4
A Perilous Task: Making the Old English Heptateuch
B
y the end of the tenth century, Old English prose translations and paraphrases of key biblical texts including the Psalms, the Old and New Testament Laws and Gospels were already in circulation. It was around this time that a team of scholars in the south of England embarked on an ambitious series of prose translations of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
1 For an overview, see Morrell, Manual of Old English Biblical Materials, pp. 3–13. The remarkable success of this project is attested by the large number of surviving manuscript witnesses dating from the first half of the eleventh century to the twelfth.
2 On the continuing interest in the Heptateuch after the Norman Conquest, see Conclusion, pp. 244–52. The two major extant manuscripts are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509 (MS L) (
c. 1050–1100) and London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B. IV (MS B) (
c. 1000–1050). MS L contains increasingly abbreviated translations of the books of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), to which were appended Ælfric’s paraphrases of the first two historical books (Joshua and Judges).
3 Laud Misc. 509 (MS L; Ker §344) is the basis of Marsden’s edition, from which all citations are taken. The contents are: Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis (fols 1r–3r); Genesis (fols 3r–37r); Exodus (fols 37r–65v); Leviticus (65v–72r); Numbers (72r–82v); Deuteronomy (fols 82v–98v); Joshua (fols 98v–107r); Judges (fols 108v–115v); Ælfric’s Letter to Wulfgeat (fols 115v–120v); and Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testaments (Letter to Sigeweard) (fols 120v–141v). The main text is the work of a single late eleventh-century scribe, perhaps working at Christ Church Canterbury. Much of the text is heavily glossed in a Latin hand of the late eleventh to early twelfth century; on the gloss as a reassertion of the Latin text of the Vulgate, see Richard A. Marsden, ‘Latin in the Ascendant: The Interlinear Gloss of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 509’, in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), II, pp. 132–52. See further below, pp. 162–3, 185, 247–8. The manuscript is fully digitised at https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/c7c1517d-3014-4a3d-9038-f678cf4969b4/. These seven biblical translations and paraphrases which form the core of MS L were therefore given the collective title ‘Heptateuch’ by Edward Thwaites in his seventeenth-century edition, though it is unclear whether they were ever conceived of as such at the time of its compilation.
4 Edward Thwaites, ed., Heptateuchus, Liber Job, et Euangelium Nicdemi: Anglo-Saxonice; Historiæ Judith Fragmentum: Dano-Saxonice, edidit nunc primum ex MMS codicibus (Oxford: Oxford Sheldonian Theatre, 1698). The biblical translations copied in MS L are framed by three works by Ælfric on biblical themes: his
Preface to Genesis, in which he dedicates the translation of the first book of the Old Testament to the West-Saxon ealdorman Æthelweard; and two exegetical letters addressed to members of the English gentry, Wulfgeat and Sigeweard. As we shall see, all three works reveal the thirst for biblical translations among the English nobility in this period. MS B, on the other hand, contains only Ælfric’s
Preface to Genesis followed by the first six biblical books – the Pentateuch and Joshua. The Old Testament translations in MS B are accompanied by a series of lavish colour illustrations, and this codex is therefore referred to as the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch.
5 Cotton Claudius B. IV (MS B; Ker §142) contains Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, missing its beginning (fols 1r–1v), followed by the Old English prose Genesis (fols 1v–72v), Exodus (fols 72v–105r), Leviticus (105v–10v), Numbers (111r–28r), Deuteronomy (128v–39r) and Joshua (fols 140v–55v). For a facsimile, see Dodwell and Clemoes, eds, The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch. MS B was used as the foundation of S. J. Crawford, ed., The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament, and his Preface to Genesis, EETS o.s. 160 (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), which also presents the corresponding Latin Vulgate text. A new edition of the Heptateuch, with the Preface to Genesis and Letters to Wulfgeat and Sigeweard, based mainly on Crawford’s transcription of B but with some material supplied from L and other manuscripts, has recently been published by John J. Gallagher and Michael Everson, eds, The Old English Bible I: The Heptateuch (Genesis to Judges), Corpus Textuum Anglicorum 1 (Dundee: Evertype, 2024). The other main manuscript is Cambridge University Library Ii.1.33 (MS C) (c. 1150–1200) (Ker §18), which despite its late date is probably closest to the original; this MS only contains Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis and the translation of Genesis 1–24.22 (with some passages, notably Gen. 4–5.31 and 10–11, differing substantially from MSS B and L), followed by excerpts from his Catholic Homilies and Lives of Saints and other works of moral instruction. Fragments of other parts of the Heptateuch are found in eight further manuscripts, while an excerpt of the translation of Genesis (chapters 37–50) is preserved in Cambridge Corpus Christi 201 (pp. 151–60) (Ker §49), a collection of Wulfstanian materials that also includes the Old English Apollonius of Tyre and a sequence of devotional poems; on the position of the Old English Genesis excerpt in this manuscript, see Daniel Anlezark, ‘Reading “The Story of Joseph” in MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College 201’, in The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Hugh Magennis and Jonathan Wilcox (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 61–94.In manuscripts L and B, rubrics introduce each of the first five biblical books, providing their Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English. While the rubric for the Old English prose Genesis in MSS L, B and C simply reads INCIPIT LIBER. GENESIS ANGLICE, the rubrics for the other four books explain the meaning of each one’s name for the benefit of readers unable to understand Latin:
‘Ellesmoth’ on Hebreisc, ‘Exodus’ on Grecisc, ‘Exitus’ on Lyden, ‘Utfæreld’ on Englisc.
6 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 89.[‘Ellesmoth’ in Hebrew’, ‘Exodus’ in Greek, ‘Exitus’ in Latin, ‘Out going’ in English.]
Her onginneð seo þridde boc, þe ys genemned on Ebreisc ‘Vaiecra’ and ‘Leuiticus’ on Grecisc and ‘Ministerialis’ on Lyden, þæt is ‘þenungboc’ on Englisc, for þam þara sacerda þenunga sind þar awritene.
7 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 129.[Here begins the third book, that is called in Hebrew ‘Vaiecra’ and ‘Leviticus’ in Greek and ‘Ministerialis’ in Latin, that is ‘service book’ in English, because the services of those priests are written therein.]
Her onginð seo boc þe ys genemned on Ebreisc ‘Vagedaber’, þæt ys on Lyden ‘Numerus’ and on Englisc ‘getel’, for þam þe Israhela bearn wæron on þære getealde.
8 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 138.[Here begins the book that is called in Hebrew ‘Vagedaber’, that is in Latin ‘Numerus’ and in English ‘number’, because the children of the Israelites were numbered in there.]
Her onginð seo boc þe is genemned on Ebreisc ‘Helleadabarim’ and on Grecisc ‘Deuteronomium’ and on Lyden ‘Secunda lex’ and on Englisc ‘seo æftre æ’.
9 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 154.[Here begins the book that is called in Hebrew ‘Helleadabarim’ and in Greek ‘Deuteronomy’ and in Latin ‘Secunda lex’ and in English ‘the second law’.]
The rubrics reflect the common medieval understanding of the Vulgate Bible itself as part of a chain of translations, echoing Alfred’s statement in the Prose Preface to the
Pastoral Care that the
æ (‘law’) was first written in Hebrew before the Greeks, Romans and other Christian nations all turned it into their own languages.
10 See above, pp. 3–4.The translations and paraphrases that comprise the Heptateuch were done in several stages by Ælfric and a group of anonymous translators working separately, as well as one or more compilers.
11 See esp. Richard Marsden, ‘Translation by Committee? The “Anonymous” Text of the Old English Hexateuch’, in The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches, ed. Rebecca Barnhouse and Benjamin C. Withers (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University/Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), pp. 41–89, who builds on, among others, Karl Jost, ‘Unechte Ælfrictexte’, Anglia 51 (1927), 81–103, 177–219; Josef Raith, ‘Ælfric’s Share in the Old English Pentateuch’, RES 3 (1952), 305–14; and Peter A. M. Clemoes, ‘The Composition of the Old English Text’, in The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. IV, ed. C. R. Dodwell and P. A. M. Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1974), pp. 42–53. Although doubts remain as to the authorship of certain sections, the division of labour can be tentatively tabulated as follows on the basis of shifts in vocabulary, syntax and style:
Genesis 1–24.22 | Ælfric |
Genesis 4–5.31 | Anonymous |
Genesis 10–11 | Anonymous |
Genesis 12–24.26 | Ælfric |
Genesis 24.61–50.25 | Anonymous |
Exodus | Anonymous |
Leviticus | Anonymous |
Numbers 1–12 | Anonymous |
Numbers 13–26 | Ælfric |
Deuteronomy | Anonymous |
Joshua | Ælfric |
Judges | Ælfric |
The translators worked from a version of the Vulgate, though a few isolated readings are closer to the
Vetus Latina (‘Old Latin’) Bible.
12 See Richard Marsden, ‘Old Latin Intervention in the Old English Heptateuch’, ASE 23 (1994), 229–64; Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 402–37. Marsden notes that whenever an Old Latin reading appears to lie behind the translation choice, this is probably due to the translator’s familiarity with a patristic source which itself used this version rather than the Vulgate, though some may be due to intervention in the exemplar, either in the form of glosses or annotations (Text of the Old Testament, p. 409). Aaron Kleist dates Ælfric’s
Preface and his section of the Old English
Genesis and his
Joshua to
c. 993–8, placing his contribution to
Numbers and his paraphrase of
Judges c. 998–1002.
13 Kleist, Chronology and Canon, p. 132. The anonymous contributions are thought to have been completed by
c. 1020.
In terms of sheer scale, this project dwarfs the Alfredian translations of the Psalms and Laws and bears comparison only with the
Wessex Gospels; Marsden has therefore described both works as constituting ‘the first sustained effort to translate Latin Scripture into English’.
14 Marsden, ‘Translation by Committee?, p. 85. Yet the idea of creating a Heptateuch is without clear precedent in biblical tradition, and it is possible therefore that the original goal may only have extended as far as the translation of the Pentateuch, the traditional division of the first five books of the Old Testament containing the laws of Moses. As we shall see below, in his
Preface to Genesis Ælfric reveals that efforts to translate the book of Genesis were already underway prior to his involvement in the project. Marsden argues that the non-Ælfrician translations of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and the first part of Numbers are the work of an independent team of later authors who ‘hijacked the available work of Ælfric and supplied the rest in a joint endeavour’.
15 Marsden, ‘Translation by Committee?’, p. 84. However, some years after he had translated the beginning of Genesis, Ælfric would state in his
Treatise on the Old and New Testaments that
we habbað awend witodlice on Englisc (‘we have translated faithfully into English’) the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, suggesting that he may have had some oversight of the whole project, or at least approved of it.
16 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 209, ll. 218–20.The separateness of Ælfric’s paraphrases of the first two historical books, Joshua and Judges, from the rest of the project is indicated by their lack of introductory rubrics, and the motivation behind the inclusion of both texts in MS L (and Ælfric’s
Joshua in MS B) is unclear. A noble patron may simply have wanted a volume containing as much Old Testament reading material in the vernacular as was available. Another possibility is that the compilation in MS L was designed to tell the history of the Israelites up until the time of the monarchy, which begins with the anointing of Saul in I Samuel (= I Kings).
17 In the Christian Old Testament, the Historical Books begin with Joshua, Judges and Ruth, followed by I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. Indeed, as we shall see below, the final book in the compilation, Ælfric’s paraphrase of Judges, ends with a meditation on the origins of Judeo-Christian kingship, which connects the biblical judges who ruled Israel before the monarchical era with present-day English kings. Such a collection might have appealed to an English nobleman interested in the responsibilities of earthly rulers. As Malcolm Godden comments:
For the Anglo-Saxons the Old Testament was a veiled way of talking about their own situation. Sometimes it was a matter of explaining how things came to be as they are in the world. Sometimes it provided a figurative framework for analysing the Church and the clergy. But most often the Old Testament offered them a means of considering and articulating the ways in which kingship, politics and warfare related to the rule of God. Despite Ælfric’s insistence that the old law had been replaced by the new, at least in its literal sense, in many ways the old retained its power for the Anglo-Saxons, and gave them a way of thinking about themselves as nations.
18 Godden, ‘Old Testament’, p. 232.The combination of the translations of the books of the Pentateuch with Ælfric’s
Joshua and
Judges in MS L provided the English nobility with a wealth of examples of heroic military and national leaders. The translation and compilation of these materials invites such readers to reflect on how God’s chosen people were consistently afflicted by foreign enemies when they turned away from his laws but enjoyed his favour when they were obedient to them. Together with the other Old English biblical prose texts discussed in this book, the Old English Heptateuch may therefore have contributed to the emergence of English national identity in this formative period.
19 See above, p. 20–1. As prominent patrons of the Benedictine Reform, pious noblemen such as Æthelweard and his son, Æthelmær, sought access to the monastic reading materials used in the Divine Office, which included the Heptateuch.
