausible, that the Old Saxon Genesis episodes—the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Creation, and Adam and Eve—would have been accessible at Tours in fuller form for illustration.

There are no indications at all in the manuscript that the three portions—Genesis Aa (verse lines 1-234), Genesis B (verse lines 235-851), and Genesis Ab (verse lines 852-2936)—are differentiated formally, despite the sophisticated use for other purposes that the decorated initials and various punctuation marks are made to serve in the manuscript, most importantly for signaling the beginning of a section, the unit of poetic organization next above the line and the highest next below the whole poem (for details, see further below). Simply put, at both interfaces—Genesis Aa/Genesis B and Genesis B/Genesis Ab—Genesis A and Genesis B are assigned to the same sections. Nor is there any explicit marking for a transition from one version of Genesis to the other within the same section. To be more precise, while Genesis Aa changes to Genesis B between verse lines 234 and 235 in the edited text, there are codicological and literary grounds for believing that two leaves were lost after Genesis A verse 234b (p. 12/18) and before Genesis B verse 235a (p. 13/1), and that Genesis B actually would have started somewhere on one of the lost pages (Doane 2013: 11). The end of verse 234b (Genesis A) on page 12 corresponds to that of Genesis 2:14, while the extant initial part of Genesis B (235a-236b) approximately relates to God’s warning in Genesis 2:16-17 (Doane 1991: 255). Since verse 234b (Genesis A) on page 12 in all likelihood—as made plausible by the incompletion of the line involved, leaving much empty line space after the end of verse 234—would have constituted the ending of section 4 (Doane 2013: 11),2 and the current beginning verse of Genesis B (235a) is located in section 5, the four lost pages in their entirety—corresponding to Genesis 2:15 and whatever elaborations added to it—would have been allotted to section 5 as well. Therefore, the end of Genesis Aa (lost) and the start of Genesis B (lost) may have been positioned in the same section, namely, section 5.

On fuller reflection, however, this may prove to be a rather naive inference. Given that the lost leaves most likely would have centered on the biblical text of Genesis 2:15 (Doane 2013: 9), they would have been expanded with extensive elaborations characteristic of Genesis B. In this light, even taking into account picture spaces, Genesis B presumably would have occupied a substantial part of the lost leaves. It may even seem conceivable that Genesis B started at the head of the lost leaves. In that event, the juxtaposition of Genesis A and B in the same section would not have taken place in the transition from Genesis Aa to Genesis B. In any event, in the absence of direct attestation in the extant manuscript, exactly how the interface would have been treated is utterly unrecoverable.

In contrast, attestation to the other transition, that from Genesis B (verse 851b) to Genesis Ab (verse 852a), is on record: it occurs in the middle of a line, the eighth line on page 40 (i.e., p. 40/8). Continuing in ways...