20 Marsden notes that the Heptateuch was prescribed reading in the pre-Lenten and Lenten monastic night office (‘Cain’s Face and Other Problems’, p. 34). See further Milton McC. Gatch, ‘The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 341–62, at 360–1. Gatch comments that while Ælfric would probably have found the biblical translations in the Heptateuch/Hexateuch ‘too ample for the laity in general’ (p. 361), the compiler may have had in mind ‘the needs of monolingual monastic novices or schoolboys and of secular clergy on whom the canonical obligation of participating in the Office was being imposed’ (p. 361 n. 73). Helen Gittos demonstrates that Ælfric’s dedications of his works to lay patrons in prefaces are indebted to rhetorical convention and cautions that these statements should not be taken at face value (‘The Audience for Old English Texts’). For a discussion of lay readership of the Lives of Saints, see E. Gordon Whatley, ‘Pearls before Swine: Ælfric, Vernacular Hagiography, and the Lay Reader’, in Via Crucis: Essays on Early Medieval Sources and Ideas in Memory of J. E. Cross, ed. Thomas D. Hill, Charles D. Wright and Thomas N. Hall (Morgantown, 2002), pp. 158–84. Lower-ranking members of the nobility, such as Wulfgeat and Sigeweard, appear to have shared this enthusiasm for biblical translations and other religious reading materials.
21 See further Catherine Cubitt, ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’, in Companion to Ælfric, ed. Magennis and Swan, pp. 165–92. In response to their requests, Ælfric produced his
Lives of the Saints and his contributions to the Heptateuch, as well as various sermon-like letters containing summaries of biblical material. Moreover, Daniel Anlezark has argued that an abbreviated version of the Benedictine Office, containing Latin and Old English psalms and prayers, was produced for members of the lay nobility in this period.
22 Daniel Anlezark, ‘The Psalms in the Old English Office of Prime’, in Psalms and Medieval English, ed. Atkin and Leneghan, pp. 198–217. The Old English Heptateuch also seems to have been produced to meet this burgeoning demand among the laity for reading materials that had previously been available only to those in monastic orders.
While the Heptateuch was probably designed mainly for readers who could not access the Bible in Latin, Ælfric appears to have envisaged that at least some readers of the work were Latinate. Hence, in the copy of his translation of Genesis 24.15–60 preserved in MS L he recommends that the reader consult a Latin version of the text should they wish to find the full account of how Abraham’s reeve secured a wife for Isaac:
swa hit þære Ledenbec awriten ys: ræde þær se þe wylle (‘thus it is written in the Latin book: he who wishes can read it there’).
23 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 50. A small number of lay readers certainly could read Latin in this period, not least Æthelweard himself, who is credited with translating the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle into Latin.
24 Æthelweard’s Chronicon is composed in the complex ‘hermeneutic style’ in fashion at the time; see Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, pp. 105, 135–9. On Æthelweard’s education as atypical for noblemen of his day, see Wormald, ‘Anglo-Saxon Society and its Literature’, p. 18. See further above, p. 57. On Æthelweard’s relationship with Ælfric, and the possibility that there may have been other laymen who had some knowledge of Latin in this period, see Mechthild Gretsch, ‘Historiography and Literary Patronage in late Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Æthelweard’s Chronicon’, ASE 41 (2012), 205–48. Readers of the Heptateuch may also have included those same
ungelæredan preostas (‘unlearned priests’) whom Ælfric criticises in his
Preface to Genesis, as well perhaps as oblates, monks or nuns who were still learning Latin.
25 See Joyce Hill, ‘Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters in Context’, in England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola Hicks, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 2 (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1992), pp. 103–17. For a particularly negative view of the Latinity of the tenth-century English clergy and the possibility that even reformed monks required translations, see C. E. Hohler, ‘Some Service Books of the Later Saxon Church’, in Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and ‘Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons (London: Phillimore, 1975), pp. 60–83 and 217–27. In a recent study, Ondřej Fúsik argues that the translation of Genesis was aimed at ‘male monks’, on the grounds of perceived ‘masculinisation’ of female characters in the Latin source: ‘Referencing Female Characters in the Old English Heptateuch Translation of Genesis: Evidence against Translation Automatisms’, in Translation Automatisms in the Vernacular Texts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, ed. Vladimir Agrigoroaei and Ileana Sasu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 156–61. Stephenson, Politics of Language, pp. 147–52, emphasises that monks, as well as secular clerics, constitute a major element of the readership of Ælfric’s vernacular writings despite the fact that he tends to dedicate such works to lay patrons. Yet as Benjamin C. Withers comments, the distinction between a ‘clerical’ and ‘lay’ audience for such a project begins to break down when we consider that ‘monks, priests, and nuns more often than not belonged to the same families or at least the same strata of society as potential lay readers.’
26 Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B. iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 178. The prose translation of the Heptateuch could thus have served multiple purposes, making the key books of the Old Law accessible to a very wide audience of English men and women.
The provision of 394 colour illustrations in the manuscript copy of the Hexateuch (MS B) made these Old Testament narratives accessible even to those who could not read written English – that is, those who possessed only ‘pragmatic literacy’.
27 See Withers, Old English Hexateuch, pp. 159–82. Commenting on the ‘workmanlike’ quality of these illustrations, Marsden argues that the Hexateuch codex was probably not commissioned by a royal patron but for a wealthy member of the nobility.
28 Marsden, ‘Cain’s Face and Other Problems’, p. 34. Given the book’s large size, Withers suggests that no more than three or four adults could be gathered around to view the images at any one time: ‘Someone read while others listened and looked’.
29 Withers, Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, p. 176. David F. Johnson proposes that the illustrated Hexateuch was designed to be consulted by laymen when visiting a monastery or for older members of the laity who had retired into a monastery: ‘A Program of Illumination in the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: Visual Typology’, in Old English Hexateuch, ed. Barnhouse and Withers, pp. 165–99. For discussion of how some of the illustrations are aimed at ‘unsophisticated audiences’, see Rebecca Barnhouse, ‘Pictorial Exegesis in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch’, Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 6 (1999), 109–32. For comparison with other illustrated manuscripts that were probably made for lay readers in this period, see Raw, ‘The probable derivation of most of the illustrations in Junius 11 from an illustrated Old Saxon Genesis’, 135–6. Despite their modest artistic talents, the illustrators succeed in domesticating Old Testament scenes, making them more intelligible to the book’s first users and providing modern readers with an invaluable window onto daily life in early to mid-eleventh-century England.
30 On the extent to which such illustrations reflect real life and their debt to earlier models, see M. O. H. Carver, ‘Contemporary Artefacts Illustrated in Late Saxon Manuscripts’, Archaeologia 108 (1986), 117–45. For example, in the depiction of Pharaoh hanging the baker (Gen. 40.22) (fig. 9), the Egyptian ruler is presented in the centre of the page dressed in the style of a contemporary English king, crowned and surrounded by his
witan, while the hanging scene on the right of the page, in which the gallows are fitted with steps for the executioner to climb and attach the noose, probably reflects present-day English practice. The conical hats that look like Phrygian caps worn by the members of the king’s
witan, on the other hand, provide a rare foreignising detail, perhaps copied from an exemplar that the artist used as a model:
31 On depictions of hanging in Ælfric and other early medieval English sources, see Susan Irvine, ‘Hanging by a Thread: Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives and the Hengen’, in Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints’ Lives into Old English Prose (c. 950–1150), ed. Loredana Lazzari, Patrizia Lendinara and Claudia Di Sciacca, Textes et études du Moyen Âge 73 (Barcelona-Madrid: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales, 2014), pp. 67–94. On hats and crowns in English art of this period, see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 263–4.~
Figure 9. London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B. IV, fol. 59v, ‘Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: Pharaoh has his baker hanged (Gen. 40.22)’.
Elsewhere in the Hexateuch manuscript, biblical cities are modelled on contemporary English architecture, while depictions of farming techniques and other scenes of everyday life in biblical times probably reflect those known to the audience.
While the Hexateuch has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention on account of its illustrations, the prose translations themselves remain relatively neglected. In this chapter, I concentrate on the Heptateuch manuscript, MS L, exploring how its makers employed a range of translation strategies in order to bring the meaning of these key books of the Old Testament across to readers, ranging from word-for-word (formal equivalence) and sense-for-sense (functional equivalence) translation to homiletic paraphrase. As we shall see, the varying approaches to biblical translation utilised in this project reflect the authors’ sensitivity to the risks involved in widening access to the Old Testament to readers who might lack the educational skills to unlock its spiritual meaning.
Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis
Like many of Ælfric’s major works, his translation of Genesis is furnished with an epistolary preface in which the author addresses his patron and implied reader, in this case the prominent West Saxon ealdorman Æthelweard, and explains the rationale behind the work that follows.
32 Æthelweard and his son, Æthelmær, are the addressees of the Old English preface to Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. For discussion of the Preface to Genesis, as well as Ælfric’s overall approach to translating Genesis, see Hurt, Ælfric, pp. 100–3. On Ælfric’s contribution to the Heptateuch, as well as the Preface to Genesis and Treatise, see Stanton, Culture of Translation, pp. 131–41. Although this preface may originally have been intended to precede only the portion of the Genesis translation for which Ælfric was responsible (up to the story of Abraham and Isaac, Gen. 24), judging from its presence in all three major manuscripts (L, B and C) it appears to have come to serve as a preface for the entire Old English Heptateuch.
33 For the manuscripts, see above, p. 146 n. 5. For discussion of the relevance of Ælfric’s preface to the entire project, see Melinda J. Menzer, ‘The Preface as Admonition: Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis’, in Old English Hexateuch, ed. Barnhouse and Withers, pp. 15–39, at 15–19. Mark Griffith has highlighted how Ælfric draws here on a wide range of biblical and patristic sources, including Jerome’s preface to his translation of Genesis in the Vulgate and Letter to Pammachius, as well as Pseudo-Jerome’s Breviarum in Psalmos and Alcuin’s Quaestiones in Genesim (Interrogationes Sigewulfi): ‘Ælfric’s Use of Sources in the Preface to Genesis, together with a Conspectus of Biblical and Patristic Sources and Analogues’, Florilegium 17 (2000), 127–54. On the Preface’s sophisticated structure and debt to classical models of letter-writing, see Mark Griffith, ‘Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis: Genre, Rhetoric and the Origins of the ars dictaminis’, ASE 29 (2000), 215–34. The preface is a key document in the history of Old English biblical prose, providing a detailed exposition of Ælfric’s theory of scriptural translation. In MS B, the opening of the preface is missing, but the complete text is preserved in L (fig. 10):
~
Figure 10. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509, fol. 1r, ‘Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis’.
Following a conventional greeting in which Ælfric addresses Æthelweard in the third person, the letter shifts into the first person as the author expresses his deep misgivings about translating Genesis for readers untrained in biblical exegesis:
34 This shift from the third to first person echoes the style of Alfred’s epistolary prefaces. On Ælfric’s knowledge of Alfredian works, see Malcolm R. Godden, ‘Ælfric and The Alfredian Precedents’, in Companion to Ælfric, ed. Magennis and Swan, pp. 139–63; and his ‘Ælfric and the Vernacular Prose Tradition’. On Ælfric’s complex attitude to the translation of the Bible, see Major ‘Rebuilding the Tower of Babel’.Ælfric munuc gret Æðelwærd ealdormann eadmodlice. Þu bæde me leof þæt ic sceolde ðe awendan of Lydene on Englisc þa boc Genesis. Ða þuhte me hefigtime þe to tiþiene þæs, and þu cwæde þa þæt ic ne þorfte na mare awendan þære bec, buton to Isaace, Abrahames suna, for þam þe sum oðer man þe hæfde awend fram Isaace þa boc oþ ende.
Nu þincð me, leof, þæt
þæt weorc is swiðe pleolic me oððe ænigum men to underbeginnenne, for þan þe ic ondræde gif sum dysig man ðas boc ræt, oððe rædan gehyrþ, þæ he wille wenan þæ he mote lybban nu on þære niwan æ swa swa þa ealdan fæderas leofodon, þa on þære tide ær þan þe seo ealde æ gesett wære, oþþe swa swa men leofodon under Moyses æ.
35 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 3, ll. 2–13.[Ælfric the monk humbly greets Ealdorman Æthelweard. You bade me, dear sir, that I should turn the book of Genesis for you from Latin into English. Then it seemed difficult to me to grant you that, and you then said that I need not translate more of the book except as far as Isaac, the son of Abraham, because some other person had translated the book for you from Isaac until the end.
Now it seems to me, dear sir, that that work is very perilous for me or any man to undertake, because I fear, if some foolish person reads this book or hears it read, that he will think that he may live now in the New Law just as the patriarchs lived then in that time before the Old Law was appointed, or just as men lived under the law of Moses.] (Emphases added).
Evidently work on a translation of Genesis – and perhaps other parts of the Old Testament – was already underway at the time of writing. As Melinda J. Menzer notes, while Ælfric typically gives voice to his reservations about translation at the end of his prefaces, in the
Preface to Genesis he foregrounds his reluctance to undertake this ‘perilous’ (
pleolic) task in the opening lines, and does so much more forcefully than in other instances.
36 Menzer, ‘The Preface as Admonition’, pp. 19–21. For example, in the prayer at the end of his second series of Catholic Homilies, Ælfric states: Ic cweðe nu þæt ic næfre heonon-forð ne awende godspel oþþe godspel-trahtas of Ledene on Englisc (‘I declare now that henceforth I will never translate the gospel or gospel homilies from Latin into English’): CH II, p. 357; on this passage and Ælfric’s presentation of himself as a reluctant translator of Scripture, see above, p. 144. On Ælfric’s seeming disapproval of translations such as the Wessex Gospels, see above, pp. 123–5. In describing biblical translation as perilous, Ælfric echoes Jerome’s preface to the Pentateuch translation in the Vulgate: Periculosum opus certe, obtrectatorum latratibus patens, qui me adserunt in Septuaginta interpretum suggillationem nova pro veteribus cudere, ita ingenium quasi vinum probantes (‘Certainly a dangerous work, open to the barkings of detractors, who accuse me of insult to the Seventy [i.e. the Septuagint] to prepare a new interpretation from the old ones, thus approving ability like wine’). On Ælfric’s familiarity with Jerome’s prefaces, see Griffith, ‘Ælfric’s Use of Sources’, 127–9. Indeed, Menzer argues that the preface’s unusually disjointed and confusing nature is itself a ploy by Ælfric to underline the complexity of the job which Æthelweard has requested of him.
37 Menzer, ‘The Preface as Admonition’, p. 34. Ælfric would have known that lay readers such as Æthelweard already had access to vernacular translations and adaptations of the Gospels as well, perhaps, as parts of the Old Testament.
38 For the possibility that the collection of Old English biblical verse in MS Junius 11 was compiled for a noble lay patron in this period, see Daniel Anlezark, ‘Lay Reading, Patronage, and Power in Bodleian Library Junius 11’, in Ambition and Anxiety: Courts and Courtly Discourse, c. 700–1600, ed. Giles E. M. Gasper and John McKinnell, Durham Medieval and Renaissance Monographs and Essays 3 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 76–97. Yet in Ælfric’s view, such readers lack the training in biblical exegesis required to distinguish between the Old and the New Law (
æ). As Ælfric explains to Æthelweard, such ignorance of the true interpretation of Scripture is unsurprising given that even some priests also lack this ability to read beyond the literal wording of the Old Testament:
Hwilon ic wiste þæt sum mæssepreost, se þe min magister wæs on þam timan, hæfde þa boc Genesis and he cuðe be dæle Lyden understandan. Þa cwæp he be þam heahfædere Iacobe þæt he hæfde feower wif: twa geswustra and heora twa þinena. Ful soð he sæde, ac he nyste, ne ic þa git, hu micel todal ys betweohx þære ealdan æ and þære niwan.
39 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 3, ll. 13–18.[Once I knew that a certain masspriest, who was my teacher at the time, owned the book of Genesis, and he could understand Latin a little; then he said about the patriarch Jacob, that he had four wives, two sisters and their two handmaidens. What he said was completely true, but he did not know, as I did not at that time, how great a difference there is between the Old Law and the New.]
In Ælfric’s view, however, it is the duty of priests to explain the hidden, spiritual (
gastlic) meaning of Scripture to lay people (
læwedum folce):
40 Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe describes this process of reading beyond the surface or literal sense as ‘symptomatic reading’: ‘Who Reads Now? The Anxieties of Millennial Reading: The 2019 Morton W. Bloomfield Lecture’, in The Practice and Politics of Reading, 650–1500, ed. Daniel Donoghue, James Simpson, Nicholas Watson and Anna Wilson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), pp. 161–80, at 162. On Ælfric’s emphasis on the duties of religious teachers in the Treatise, see below pp. 222–4. For his instruction that priests should explain the meaning of the gospel reading used in the mass in the Letter for Wulfsige, see above, pp. 119–20.Preostas sindon gesette to lareowum þam læwedum folce. Nu gedafnode him þæt hig cuþon þa ealdan æ gastlice understandan and hwæt Crist silf tæhte, and his apostolas, on þære niwan gecyðnisse, þæt hig mihton þam folce wel wissian to Godes geleafan and wel bisnian to godum weorcum.
41 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 4, ll. 38–42.[Priests are set up as teachers for lay people. Now it has become fitting for them that they know how to understand the Old Law spiritually, and what Christ himself taught and his apostles in the New Testament, so that they could guide the people properly to God’s faith and set an example properly in good deeds.]
Ælfric knew Jerome’s dictum that in translating Scripture, the best approach is to stick as closely as possible to the wording of the source.
42 For Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius, see above, p. 33. Yet he was also aware that lay readers and poorly educated priests were ill-equipped to understand Genesis without a robust interpretive framework. In the
Catholic Homilies, he had been able to circumvent the problem of translating the Bible for lay readers by supplying a wealth of authoritative patristic exegesis and biblical citation to accompany each gospel excerpt.
43 See Chapter Three, pp. 119–43. However, exegesis of this sort had no place in the sort of free-standing translation of Scripture requested by Æthelweard.
Weighing up these difficulties, Ælfric declares that while he will supply nothing more than the naked (
nacedan) or plain narrative in his translation of Genesis, his readers should not be so foolish (
dysig) as to read it only in the literal sense:
44 Stanton argues that in presenting only the ‘naked narrative’, Ælfric was offering the unlearned an encounter with Scripture in simple language ‘untroubled by rhetorical figures, allegory, typology, or any other features of human interpretative machinery’, through which ‘the faithful can experience the presence of God without beginning to understand its meaning (Culture of Translation, p. 134). For an exploration of the contrast between the vigorous promotion of vernacular reading in the Alfredian reform with Ælfric’s more cautious approach, see O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Who Reads Now?’. O’Brien O’Keeffe argues that the model of reading Alfred advocated in the Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care ‘was simply an act of decoding words on a page’, whereas for Ælfric reading ‘was a composite set of highly fraught activities’ (pp. 161–2).We secgað eac foran to, þæt seo boc is swiþe deop gastlice to understandenne and we ne writaþ ne mare buton þa nacedan gerecednisse. Þonne þincþ þam ungelæredum þæt eall þæt andgit beo belocen on þære anfealdan gerecednisse ac hit ys swiþe feor þam.
45 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 4, ll. 43–6.[We also say in advance that the book is very profound to understand spiritually, and we are not writing anything more than the naked narrative. Then it may seem to the unlearned that all the sense is enclosed in the simple narrative, but it is very far from that.]
In order to illustrate the complexity of the Book of Genesis to Æthelweard and other readers, he provides an exegetical interpretation of the spiritual meaning of the opening verses:
Heo onginð þus: ‘In principio creauit Deus celum et terram.’ Þæt ys on Englisc, ‘on anginne gesceop God heofenan and eorþan.’ Hit wæs soðlice swa gedon þæt God ælmihtig geworhte on anginne, þa þa he wolde, gesceafta. Ac swa þeah, æfter gastlicum andgite, þæt anginn ys Crist, swa swa he sylf cwæþ to þam Iudeiscum: ‘Ic eom angin þe to eow sprece.’ Þurh þis angin worhte God fæder heofenan and eorþan, for þan he gesceop ealle gesceafta þurh þone sunu, se þe was æfre of him accened, wisdom of þam wisan fæder.
46 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 5, ll. 49–57.[It begins thus: ‘In principio creauit Deus celum et terram.’ That is in English, ‘in the beginning God made heaven and earth.’ It was truly done in this way that God Almighty made creation in the beginning, as he intended to. But also, in the spiritual sense, that meaning is Christ, just as he himself said to the Jews: ‘I say to you, I am the beginning.’ Through this beginning God the Father made heaven and earth, because he made all creation through that son, who was always born from him, wisdom from the wise father.]
As Jonathan Wilcox comments, the sheer length of the exegesis provided for this single biblical verse ‘dramatizes the extent to which interpretation is necessary.’
47 Wilcox, Ælfric’s Prefaces, p. 39. The elaborate and sophisticated rhetoric of the
Preface thus serves to underline Ælfric’s point about the perils of translating the Old Testament for lay readers and poorly educated clerics. On the one hand, the words of Scripture should not be added to in the course of translation, yet the ‘naked’ text of the Old Testament is too complex for such readers to understand without accompanying exegesis.
48 Wilcox, Ælfric’s Prefaces, pp. 39–40. Ælfric did provide extensive exegesis of the Book of Genesis elsewhere in his writings, notably in his Interrogationes Sigewulfi (‘Sigewulf’s questions’), a translation of Alcuin’s influential Quaestiones in Genesim (‘Questions on Genesis’) (c. 796), probably composed around the same time as the Preface to Genesis. Sigewulf is the name of Alcuin’s student, who in the course of the work asks him 281 questions about the Book of Genesis. Clemoes argues that Ælfric composed his translation of this work ‘precisely to clothe þa nacedan gerecedinnse’ of his translation of Genesis (‘The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of Their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes [London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959], pp. 212–47, repr. in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. Szarmach, pp. 29–72, at 40). However, Griffith suggests on the basis of verbal parallels that Ælfric was in fact working on his version of the Interrogationes around the same time as the Preface to Genesis (‘Ælfric’s Use of Sources’, 139–40). Fox argues that Ælfric transformed Alcuin’s work into ‘a much more basic exegetical primer’, noting that he translates only 69 of Sigewulf’s 281 questions (‘Ælfric’s Interrogationes Sigewulfi’, pp. 33–4). On the Interrogationes, see further below, p. 176. Another issue which the biblical translator must tackle is syntax. We have seen how the Old English glosses added to Latin psalters and gospel books typically adhere to the word order of the source text, as their goal was to aid the reader in understanding the Latin. Ælfric’s readers, on the other hand, have now requested a vernacular version of Genesis which can be read independently of the Latin source. In the
Letter to Pammachius, Jerome had insisted that the word order of Scripture is sacred and must therefore be preserved, though in his preface to his translation of the Book of Job in the Vulgate he acknowledged that it was impossible to do so, recommending instead a flexible approach:
vel verbum e verbo, vel sensum e sensu, vel en utroque commixtum (‘sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense, sometimes a mixture of the two’).
49 On Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius, see above, p. 33. In the
Preface, Ælfric similarly explains that while his translation of Genesis will not add anything to the source in terms of wording, it will make no attempt to replicate its syntax (
endebirdnisse), as to follow the word order of the Latin would result in unidiomatic English:
50 As Stanton notes, Ælfric establishes his credentials here as a faithful translator as distinct from the prophetic or miraculous type represented by Cædmon (Culture of Translation, p. 136).Nu is seo foresæde boc on manegum stowum swiþe nearolice gesett, and þeah swiðe deoplice on þam gastlicum andgite. And heo is swa geendebyrd swa swa God silf hig gedihte þam writere Moise, and we ne durron na mare awritan on Englisc þonne þæt Liden hæfþ, ne þa endebirdnisse awendan, buton þam anum þæt þæt Leden and þæt Englisc nabbað na ane wisan on þære spræce fadunge. Æfre se þe awent oþþe se þe tæcþ of Ledene on Englisc, æfre he sceal gefadian hit swa þæt þæt Englisc hæbbe his agene wisan, elles hit biþ swiþe gedwolsum to rædenne, þam þe þæs Ledenes wisan ne can.
51 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 6–7, ll. 95–102.[Now the aforesaid book is in many places very obscurely written, and also very profoundly composed in the spiritual sense. And the word order is as if God himself had dictated it to the writer Moses, and we dare not write any more in English than the Latin has, nor change the word order, except that Latin and English do not have the same way of ordering speech. If anyone should wish to translate or to teach from Latin into English, he must always arrange it so that the English has its own style, otherwise it will be very erroneous to read, for those who do not know the Latin.]
In the translation of Genesis that follows, although Ælfric briefly experiments with following the syntax of the Latin source, he quickly abandons this scheme and opts instead for a more natural, English prose style suitable for conveying the meaning of the source text to the reader. As we shall see, however, Ælfric’s commitment to providing nothing more than the naked narrative of Genesis is often challenged by the nature of the source text itself, which contains a good deal of material deemed unsuitable or too challenging for poorly educated readers.
Genesis
Having reluctantly accepted his patron’s request to supply him with a free-standing translation of Genesis (‘affirmation’ in Steiner’s terminology), Ælfric proceeds to weigh up the meaning of each word in his Latin source at the level of grammar and syntax (‘aggression’), evaluating which parts to bring over into the target language (‘incorporation’) before finally adapting the source in various ways to make it appealing and comprehensible to readers (‘compensation’).
52 For Steiner’s theory of translation, see above, p. xiii. In MS L, the Genesis translation begins immediately after the Preface at the bottom of fol. 3
r. The Old English text of Genesis has been heavily glossed in Latin by a hand dated to the late eleventh or twelfth century (fig. 11), demonstrating the continuing scholarly interest in the Heptateuch in this period.
53 See above, 145 n. 3, and below, pp. 247–8.~
Figure 11. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509, fol. 3r, ‘Old English Heptateuch: End of Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis/opening of Ælfric’s translation of Genesis’.
Comparison with the Vulgate source demonstrates Ælfric’s largely formal-equivalence, word-for-word approach at this early stage in the translation:
1.1 In principio, creavit Deus caelum et terram. 1.2 Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae super faciem abyssi, et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. 1.3 Dixitque Deus, “Fiat lux.” Et facta est lux. | On anginne gesceop God heofenan and eorþan. 1.2 Seo eorðe soþlice wæs ydel and æmtig and þeostru wæron ofer þære niwelnisse brandnisse, and Godes gast wæs geferod ofer wateru. 1.3 God cwæþ þa: ‘Geweorðe leoht’, and leoht wearþ geworht. 54 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 8. Marsden’s edition is based on MS Laud Misc. 509 (L), copied in the second half of the eleventh century, with some readings supplied from other manuscripts. |
[In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: ‘Be light made. And light was made.’] | [In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. God said then: ‘Be light made. And light was made.’] |
Ælfric sticks remarkably closely here to the Latin source, both at the level of diction (e.g.
In principio >
On anginne;
caelum et terram >
heofenan and eorþan) and syntax (e.g.
creavit Deus >
gesceop God), leading some scholars to criticise his approach to biblical translation for being so literal that it borders on becoming incomprehensible.
55 Stanley Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature, with a survey of the Anglo-Latin Background by Michael Lapidge (New York: NYU Press, 1986), p. 85. Yet even in this short passage, Ælfric nevertheless makes small concessions to vernacular grammar (e.g.
Terra >
Seo eorðe) and word order (
Et facta est lux >
and leoht wearþ geworht). Although alliteration is not used consistently as it would be in his later rhythmical prose, there are occasional flashes (e.g.
ydel and æmtig;
Godes gast), and in one phrase Ælfric picks up on sound patterning in the Latin source and matches it, rendering
Dixitque Deus, “Fiat lux.” Et facta est lux with an elegant, chiasmic structure as
God cwæþ þa: ‘Geweorðe leoht’, and leoht wearþ geworht.
In keeping with his stated intention to provide only the ‘naked’ narrative of the Bible, and in striking contrast with the elaborate exegesis showcased in the Preface, Ælfric’s translation of Genesis adds very little to the wording of the text by way of explanation or interpretation. However, as Marsden has demonstrated, Ælfric not only alters syntax and wording to achieve smooth, idiomatic English prose, but he also frequently paraphrases, edits or simplifies his source so as not to mislead his relatively unlearned readers, especially from Ch. 7.
56 Richard Marsden, ‘Ælfric as Translator: The Old English Prose Genesis’, Anglia 109 (2009), 319–58. For an overview of Ælfric’s approach to translating Genesis as well as that of the anonymous translators of other parts of the Heptateuch, see also Rebecca Barnhouse, ‘Shaping the Hexateuch’, in Old English Hexateuch, ed. Barnhouse and Withers, pp. 91–108. Particularly striking is Ælfric’s consistent omission or downplaying of references to the misconduct of the patriarchs and matriarchs, an approach that is also adopted by the anonymous translators throughout the Heptateuch. For example, an anonymous translator omits the verse in which Rachel lies to Laban claiming that she cannot stand up
nequeo quia iuxta consuetudinem feminarum nunc accidit mihi (‘because it has now happened to me, according to the custom of women’, Gen. 31.35). References to concubinage among the patriarchs are similarly downplayed by Ælfric and his fellow translators, lest uneducated readers might be misled into believing that the Church condoned this practice.
57 On ecclesiastical condemnation of concubinage and polygamy among the English aristocracy and monarchy, as well as the unreformed clergy, see Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England’, Past & Present 108 (1985), 3–34, repr. in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 6 (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 251–88. Hence Ælfric cuts a verse which describes how Sarah took her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, and gave her to her husband, Abraham, as a wife (Gen. 16.3),
58 On Ælfric’s treatment of this story and other accounts in early medieval English art and literature, see Catherine E. Karkov, ‘Hagar and Ishmael: The Uncanny and The Exile’, in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, ed. Samantha Zacher, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Studies Series 21 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 197–218. while the anonymous translator has excised the entire story of Abraham’s second marriage to the concubine Cetura and his division of property among her offspring (Gen. 25.1–4, 6).
59 For the argument that the omission of Tamar’s second marriage, to Onan who ‘spilled his seed in the ground’ (sui semen fundebat in terram) (Gen. 38.8–10), similarly reflects the translators’ general avoidance of sexual topics throughout the Old English Heptateuch, see Mary C. Olson, ‘Genesis and Narratology: The Challenge of Medieval Illustrated Texts’, Mosaic 31 (1998), 1–24, at 14–21; Jonathan Wilcox, ‘A Place to Weep: Joseph in the Beer-Room and Anglo-Saxon Gestures of Emotion’, in Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis, ed. Stuart McWilliams (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 14–32, at 17–22. For the recent suggestion that this same omission is more reflective of contemporary English concerns with widowhood, see A. Joseph McMullen and Chelsea Shields-Más, ‘Tamar, Widowhood, and the Old English Prose Translation of Genesis’, Anglia 138 (2020), 586–617. On the downplaying of sexual matters in Old English writing more generally, see Hugh Magennis, ‘“No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons?”: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Old English Prose and Poetry’, Leeds Studies in English 26 (1995), 1–27. Passages which are deemed irrelevant or potentially boring are likewise cut, notably the long genealogies of the descendants of Noah.
60 The genealogies of the descendants of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth (Gen. 10.2–31) and the generations from Shem to Thare (Gen. 11.10–26) are missing from MSS L and B, thought to be the best witnesses to Ælfric’s section. These sections are translated, however, in MS C, the work of one or more of the anonymous translators of the Heptateuch.On rare occasions, however, Ælfric’s concern that his readers might misinterpret the Old Testament overrides his stated intention to add nothing to the wording of the Latin source, causing him to insert exegetical comments more typical of a homily than a translation in the strict sense. One such homiletic excursus occurs in Ælfric’s treatment of the story of Lot and the angels in Sodom (Gen. 19.1–38).
61 On the treatment of homosexuality by Ælfric and other early medieval English authors more generally, see Malcolm R. Godden, ‘The Trouble with Sodom: Literary Responses to Biblical Sexuality’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 77 (1995), 96–119; David Clark, Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). The translation of the opening passage (Gen. 19.1–3) is typical of his approach to Genesis more generally (table 4); sections omitted in the Old English version are struck through, alterations to the Latin source are indicated by italics in both columns and wording original to Ælfric is underlined:
Table 4. Comparison of Genesis 19.1–3 in Vulgate and Ælfric’s Genesis
Vulgate | Ælfric’s Genesis |
Gen. 19.1 Veneruntque duo angeli Sodomam vespere, et sedente Lot in foribus civitatis. Qui cum vidisset eos, surrexit, et ivit obviam eis: adoravitque pronus in terram, [And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of the city. And seeing them, he rose up and went to meet them: and worshipped prostrate to the ground,] | Comon þa on æfnunge twegen englas fram Gode asende to þære birig Sodoma. And Loth, Abrahames broðer sunu, sæt on ðære stræt and geseah hig. He aras þa sona and eode him togeanes and astrehte hyne ætforan þam englum [Then two angels came in the evening sent from God to the city of Sodom. And Lot, Abraham’s brother’s son, sat on the street and saw them. He quickly arose then and went towards them and prostrated himself before those angels] |
2 et dixit: ‘Obsecro, domini, declinate in domum pueri vestri, et manete ibi: lavate pedes vestros, et mane proficiscemini in viam vestram.’ Qui dixerunt: ‘Minime, sed in platea manebimus.’ [And said: ‘I beseech you, my lords, turn in to the house of your servant, and lodge there: wash your feet, and in the morning you shall go on your way.’ And they said: ‘No, but we will abide in the street.’] | and cwæð: ‘Ic bidde eow, leof, þæt ge gecirron to minum huse and þær wunion nihtlanges, and þweað eowre fet þæt ge magon faran tomergen on eowerne weg.’ Hig cwædon: ‘Nateshwon, ac we wyllaþ wunian on þære stræt.’ [and said: I beseech you, beloved, that you turn in to my house and stay there for the night, and wash your feet so that you may go on your way in the morning.’ They said: ‘Not at all, for we wish to remain in the street.’] |
3 Compulit illos oppido ut diverterent ad eum: ingressisque domum illius fecit convivium, et coxit azyma, et comederunt. [He pressed them very much to turn in unto him: and when they were come into his house, he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread and they ate:] | Loth þa hig laþode geornlice oð þæt hig gecyrdon to his huse. He þa gearcode him gereord and hig æton. [Lot earnestly pressed them until they turned into his house. He then prepared a meal for them and they ate.] |
In translating these verses, Ælfric makes numerous small changes to the wording of the source, clarifying certain minor points of detail that might have confused his readers. For example, in the first verse he explains that the angels were sent by God, that Sodom was a city, and that Lot was Abraham’s nephew (Gen. 19.1), while in 19.3 he omits the source’s reference to azyma (‘unleavened bread’) as this would be unfamiliar to his readers. In Gen. 19.2, Ælfric makes a small lexical alteration, rendering the dative plural form domini (‘lords’), which has a formal vocative function here, with the Old English formal term of address leof (‘beloved’), thereby further domesticating the source text into English idiom.
Such minor alterations of wording, grammar and syntax in service of clarity and intelligibility are on display throughout Ælfric’s translation of the story of Lot and the angels. For instance, the Vulgate’s reference to the number of Lot’s daughters (Gen. 19.15, 16) is dropped, as Ælfric had already clarified the number of his sons-in-law in verse 14, while a potentially confusing reference to Lot as servus tuus (‘your servant’) is replaced by the personal pronoun me (Gen. 19.19). Further modifications of wording and syntax may simply be a matter of personal choice and style: hence, for example, Ælfric reverses the word order of Gen. 19.23 Sol egressus est super terram, et Lot ingressus est Segor (‘The sun was risen upon the earth, and Lot entered into Segor’) to produce Loth com þa to Segor, þa þa sunne upp eode (‘Then Lot came to Segor, when the sun came up’).
Other small translation choices in Ælfric’s rendering of the story of Lot are prompted by his abiding concern with theological orthodoxy. For example, the reference to the salvation of Lot’s soul in Gen. 19.20, which might have perplexed a Christian reader given that Lot himself was not a Christian, is replaced with the simple statement that he wished to save his life, while ambiguity is further reduced with the substitution of the concluding rhetorical question with a simple statement of fact:
est civitas haec iuxta, ad quam possum fugere, parva, et saluabor in ea: numquid non modica est, et vivet anima mea?
[There is this city here at hand, to which I may flee, it is a little one, and I shall be saved in it: surely it is small enough
that my soul might live in it?]
62 Translation modified from Douay-Rheims, which has the overly literal: is it not a little one, and my soul shall live.Nu ys her gehende an gehwæde burh, to þære ic mæg fleon and minum feore gebeorgan.
[Now there is a little city nearby, where I may flee and save my life.]
The Old English idiom ‘to protect one’s life’ appears elsewhere in poetry but is rare in prose, though Ælfric uses it once in his
Life of St Edmund.
63 Ælfric’s Life of Edmund: Clayton and Mullins, III.29, pp. 190–91, l. 59. For examples in poetry, see Genesis A (l. 1838a), Beowulf (ll. 1293a, 1548b, 2570b–71a, 2599a) and The Battle of Maldon (l. 194b).Ælfric’s treatment of the story of Lot and Sodom is also noteworthy from a stylistic perspective, as it marks the introduction of Ælfric’s late rhythmical prose style (at Gen. 19.19), characterised by the use of word pairs and two-stress phrases linked by alliteration.
64 On Ælfric’s rhythmical prose, see John C. Pope, Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, 2 vols, EETS o.s. 259 (London, Oxford University Press, 1967), I, pp. 105–36; Peter Clemoes, ‘Ælfric’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Eric G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 176–209 (at pp. 203–4); Peter Clemoes, Rhythm and Cosmic Order in Old English Christian Literature: An Inaugural Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); and Haruko Momma, ‘Rhythm and Alliteration: Styles of Ælfric’s Prose up to the Lives of Saints’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. Karkov and Hardin Brown, pp. 253–70. On Ælfric’s debt to the rhythmical prose style of earlier Old English homilies, see Bruce Mitchell, ‘The Relation Between Old English Alliterative Verse and Ælfric’s Alliterative Prose’, in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), II, pp. 349–62. Stanton connects the development of rhythmical prose style with Ælfric’s move towards a sermo humilis (plain style) (Culture of Translation, pp. 160–1). This shift becomes more apparent if we present the prose in lineated layout, as has become the editorial convention for his
Lives:
19.19 ‘[…] nu þu þine mildheortnysse me cyddest,
for þan þe ic ne mæg on þam munte me gebeorgan,
þe læs þe me þær gefo sum færlic yfel.
19.20 Nu ys her gehende an gehwæde burh,
to þære ic mæg fleon and minum feore gebeorgan.’
19.21 Him wæs þa geandwyrd þus: ‘Ic underfeng þine bene
þæt ic þa burh ne towende, nu ðu wylt þyder bugan. […].’
[‘[…] 19.19 Now you make known to me your mercy, because I cannot save my life on that mountain, lest some evil should quickly befall me there. 19.20 Now there is a little city nearby, where I may flee and save my life.’ 19.21 He answered him thus: ‘I received your prayer that I should not destroy the city, now you wish to return there. […].’]
In his rendering of the transformation of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, Ælfric’s lexical additions to the Latin enhance alliteration on w and s, as well as making the scene more dramatic; inserted words are underlined below and alliteration marked in bold:
19.26 Respiciensque uxor eius post se, versa est in statuam salis. [And his wife looking behind her, was turned into a statue of salt.] | Ða beseah Lohtes wif unwislice underbæc and wearð sona awend to anum sealtstane, na for wiglunge ac for gewisre getacnunge. [Then Lot’s wife unwisely looked behind her and was suddenly turned into a stone of salt, not for wilfulness but as a certain sign.] |
However, on the whole Ælfric refrains from the ornate stylistic flourishes which appear with more consistency in his later works such as the Lives of Saints, opting instead for a plain, humble style mirroring that of his scriptural source.
It is in Ælfric’s treatment of the actions of the Sodomites and Lot’s daughters, however, that his homiletic instincts force him to temporarily abandon his principle of adding nothing to the wording of the source. Most strikingly, he excises all of Gen. 19.4–11, which describes how the men of Sodom attempted to ‘know’ Lot’s houseguests, demanding that he bring them out of the house, only for Lot to offer them his daughters instead with the statement
abutimini eis sicut vobis placuerit (‘abuse you them as it shall please you’).
65 On the debate surrounding whether the biblical narrative uses the term ‘to know’ in the sexual sense here or in the sense of simply to acquaint, see Godden, ‘The Trouble with Sodom’, 98. In the same article, Godden also discusses the common interpretation of Lot’s offer of his daughters as an act of wisdom (110–11). In place of this passage, Ælfric supplies a terse exegetical statement which has no basis in the biblical source:
Se leodscipe wæs swa bysmorfull þæt hig woldon fullice ongean gecynd heora galnysse gefyllan, na mid wimmannum ac swa fullice þæt us sceamað hyt openlice to secgenne, and þæt wæs heora hream þæt hig openlice heora fylþe gefremedon.
[The townspeople were so sinful that they wished to go completely against their nature to fall into lust, not with women but so completely that it shames us openly to say it, and that was their outcry that they openly performed their filth.]
As Malcolm Godden notes, while the sexuality of the Sodomites may have been only a minor element in the original biblical story, Ælfric is following a long tradition of exegesis in identifying homosexuality as the cause of God’s wrath.
66 Godden, ‘The Trouble with Sodom’, 98. Godden further notes that the poet of Genesis A, by contrast, was seemingly uninterested in the Sodomites’ homosexuality, attributing the cause of the downfall of their city to the sins of drunkenness and rowdiness (109–13). Having made his own views on the sexual misconduct of the Sodomites clear to his readers, Ælfric emphasises the ferocity of God’s wrath by adding intensifiers to the angels’ words to Lot:
19.13 delebimus enim locum istum, eo quod increverit clamor eorum coram Domino, qui misit nos ut perdamus illos.
[For we will destroy this place, because their cry is grown loud before the Lord, who has sent us to destroy them.]
19.13 We sceolon soþlice adiligan ealle þas stowe, for þam þe heora hream weox to swyþe ætforan Gode and God us sende þæt we hig fordon.
[We must truly destroy all of this place, because their cry has grown too great before God, and God sent us so that we should destroy them.]
God’s righteous anger is further emphasised in the expanded description of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19.25) which features extensive alliteration on g, w, b and ea(l); expansions are underlined and alliteration marked in bold:
19.25 et subvertit civitates has, et omnem circa regionem, universos habitatores urbium, et cuncta terrae virentia. [And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth.] | God towearp þa swa mid graman þa burga and ealne þone eard endemes towende and ealle þa burhwara forbærnde ætgædere, and eall þæt growende wæs wearð adilegod. [God thus destroyed those cities with wrath and likewise overthrew all the country about and burned up all the citizens together, and all that was growing was blotted out.] |
Ælfric amplifies this biblical theme of divine wrath in his account of Lot in order to impress firmly upon his readers the dire consequences of sexual licentiousness, a topic with which he is much concerned elsewhere in his other writings for the laity. For example, in De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis gradus, an adaptation of monastic treatises which seems to have been aimed primarily at lay readers and which circulated as part of his Lives of Saints, Ælfric warns of the vice of lust:
Se oðer leahter is forliger and ungemetgod galnyss. Se is gehaten fornicatio, and he befylð þone mannan, and macað of Cristes limum myltestrena lima ond and of Godes temple gramena wununge.
[The second vice is adultery and intemperate lust. This is called
fornicatio and it defiles a person and makes prostitutes’ limbs out of Christ’s limbs and a
dwelling of fiends out of God’s temple].
67 Mary Clayton, ed. and trans., Two Ælfric Texts: “The Twelve Abuses” and “The Vices and Virtues”: An Edition and Translation of Ælfric’s Old English Versions of “De duodecim abusivis” and “De octo vitiis et de duodecim abusivis”, Anglo-Saxon Texts 11 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 144–5 (translation modified). Clayton identifies Ælfric’s main sources for De octo vitiis as Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis (itself composed for Carolingian laity) and Cassian’s monastic treatises, the Conlationes and De institutis. On Ælfric’s adaptation of these sources for an English lay audience, see Clayton, esp. p. 106. Ælfric combined this work on the eight vices and virtues with an adaption of the Hiberno-Latin De duodecim abusiuis gradus.Ælfric’s condemnation of the Sodomites, and his concern that his readers should not be exposed to such material, again overrides his stated commitment to add nothing to the naked text of the Bible, steering him into further invective. Hence in Gen. 19.15, Ælfric renders the Vulgate’s scelere civitatis (‘the wickedness of the city’) as þisre scildigan burhware (‘these sinful citizens’), while he expands Gen. 19.24 by inserting his own damning assessment of how God punished them for their sins:
19.24 Igitur Dominus pluit super Sodomam et Gomorrham sulphur et ignem a Domino de caelo. [And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.] | And God sende to þam burgum eallbyrnende renscur mid swefle gemencged and þa sceamleasan fordyde. [And God sent to those cities a burning rain shower mingled with sulphur and destroyed those shameless ones.] |
Just as Ælfric is willing to depart from the scriptural source in his eagerness to condemn the Sodomites, so in his rendering of Gen. 19.12 he expands on the Vulgate in placing extra emphasis on Lot’s righteousness, inserting the epithet se þe rihtlice leofode (‘the one who righteously believed’) where the Latin had simply provided his name.
Ælfric’s concern with the moral lives of his readers causes him to omit the Vulgate’s description of how Lot’s elder daughter told her sibling that she had lain with her father during the night after making him drunk (Gen. 19.34) and the reference to both daughters becoming pregnant
de patre suo (‘by their father’) (Gen. 19.36).
68 Godden argues that Ælfric was less interested in the incest of Lot’s daughters than the sin of the Sodomites, contrasting the ‘matter-of-fact’ style of this passage with his more polemical approach to the preceding episode (‘The Trouble with Sodom’, 103). On Ælfric’s concern with sexual matters and voyeurism in his saints’ lives, see Renée Trilling, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Paradoxes of Female Martyrdom in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’, in Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), pp. 249–73. The same reluctance to expose readers to the misconduct of the patriarchs lies behind the addition of the qualifying statement that Lot did not know if he had slept with his daughters
for þære/his druncenysse (‘because of the/his drunkenness’) (Gen. 19.33, 35), a vice which Ælfric warns his lay readers of in his
Treatise on the Old and New Testaments and his translation of Alcuin’s
De virtutibus.
69 Ælfric makes a similar complaint about excessive drinking to another lay patron in his Letter to Wulfgeat, which is preserved in Laud Misc. 50 (MS L) along with the Heptateuch and Treatise on the Old and New Testaments. Cubitt (p. 184) places Wulfgeat in the same thegnly class as Sigeweard. See below, pp. 238–9. For the warning against drunkenness in the Eight Vices, see Clayton, ed., Two Ælfric Texts, pp. 142–5, 148–9. In the Vulgate, Lot and his daughters, by contrast, commit incest because of the need for procreation.
70 Indeed, medieval exegetes tended to view Lot’s incest as a lesser sin than that of the Sodomites because it involved heterosexual intercourse: see Godden, ‘The Trouble with Sodom’. In his own summary of the first age of the world in the
Treatise,
Ælfric would distinguish between the respective fates of the evil inhabitants of Sodom, who are damned because of their sinfulness, and Lot, who is spared because of his righteousness:
And on þissere ylde þa yfelan leoda fif burhscira, ðæs fulan mennisces Sodomitisces eardes, mid sweflenum fyre færlice wurdon ealle forbærnde, and heora burga samod, buton Loþe anum þe God alædde þanon mid his ðrim hiwum for his rihtwisnisse.
71 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 206, ll. 145–8.[And in this age the evil people of the five cities, the entire people of the land of the Sodomites, were all suddenly burned with sulphurous fire, and their city with them, except for Lot alone, whom God led out of there with his three relatives on account of his righteousness.]
While the Treatise makes no mention of Lot’s incest with his daughters, in his translation of Genesis Ælfric’s small twofold insertion of the explanatory phrase for þære druncenysse both excuses Lot’s behaviour and serves as a warning to his lay readers of the terrible consequences that might befall them should they too indulge in excessive drinking.
Ælfric’s cautious treatment of Lot and the Sodomites in his translation of Genesis can be contrasted with his more exegetical paraphrase of the same story in his sermon ‘On the Prayer of Moses for Mid-Lent Sunday’, an apocalyptic work included in his
Lives of the Saints which reflects on how God has always punished sinners throughout history.
72 For discussion of this text and its interpretation of the Viking invasions as a sign of God’s wrath, see Malcolm Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English, ed. Eric G. Stanley, Malcolm Godden, Douglas Gray and Terry Hoad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 130–62. Following a brief summary of the fate of the rebel angels, the fall of Adam and the destruction of fornicators in the Great Flood, Ælfric delivers an abbreviated account of the destruction of Sodom and the flight of Lot and his family. Paraphrasing Gen. 18.22–33, Ælfric describes how Abraham pleaded with God on behalf of any righteous citizens who might be dwelling in Sodom:
Eft ða God wolde wrecan mid fyre
þa fulan forligeras þæs fracodostan mennisces,
Sodomitiscra ðeoda, þa sæde he hit Abrahame.
Habraham þa bæd þone Ælmihtigan ðus:
“Þu Drihten, þe demst eallum deadlicum flæsce,
ne scealt ðu þone rihtwisan oflsean mid þam arleasan.
Gif ðær beoð fiftig wera wunigende on þam earde,
rihtwise ætforan ðe, ara him eallum.”
Ða cwæð God him to eft: “Ic arige him eallum
gif ic ðær finde fiftig rihtwisra.”
Þa began Abraham eft biddan God georne
þæt he hi ne fordyde gif ðær feowertig wæron
rihtwisra wera wunigende on ðære leode.
God him ðæs getiþode and he began git biddan
oðþæt he becom to tyn mannum, and him tiðode ða God
þæt he nolde hi fordon gif he funde ðær tyn
rihtwisra manna, and he wende ða him fram.
[Likewise when God intended to punish by fire the foul fornicators of that most wicked people, the people of Sodom, then he told this to Abraham. Abraham then prayed to the Almighty thus: “You Lord, you who judge all mortal flesh, you ought not to kill the just person with the impious person. If there are fifty people living in this region, just in your judgement, spare them all.” Then God spoke to him again: “I will spare them all if I find fifty just people there.” Then Abraham began to entreat God urgently not to destroy them if there were forty just men living among that people. God granted him that and he began to entreat again until he came to ten people, and God granted him then that he would not destroy them if he found there ten just people, and then he went away from him.]
73 Clayton and Mullins, II.12, pp. 38–41, ll. 190–206/190–207; translations adapted from this edition to UK spelling.Whereas alliteration and other stylistic effects were used sparingly in the earlier translation of Genesis, ‘On the Prayer of Moses’ is representative of Ælfric’s late, rhythmical prose style. In this passage, alliteration is used effectively to link sound and sense, underlining Ælfric’s disgust at the conduct of the Sodomites (þa fulan forligeras þæs fracodostan mennisces, ‘the foul fornicators of that most wicked people’). However, those same features of the story which had given him so much concern in his translation of Genesis – in particular the Sodomites’ surrounding of Lot’s house and their attempted rape of the angels – are now completely excised, as is the troublesome story of the incest of Lot and his daughters. In their place, Ælfric offers a moral interpretation of the significance of God’s sparing of Lot:
God sende ða sona to ðam sceandlicum mannum
twegen englas on æfen and hi Abrahames broðor sunu,
Loth, mid his hiwum, alæddon of ðære byrig
and ðær næs na ma þe manful nære gemet.
God sende ða fyr on merigen and fulne swefel him to
and forbærnde hi ealle mid egeslicum fyre,
and ðær is nu ful wæter ðær ða fulan wunodon.
And Loth se rihtwisa wearð ahred ðurh God.
Be ðysum man mæg tocnawan þæt micclum fremiað
þam læwedum mannum þa gelæredan Godes ðeowas,
þæt hi mid heora ðeowdome him ðingian to Gode,
nu God wolde arian eallum ðam synfullum
gif he þær gemette tyn rihtwise menn.
[God immediately sent two angels in the evening to the shameful people, and they took Abraham’s brother’s son Lot, with his family, out of the city, and no more were found there who were not evil. Then in the morning God sent fire and foul sulphur to them and burned them all up and destroyed their cities and all that region with a terrifying fire, and now there is foul water where the foul ones lived. And Lot the just man was saved by God. From this it can be known that the learned servants of God greatly benefit lay people, in that they intercede for them with God by their service, since God was willing to spare all the sinful people if he found ten just people there.]
74 Clayton and Mullins, II.12, pp. 40–1, ll. 207–20/207–20.In marked contrast to the Genesis translation, in which he strove to provide only the ‘naked’ narrative, Ælfric is now able to deliver a clear doctrinal message to his unlearned lay readers (læwedum mannum) in this homiletic paraphrase: if they avoid the sins of the Sodomites and imitate the righteousness of Lot, as well as receiving the intercession (ðingian) of learned (gelæredan) clergymen such as himself, they too will be spared God’s wrath. Ælfric’s description of the foul water which still marks the desolation of Sodom in this passage echoes his earlier Interrogationes Sigewulfi, in which he had contrasted the gentler, watery punishment of Noah’s Flood with the devastating fiery wrath unleashed upon the Sodomites:
On Noes flode wæs seo eorðe afeormað and eft geedcucod and on þæra Sodomitiscra gewitnunge forbarn seo eorþe and bið æfre unwæstmbære and mid fulum wætere ofergan.
75 George E. MacLean, ed., ‘Ælfric’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Alcuini Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin’, Anglia 6 (1883), 425–73, and Anglia 7 (1884), 1–59, at 48. On the equation of Ælfric and Alcuin in the thirteenth-century poem The First Worcester Fragment, perhaps on account of his translation of this work, see below, p. 246 n. 6. On the relationship between Ælfric’s Interrogationes and his Preface to Genesis, see above, pp. 160–1 n. 48.[In Noah’s Flood the earth was cleansed and afterwards revived, and in the punishment of the Sodomites the earth was completely burned and will forever be unfruitful and covered with foul water.]
By contrast with the generally conservative translation of Genesis, Ælfric was free in these and other homiletic works to guide his readers in their response to the often complex narratives of the Old and New Testaments.
At the end of the
Preface to Genesis, Ælfric had stated his intention to translate no more Latin books after his version of Genesis, echoing his earlier statement at the end of the second series of
Catholic Homilies that he would not translate any more Gospels or gospel-expositions:
76 For the debates surrounding Ælfric’s reluctance to translate, see Wilcox, Ælfric’s Prefaces, pp. 40–4; see further above, pp. 157–8.Ic cweþe nu þæt ic ne dearr, ne ic nelle, nane boc æfter þissere of Ledene on Englisc awendan. And ic bidde þe, leof ealdorman, þæt þu me þæs na leng ne bidde, þi læs þe ic beo þe ungehirsum, oþþe leas gif ic do.
77 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 7, ll. 115–18.[I say now that I do not dare, nor do I wish, to translate any other book after this from Latin into English. And I ask you, dear ealdorman, that you do not request this of me any longer, lest that I should be disobedient to you, or false if I do.]
Ælfric would in fact go on to translate and adapt several further biblical books, including the second half of Numbers and the paraphrases of Joshua and Judges. However, in these later renderings of the Old Testament, he would increasingly move away from word-for-word translation towards interpretive, homiletic exegesis, a process that would culminate in his summary of the entire Bible in the form of the
Treatise on the Old and New Testaments.
78 On the Treatise, see Chapter Five.Exodus
The Old English prose
Exodus was produced by two anonymous translators, with the changeover taking place around Ex. 17.
79 Marsden reaches this conclusion from analysis of variant readings based on Vulgate and Old Latin sources: Text of the Old Testament, pp. 420–9. For the most part, these translators follow the functional equivalence approach employed throughout most of the Old English
Genesis, whereby the meaning of the source text is brought over to the reader in the idiom and syntax of the target language. However, whereas all fifty of Genesis’ chapters were translated, the approach to Exodus is considerably more selective: Chs 1–35.3 are rendered faithfully, with some abridgement, but the final four and a half chapters (35.4–40), in which Moses reiterates the commandments God had issued to him on Mount Sinai, are all cut.
80 On the treatment of Exodus in the Mosaic Prologue, see above, Chapter Two, pp. 54–67. As we shall see, this tendency towards abridgement becomes more pronounced as we move through the remaining books of the Heptateuch, reflecting the team’s sensitivity to the needs of their readers.
The economical style of the prose
Exodus is well represented in the first translator’s selective treatment of the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea (Ex. 14). In stark contrast to the poetic
Exodus, which transforms this episode into a dramatic set piece covering over two hundred lines (ll. 447–590),
81 Exodus was probably composed early in the Old English period (c. 700–850), but its sole manuscript witness is MS Junius 11, copied close to the time of the composition of the Heptateuch (c. 960–970). the prose version compresses the episode to its bare essentials. Artistic flourishes are generally kept to a minimum, though there are occasional instances of alliteration (in bold) and balanced phrasing (underlined) suggestive of a conscious prose stylist:
14.15 ‘Sege Israhela
folce þæt hig
faron to þære Readan Sæ,
16 and aðene þine girde ofer þa sæ and todæl hig, þæt Israhelisce
folc ga drium
fotum innan þa sæ.
17 And ic a
hyrde Pharaones
heortan and his
folces þæt hig
farað æfter eow innan þa sæ, þæt ic beo gemærsod on Pharaone
and on eallum his here and on eallum his cratum 18 and þa Egiptiscan witon þæt ic eom Drihten eower God.’
21 Þa Moises aþeonde his hand ofer þa sæ, þa sende Drihten micelne
wind ealle þa niht and ge
wende þa sæ to drium,
and þæt wæter wearð on twa todæled and læg an
drie
stræt þurh þa sæ,
22 and þæt wæter stod on twa healfa þære
stræt, swilce
twegen
hege
weallas. Þa for eall Israhela folc þurh þa sæ on þone
weg þe Drihten him ge
worhte and comon hale and gesunde þurh þa sæ, swa Drihten him behet.
23 Ða Pharao com to þære sæ, and eall his here, þa for he on þone ylcan weg æfter Israhela folce on dægred,
mid eallum his folce and mid eallum his wæpnum.
26 Þa cwæð Drihten to Moise: ‘Aþena þine hand
ofer þa sæ and ofer Pharaon and ofer ealne his here.’
27 And he a
hefde up his
hand and
seo
sæ
sloh togædere and ahwylfde Pharaones cratu
28 and adrencte hine sylfne and eall his
folc, þæt þar ne wearð
furðon to
laue an þe
lif gebyrode.
29 Soðlice Moises and Israhela
folc
foron þurh þæ sæ
drium
fotum.
30 And
Drihten alysde on þam
dæge
Israhela folc of þara
Egiptiscan handum
31 and hig gesawon þa Egiptiscan deade, upp to lande aworpene, þa hira ær ehton on ðam lande þe hig þa to cumene wæron, and þæt Israhelisce folc on
dredon him
Drihten and hyrdon Gode and Moise his þeowe.
82 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 109–10. [15 ‘Say to the people of Israel that they should go to the Red Sea, 16 and lift up your rod over that sea and divide it, so that the Israelite people can go on dry land through the sea. 17 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and his people’s so that they follow after you into that sea, so that I will be glorified in Pharaoh and in all of his army and in all his chariots, 18 and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord your God.’ 21 Then Moses lifted his hand over the sea, then the Lord sent a great wind all that night and turned the sea into dry land, and that water was divided in two and a dry path lay through the sea, 22 and that water stood on both sides of the path, like two high walls. Then all the people of Israel went through that sea on the route that the Lord made for them and they came safe and sound through the sea, just as the Lord had promised them. 23 Then Pharaoh came to that sea, and all his army, then he went on that same route after the people of Israel in the dawn, with all his people and with all his weapons. 26 Then the Lord said to Moses: ‘Lift your hand over the sea and over Pharaoh and over all his army.’ 27 And he raised up his hand and the sea struck together and covered over Pharaoh’s chariots 28 and drowned him and all his people, so that there remained not one of them alive. 29 Truly Moses and the people of Israel went through the sea on dry land. 30 And the Lord saved the people of Israel on that day from the hands of the Egyptians 31 and they saw the Egyptians dead, thrown up onto the shore, who before had pursued them on that land when they were come to them, and that Israelite people feared the Lord and obeyed God and Moses his messenger.]
Extraneous details in the Vulgate source are passed over, including God’s question to Moses (Ex. 14.15: quid clamas ad me, ‘why do you cry unto me?’) and God’s instruction that Moses should extend his hand (Ex. 14.16: et extende manum) over the water. Similarly, the repetition of Pharaoh’s host, chariots and horsemen (Ex. 14.17: in curribus et in equitibus illius; Ex. 14.18: atque in equitibus eius) is reduced to a single reference to his folces (‘his people’) in verse 17 and an abbreviated reference to his army and chariots in verse 18. Other verses are cut entirely, such as Ex. 14.19–20, which describes the angel of God and the pillar of cloud standing between the Israelites and the pursuing army of Pharaoh, and Ex. 19.24–5, in which the Lord flings the Egyptians from their chariots as they realise the Lord is fighting on the side of the Israelites. Alert to the fact that readers of the Heptateuch might find the biblical motif of the pillars of cloud and fire confusing, the translator explains that the ‘pillar of cloud’ (columna nubis) was in fact a ‘clear sign’ (swert tacen) in ‘the likeness’ (on […] gelicynsse) of a pillar (Ex. 13.21–2) (alliteration in bold):
21 Dominus autem praecedebat eos ad ostendendam viam per diem in columna nubis, et per noctem in columna ignis, ut dux esset itineris utroque tempore. 22 Numquam defuit columna nubis per diem, nec columna ignis per noctem, coram populo. [And the Lord went before them to show the way, by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire, that he might be the guide of their journey at both times. 22 There never failed the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, before the people.] | And Drihten for beforan him and swutelode him þone weg on dæg þurh swert tacn, on sweres gelicynsse, and on niht swilce an byrnende swer him for beforan, 22 and symle him gelæste þæt sweorte tacn on dæg and þæt fyrene on niht. 83 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 110.[And the Lord went before them to show them the way by day through a clear sign, in the likeness of a pillar, and by night also a burning pillar went before them, 22 and that clear sign always served them by day and that fire by night.] (Emphases added). |
Again, comparison with the poetic version is instructive: in the verse
Exodus,
the description of the pillars of cloud and fire takes up over thirty verse lines (ll. 72b–97), as the poet invites the learned (and probably monastic) reader to meditate on the miraculous image of the
halige seglas, / lyft-wundor leoht (‘holy sails, bright sky-wonder’, ll. 89b–90a);
84 For discussion of the complex imagery at work in this celebrated poetic passage, see Miranda Wilcox, ‘Creating the cloud-tent-ship conceit in Exodus’, ASE 40 (2012), 103–50. the prose version, by comparison, is truncated and simplified, to cater to readers untrained in the monastic practice of meditative reading.
A rare expansion to the Vulgate source occurs in Ex. 14.22, where the first translator rearranges the syntax, placing the comparison between the divided sea and walls first, before providing a brief explanation of the Lord’s role in the Israelites’ salvation (expansion in italics):
14.22 et ingressi sunt filii Israhel per medium maris sicci erat enim aqua quasi murus a dextra eorum et leva. [And the children of Israel went in through the midst of the sea dried up; for the water was as a wall on their right hand and on their left.] | and þæt wæter stod on twa healfa þære stræte, swilce twegen hege weallas. Þa for eall Israhela folc þurh þa sæ on þone weg þe Drihten him geworhte and comon hale and gesunde þurh þa sæ, swa Drihten him behet. [and that water stood on both sides of the path, like two high walls. Then all the people of Israel went through that sea on the route that the Lord made for them and they came safe and sound through the sea, just as the Lord had promised them.] |
While placing greater emphasis on God’s covenant with his Chosen People, the introduction of the idiomatic English expression
hale and gesunde (‘safe and sound’) also serves to further domesticate this key moment in the scriptural narrative.
85 DOE Corpus records four instances of the phrase in Old English prose.Leviticus
The irrelevance of many of the Judaic laws contained in Leviticus to contemporary English readers results in this book being even more severely edited in the Old English Heptateuch than either Genesis or Exodus, with many chapters reduced to a mere handful of verses. Although all seventeen verses of Chapter 1 are faithfully rendered, including instructions given by God to Moses from the tabernacle on the correct manner of offering animals as sacrifice, in Chapter 2 the translator begins to make extensive cuts, reducing the number of verses from sixteen to eight (Lev. 2.1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 12 and 13). This drastic abbreviation continues throughout the translation of Leviticus. The omission of many minor details, such as instructions on the correct manner of preparing an oblation in a frying pan (Lev. 2.5) or gridiron (Lev. 2.7–10), allows for greater emphasis on the core theme of the biblical source text, namely that the Israelites were given strict instructions from God via Moses on how to make sacrifices.
86 As we saw in Chapter Two of this volume, the Mosaic Prologue to the Domboc takes a similarly selective approach omitting long scriptural lists of outmoded Jewish practices now superseded by Christian laws; see pp. 62–6. For a recent study of supersessionist attitudes in the Heptateuch and other Old English biblical writing, see Mo Pareles, Nothing Pure: Jewish Law, Christian Supersession, and Bible Translation in Old English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024). Indeed, injunctions to fear the Lord God and keep his laws (e.g. Lev. 19.14, 32, 37; 19.19; 23.1; 25.17, 18) are not only retained but reinforced by a series of variations on the statement
Ic eom Drihten [eowre God] (e.g. Lev. 18.30; 19.12, 18–19, 36–7; 26.1, 13). This theme of obedience is most forcefully brought home in the conclusion to the Old English version. While the final chapter of the Vulgate source (Ch. 27) lists the reckoning of prices to be paid for various offences against God, the translator brings the vernacular version to a close with a relatively faithful translation of Chapter 26, concerning the terrible punishments which God will unleash on those who disobey his laws. In a departure from the periphrastic approach taken to most preceding chapters of Leviticus, now the translator makes extensive use of alliteration (in bold) and balanced phrasing (underlined), producing a powerful piece of rhythmical prose reminiscent of Ælfric’s late style:
26.14 ‘[…] Gif ge me ne gehirað and mine gebodu forhogiað, 15 and mine æ and mine domas forseð and ne doð min wedd for naht, 16 ic gedo eow þas þing. Ic sende hrædlice fyr and gewirce eow to wædlan. […] 17 Ic wiðstande ongen eow and ge feallað beforan eowrum feondum and gehirað þam þe eow hatiað. Ge fleoð, þeah eow man ne drife. 18 Ic eow do seofonfealdne ege, 19 and ic forbrece eowre ofermodignisse heardnysse, and ic gedo þæt eow bið ægþer heard, ge heofone ge eorðe. 20 And eall eower geswinc bið idel; ne bringð eorðe eow nane wæstmas. 22 And ic sende on eow wildeor þæt forspillon eow and eowre nytenu. 23 Gif ge nellað onfon mine lare and gað ongean me, 24 ic ga ongen eow and slea eow. 25 And þonne ge fleoð fram byrig to byrig, ic sende cwealm on eow […]. 28 And ic witnige eow seofon witon, swa þæt ge etað eowre suna and eowre dohtra flæsc. 30 And ic towurpe eowre heagan getimbru and eowre hearga ic tobrece, and ge feallað betwix eowrum deofolgildum. […] 41 And ic ga ongen eow and gelæde eow on feonda land, oþ eowre lyþre mod ablisige. Þonne gebidde ge for eowrum arleasnissum, 42 and ic gyme min wedd þe ic behet Abrahame and Isaace and Iacobe. Ic gime þæs landes; 43 þonne ge hit forlætað, hit licað me þeah hit weste sig. 44 Ic eom Drihten eowre God 45 þe eow ut alædde of Egipta lande beforan ealles folces gesihþe.’
Ðis synd þa gebodu and domas and laga þe Drihten gesette betwyx him and Israhela folc on Sinai dune.
87 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 136–7.[‘[…] 14 If you do not obey me and ignore my commandments, 15 and scorn my laws and do not keep my covenant at all, 16 I will do these things to you. I will send terrible fire and reduce you to poverty. […] 17 I will set my face against you and you will fall before your enemies and obey those whom you hate. You will flee, although men do not drive you. 18 I will deliver sevenfold terror on you, 19 and I will break your proud hardness, and I will make it so that you are always hard, and everything will be hard for you, either in heaven or on earth. 20 And all your work will be idle; the earth will not bring forth for you any fruits. 22 And I will send to you wild animals that will kill you and your cattle. 23 If you do not wish to receive my teaching, and go against me, 24 I will go against you and kill you. 25 And when you flee from city to city, I will send death to you […]. 28 I will punish you with seven afflictions, so that you will eat your sons’ and your daughters’ flesh. 30 And I will topple you from your high towers and I will break your shrines, and you will fall amidst your devil-worship. […] 41 And I will go against you and lead you into the land of enemies, unless your vile mind is ashamed. Then you will pray for your wickednesses, 42 and I will take care of my covenant that I promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I will take care of the land 43 when you abandoned it, it pleases me although it is waste. 44 I am the Lord your God 45 that led you out of the land of Egypt before the sight of all the people.’
These are the commandments and judgements and laws that the Lord established between himself and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.]
The use of a range of literary and rhetorical devices, including homeoteleuton (e.g.
ne gehirað […] forhogiað […] forseð […] ne doð) and parallelism (e.g.
mine gebodu […] and mine æ and mine domas […] min wedd […] mine æ and mine domas), lends rhythm and structure to this passage. Most striking is the insistent anaphoric front-placement of the personal pronoun
ic (underlined) followed by a series of present indicative verbs with future sense (
gedo,
sende,
wiðstande,
forbrece,
witnige,
towurpe,
tobrece,
gyme) culminating in the emphatic declaration:
Ic eom Drihten eowre God.
88 In the equivalent passage in the Latin source, the first person singular personal pronoun ego appears relatively infrequently (Lev. 26.16: ego quoque haec faciam vobis; Lev. 26.24: ego quoque contra vos adversus incedam; Lev. 26.28: et ego incedam adversum vos in furore contrario; Lev. 26.41: ambulabo igitur et ego contra eos; Lev. 26.44: ego enim sum Dominus Deus eorum; Lev. 26.45: Lev. 26.45: ego Dominus Deus) as the subject is usually indicated by the verb. By electing to end the Old English
Leviticus by foregrounding the theme of divine wrath, rather than with the source text’s list of prices for offences, the translator leaves contemporary English readers in no doubt of the dire consequences of failing to obey God’s
æ (‘law’).
89 As Peter Clemoes notes, Ælfric’s preoccupation with obedience to God inspired him to include homiletic paraphrases of certain Old Testament books in his Catholic Homilies, Lives of Saints and other writings: ‘Chronology’, p. 53. Job is included in the Catholic Homilies; Esther and Judith are Assmann 8 and 9, respectively; Kings and Maccabees are in the Lives. For an online edition of three of these works, see Stuart D. Lee, Ælfric’s Homilies on Judith, Esther and The Maccabees (Oxford, 1999): https://users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/kings/. Numbers
The Book of Numbers recounts the final phase of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert under the leadership of Moses and Aaron, bookended by two censuses in which men of fighting age are enumerated. At the heart of this narrative are a series of episodes in which the Israelites incur God’s wrath by lamenting their miserable condition in the desert and complaining that they should never have left Egypt. In addition to a large volume of legal material, including details of sacrifices and rules concerning the priestly tribe of Levites, Numbers also narrates the story of the twelve spies sent by Moses and Aaron to inspect the Promised Land, ten of whom are destroyed by God for claiming it is inhabited by giants. Moses and Aaron themselves incur God’s wrath in the story of the waters of contradiction. There follows a series of military victories for Israel and the story of Balaam, a messenger sent to curse Israel who instead delivers blessings and oracles. With the defeat of the Midianites, the Israelites now settle in Moab, close to the promised land of Canaan, and at this point the Book of Numbers reaches its conclusion.
In MS L, the Old English Numbers begins immediately after the conclusion to the Old English
Leviticus on fol. 72
r; again, extensive late eleventh- or twelfth-century Latin glosses are visible in the opening verse (fig. 12).
90 For discussion of how these glosses reveal post-Conquest interest in the text, see above, p. 145 n. 3, and below, pp. 247–8. Chapters 1–25, containing the first census of the tribes of Israel, their wanderings in the desert and disobedience to God, are substantially truncated, while the final ten chapters (26–36), which include a second census, accounts of battles between Israel and the kings, various laws and the settlement of the Israelites in Moab, are cut in their entirety. The omission of this final section effectively reorients the entire book: whereas the main focus of the narrative in the Vulgate is the Israelites’ wanderings and their arrival on the border of Canaan, the Old English
Numbers instead presents a series of examples of the consequences of disobeying God set against a backdrop of military mobilisation.
~
Figure 12. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509, fol. 72r, ‘Old English Heptateuch: end of Leviticus, opening of Numbers’.
Chapters 1–12 are thought to be the work of an anonymous translator, while Ælfric was responsible for chapters 13–26. Both translators foreground those parts of the biblical narrative that speak most directly to the spiritual and political concerns of the work’s readers. In particular, the description of the gathering of the Israelite armies, the census and the appointment of military leaders in the opening section of Numbers would have had special resonance for readers such as Æthelweard, who were responsible for organising English wartime defences:
1.1 Drihten spræc witodlice to Moise on Sinai dune on þære halgan stowe, on þam forman dæge þæs ætferan monðes, on þam oðrum geare þe hig foron of Egipta lande:
2 ‘Nim and telle Israhela folc swa hwæt swa si
wæpnedhades,
3 fram twentig wintrum and ofer, þæt ealle þa strengestan of Israhela folc telle þu and Aaron
heapmælum.
4 And þæra
mægða ealdras beoð mid inc mid hira
hiredum,
5 þe þis sint hira naman: Of Ruben, Elisur, Sedeures sunu.
6 Of Simeon, Salamiel, Surisaddais sunu.
7 Of Iuda, Nason, Aminadabis sunu.
8 Of Isachar, Nathanael, Suares sunu.
9 Of Zabulon, Heliab, Elonis sunu.
10 Iosepes bearna: Of Ephraim, Elisama, Amiiudes sunu. Of Mannase, Gamiliel, Phadasures sunu.
11 Of Beniamin, Abidan, Gedeonis sunu.
12 Of Dan, Abiezer, Amisaddages sunu.
13 Of Aser, Pheziel, Ochranes sunu.
14 Of Gad, Eliazapha, Dueles sunu.
15 Of Neptalim, Ahira, Enananis sunu.’
16 Ðis sind þe wæron þa
æðelostan ealdras geond þa
scira and Israhela
heafodmen.
17 Moises and Aaron gegaderodon ealle þas
18 on þam forman dæge þæs æftran monðes, and demdon him
19 swa Drihten bebead Moise, and hig man tealde on Sinai westene.
91 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 138. [1.1 The Lord spoke truly to Moses on Mount Sinai in that holy place, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they went out of Egypt:
2 ‘Take and count the people of Israel all of those who are male, 3 from twenty years upwards, count all those that are the strongest of the people of Israel by their troops, you and Aaron. 4 And the princes of the tribes will be with you with their retainers. 5 These are their names: Of Ruben, Elisur the son of Sedeur. 6 Of Simeon, Salamiel the son of Surisaddai. 7 Of Juda, Nason, son of Aminadab. 8 Of Isachar, Nathaniel, son of Suar. 9 Of Zabulon, Heliab, son of Elon. 10 Joseph’s sons: Of Ephraim, Elisama, son of Amiiud. Of Mannase, Gamiliel, son of Phadasur. 11 Of Beniamin, Abidan, son of Gedeon. 12 Of Dan, Abiezer, son of Amisaddag. 13 Of Aser, Pheziel, son of Ochran. 14 Of Gad, Eliazapha, son of Duel. 15 Of Neptalim, Ahira, son of Enanan.’ 16 These are the noblest princes of the shires and the chief men of the Israelites. 17 Moses and Aaron gathered all of these 18 on the first day of the second month and counted them 19 as the Lord had instructed Moses, and they were numbered in the desert of Sinai.] (Emphases added)
The translator makes the biblical narrative of the census directly relevant to such readers by using a range of English military terms:
turmas >
heapmælum;
domorum in cognationibus suis >
hiredum (‘retainers’);
nobilissimi principes multitudinis per tribus et cognationes suas et capita exercitus Israhel >
þa æðelostan ealdras geond þa scira and Israhela heafodmen. The copy of the Old English
Numbers in the Hexateuch is further domesticated in the accompanying illustrations which depict the large-scale mustering of troops, a scenario that would have been familiar to contemporary readers (Cotton Claudius B. IV, fols 112
v–113
r). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example, records how Alfred gathered troops from various
sciras (‘shires’) in preparation for the Battle of Eddington (MS A 878),
92 John Baker and Stuart Brookes, ‘Explaining Anglo-Saxon Military Efficiency: The Landscape of Mobilization’, ASE 44 (2015), 221–58, at 222. See further, Ryan Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age, Warfare in History 30 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010). Cf. Janet M. Bately, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 3, MS A (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 50–1. and later divided his army in two so that one part was always on active service while the other was stood down (MS A 893).
93 On Alfred’s development of a system of fortified defences (burhs) each containing a garrison from which he could conscript men of fighting age, as witnessed by the document known as the Burghal Hidage, see David Hill and Alexander R. Rumble, eds, The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); Georgina Pitt, ‘Alfredian military reform: the materialization of ideology and the social practice of garrisoning’, Early Medieval Europe 30 (2022), 408–36. The failure of certain ealdormen to mobilise their troops effectively against the Danes was a source of recurring frustration for the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for the 990s and early 1000s.
94 See esp. ASC MS C 992, 993, 1003. See further John Scattergood, ‘The Battle of Maldon and History’, in Literature and Learning in Medieval and Renaissance England: Essays Presented to Fitzroy Pyle, ed. John Scattergood (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1984), pp. 11–24. Bucking the trend was the East Saxon ealdorman Byrhtnoth (d. 991), whose heroic organisation of his
fyrd (‘army’, l. 221a) and
hiredmen (‘retainers’, l. 261a) for battle against
hæðene scealcas (‘heathen attackers’, l. 181b) is celebrated in the Old English poem
The Battle of Maldon.
95 The biblical resonance of Byrhtnoth’s actions were not lost on the author of the Latin Life of Saint Oswald (c. 1000), attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey, who evokes the Old Testament figures of Aaron and Hur, the warriors who supported Moses’ hand in battle against Amalek (Ex. 17.10–12) (Stabat ipse statura procerus, eminens super ceteros; cuius manum non Aaron et Hur sustentabant, sed multimoda pietas Domini fulciebat, quoniam ipse dignus er, ‘He himself was tall of stature, standing above the rest; Aaron and Hur did not stay his hands: it was the Lord’s manifold mercy which sustained them, because he was worthy of it’). The Life of Saint Oswald also depicts Byrhtnoth defending himself to left and right in a manner which, as Michael Lapidge notes, echoes 1 Macc. 6.45 (interficiens a dextris et a sinistris) and 2 Cor. 6.7 (exhibeamus nosmet ipsos […] per arma iustitiae a dextris et a sinistris): Michael Lapidge, ed., Oxford Medieval Texts: Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Vita S. Oswaldi IV.58, pp. 157–9; see also Michael Allen and Daniel Calder, eds and trans., Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry, Vol. 1: The Major Latin Texts in Translation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), pp. 188–9. Aaron is also credited with organising the Israelite armies with Moses in Numbers. As we shall see below, Ælfric would connect those English kings who had bravely protected their people by fighting against heathen invaders with their Old Testament forebears in his homiletic paraphrase of Judges. Like Ælfric, the anonymous translator of the first half of Numbers was thus alert to the contemporary political resonances of this section of the biblical source text.
In keeping with the pragmatic editorial principles established in the preceding rendering of Leviticus, the anonymous translator decided that long passages enumerating the fighting men of each tribe and their princes as reckoned by Moses and Aaron (Num. 1.19–44, 2.1–31) were otiose and therefore cut them entirely. Significantly, however, the Old English version retains God’s instruction that Moses and Aaron should not number the priests among those preparing for battle:
1.45 Ðus fela wæs þæra manna þe Moises and Aaron and þa twelf Israhela ealdras getealdon fram twentigum wintrum and bufan, þam þæra þe to gefeohte faran mihton: six hund þusenda and þreo þusenda and fif hundred and fiftig.
47 Ða sacerdas mid hira hirede næron getealde mid him,
48 for þam þe Drihten bebead Moyse: ‘Ne telle þu Leuies mægðe, ne sete þu hig mid Israhela folce,
50 ac sette hig to þære halgan stowe and to þingum þe þærto belimpað.’
54 Israhela bearn didon neah eallon þam þingum þe Drihten bebead þurh Moisen.
2.32 And ealles hira heres wæs, þa he todæled wæs, six hund þusenda and þreo þusenda and fif hundrydo and fiftig.
34 Hig foron floccmælum mid hira hiredum.
96 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 138–9. [45 This was the number of those men that Moses and Aaron and the twelve princes of Israel counted from twenty years old and above, and those that were able to go to war: six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. 47 The priests with their troops were not counted with them, 48 because the Lord instructed Moses: ‘Do not count the kindred of Levi, nor place them with the people of Israel, 50 but put them in the holy place and to those things that belong thereto.’ 54 The children of Israel performed all the things that the Lord instructed through Moses. 2.32 And all of their army was, when he separated them, six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. 34 They went in companies with their troops.]
Although Ælfric certainly accepted the use of violence in the service of God and the concept of the Just War,
97 See James Cross, ‘The Ethics of War in Old English’, in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 269–82; James W. Earl, ‘Violence and Non-Violence in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric’s Passion of St Edmund’, PQ 78 (1999), 125–49; E. Gordon Whatley, ‘Hagiography and Violence: Military Men in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’, in Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill, ed. Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs and Thomas N. Hall (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 217–38; and Ben Snook, ‘Just War in Anglo-Saxon England: Transmission and Reception’, in Handbook of Medieval Culture: Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), pp. 99–120. he was of the firm belief that monks should not take any part in worldly battles, a point he makes clear in his treatise on the Three Orders of Society, that is
laboratores,
oratores,
bellatores (‘those who work, those who pray, those who fight’):
98 The treatise forms the final part of Ælfric’s paraphrase of the Book of Maccabees in his Lives of the Saints. See further Andrei Crișan, ‘The Concept of the Three Orders of Society in Late Old English Prose’, Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia 3 (2024), 189–206. On the contemporary political and theological resonance of Ælfric’s Maccabees and Three Orders, see further Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, p. 141; Andrew Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 313–30; Samantha Zacher, ‘Anglo-Saxon Maccabees: Political Theology in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’, in Old English Lexicology and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Antonette diPaolo Healey, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer, Haruko Momma and Samantha Zacher, Anglo-Saxon Studies 40 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 143–58; S. I. Rubinstein, ‘The Politics of Ælfric’s Maccabees’, RES 74 (2023), 589–604. On the Three Orders more generally in this period, see Timothy E. Powell, ‘The “Three Orders of Society” in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 23 (1994), 103–32.Is nu forþy mare þæra muneca gewinn
wið þa ungesewenlican deofla þe syrwiað embe us
þonne sy þæra woruld-manna þe winnað wiþ ða flæsclican
and wið þa gesewenlican gesewenlice feohtað.
Nu ne sceolon þa woruld-cempan to woruldlicum gefeohte
þa Godes þeowan neadian fram þam gastlican gewinne,
forðan þe him fremað swiðor þæt þa ungesewenlican fynd
beon oferswyðde þonne ða gesewenlican,
and hit bið swyðe derigendlic þæt hi Drihtnes þeowdom forlætan
and to woruld-gewinne bugan, þe him naht to ne gebryiað.
[The fight of the monks against the invisible devils who lay traps around us is greater now, therefore, than that of the men of the world who fight against human enemies and fight visibly against the visible. Now worldly soldiers should not force the servants of God away from the spiritual battle to the worldly battle, because it will serve them better that invisible enemies are overcome rather than the visible, and it would be very harmful for them to neglect their service of the Lord and to turn to the worldly fight, which in no way concerns them.]
99 Clayton and Mullins, II.23, pp. 334–7. On Ælfric’s treatment of the different responsibilities of the three orders of society in his Treatise, see pp. 221–3.The anonymous translator’s selective rendering of Numbers 2 provides biblical support for Ælfric’s dictum that a monk’s place is in the cloister and not on the battlefield.
The transition from the anonymous translator to Ælfric at Numbers 13 is signalled by a brief recapitulation of the preceding biblical narrative, linking Numbers with Exodus, and the return of his distinctive rhythmical prose style which last appeared in his stint of the Old English
Genesis from Ch. 19.19:
100 See further Marsden, ‘Translation by Committee?’, p. 45. Raith argues that Ælfric’s sections of Numbers are derived from one of his homilies (‘Ælfric’s Share in the Old English Pentateuch’, 314).Anonymous author:
12.13 Moises þa clipode to Drihtne and cwæð: ‘Drihten God, ic bidde þe,
hæl
hig.’
14 Drihten him andswarode and cwæð: ‘Gif hire fæder spigette on hire nebb, hu ne sceolde
hire,
huru, þinga
sceamian
seofon
dagas? Beo heo a
sindrod
seofon
dagas fram oðrum
mannum and clipige hig
mann
siþþan ongen.’
15 Maria wæs belocen seofon dagas butan þære wicstowe and þæt folc ne stirode hwæder, ær þam þe Maria
wearð hal ge
worden.
101 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 143, [12. 13 Moses then spoke to the Lord and said: ‘Lord God, I pray to you, save her.’ 14 The Lord answered him and said: ‘If her father spat on her face, ought she not, indeed, be ashamed of this thing for seven days? Let her be separated for seven days from other people and people may call her back again.’ 15 Mary was put out of the camp for seven days and that people did not move until Mary was called again.]
Ælfric:13.1 Æfter þam þe
Moises se
mæra heretoga mid Israhela folce, swa swa him bebead God, ofer þa Readan Sæ
ferde and
Pharo adrenced wæs, and siþþan se
ælmihtiga God him
æ gesette hæfde, þa þa seo
fyrd com to
Foran þam westene,
2 ða cwæð se
heofonlica God to þam
halgan
Moise:
3 ‘Ceos þa
menn þæt
magon sceawigean þone eard Chanaan landes, þe ic Israhela folce forgifan
wille to hira ge
wealde, and asend
twelf heafod
menn of þam
twelf
mægðum.’
102 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 144. [13.1 Afterwards Moses the famous battle-chief among the people of Israel, just as God instructed him, went across the Red Sea and Pharaoh was drowned, and after the Almighty God had given him the Law, then the army came to the desert of Pharan 2 then the heavenly God said to the holy Moses: 3 ‘Choose the men that might examine that place, the land of Chanaan, which I will give to the people of Israel as their dominion, and send twelve chief-men from those twelve tribes.]
The anonymous author produces a very faithful but nevertheless idiomatic rendering of the Vulgate’s account of the expulsion of Mary from the tribe for seven days on account of her leprosy.
103 The final verse of Num. 12, verse 16 (profectus est de Aseroth fixis tentoriis in deserto Pharan, ‘And the people marched from Haseroth, and pitched their tents in the desert of Pharan’) is omitted, though it is unclear whether this was the decision of the anonymous translator or Ælfric. Where alliteration does occur, it appears to be accidental and does not form any clear pattern or contribute to the rhythm of the passage. In striking contrast, Ælfric introduces a succinct summary of the key events of Exodus (the issuing of the law on Mount Sinai and the crossing of the Red Sea) and expands considerably on Num. 13.2 (
ibi locutus est Dominus ad Moysen dicens, ‘And there the Lord spoke to Moses, saying’) by introducing epithets which create alliteration and rhythm:
Moise se mæra heretoga;
cwæð se heofonlica God to þam halgan Moise.
104 As we shall see, Ælfric will again use the heroic epithet se mæra heretoga to describe Moses in the opening of his homiletic paraphrase of Judges and in his Treatise; see pp. 206–7, 233. In his homily on ‘The Circumcision’, Ælfric refers to Moses as simply se heretoga (CH I.6, p. 112). He also uses the term once in his stint of Genesis (17.20) to describe the twelve princes (Lat. duces) who will proceed from Ishmael. Andy Orchard records three instances of the compound here-toga (‘army-leader’) in verse, once in Gifts of Men l. 76b, where it is used in the universal sense to refer to a good leader of armies, and twice in the Metres of Boethius, for the Roman consuls Boethius and Brutus, noting that it occurs ‘more than 170 times in prose’: Word-Hord: A Lexicon of Old English Verse with Particular Focus on the Distribution of Nominal and Adjectival Compounds, CLASP Ancillary Publications 1 (Oxford: CLASP, 2022), p. 159. Moses is described as folc-toga in the poetic Exodus (ll. 14a, 254a). For a survey of depictions of Moses as lawgiver, leader and writer in Anglo-Latin writing and Old English verse, see Gernot Wieland, ‘Legifer, Dux, Scriptor: Moses in Anglo-Saxon Literature’, in Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance, ed. Jane Beal, Commentaria 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 185–209; Wieland does not discuss references to Moses in Old English prose.Ælfric’s rhythmical prose style remains in use for most of the remaining part of Numbers, though it is temporarily suspended for practical reasons during various long lists of names (e.g. Num. 13.5–16). All of Chapter 13 and most of Chapter 14 are faithfully rendered, before Ælfric begins to make larger cuts to the remaining chapters, providing a foretaste of the ‘brief style’ he will employ in his paraphrases of Joshua and Judges and, in even more extreme form, in the
Treatise.
105 See further Nichols, ‘Ælfric and the Brief Style’. All forty-one verses of Chapter 15, for example, are reduced to a terse summary:
God gesette þa Moyse menigfealde beboda106 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 147. (‘God then established many commandments to Moses’).
In keeping with the Heptateuch’s tendency to downplay the misconduct of the patriarchs, Ælfric radically alters the biblical account of how Moses incurred God’s wrath on account of his disobedience when striking the rock (Num. 20). In the Vulgate, the Israelites complain to Moses and Aaron that they have no water in the desert, saying that they wish that they had remained in captivity in Egypt (Num. 20.1–5); Moses and Aaron then go into the tabernacle and prostrate themselves before God, asking for his help (Num. 20.6). God speaks to Moses instructing him to take the rod and assemble the people with Aaron, and speak to the rock, which will yield water (Num. 20.8); Moses then takes the rod and gathers the people, asking them if the rock will bring forth water (Num. 20.9–10). Lifting up his hand, Moses twice strikes the rock with the result that water comes forth and the people drink (Num. 20.11). God then speaks to Moses and Aaron, criticising them for their disobedience and warning them of the punishment to come:
20.12 Quia non credidistis mihi, ut sanctificaretis me coram filiis Israhel, non introducetis hos populos in terram, quam dabo eis. 13 Haec est aqua contradictionis, ubi iurgati sunt filii Israhel contra Dominum, et sanctificatus est in eis.
[20.12 Because you have not believed me, to sanctify me before the children of Israel, you shall not bring these people into the land, which I will give them. 13 This is the water of contradiction, where the children of Israel strove with words against the Lord, and he was sanctified in them.]
Ælfric omits this passage as well as two further references detailing God’s chastisement of Moses and Aaron (Num. 20.24, 17.14), while abridging other verses in this episode which cast Moses in a negative light:
20.1 Æfter þisum comon Israhela bearn to þam westene Sin, and þær sweolt Maria, Aarones swuster, and ys þær bebirged.
2 Ða næs þær nan wæter on þam westene þam folce
3 and hig þa ciddon swiþe wið Moisen.
6 He clipode þa to Gode
7 and God cwæð him to:
8 ‘Gang þu and Aaron and gegaderiað þis folc geond to þam stane and se stan eow slyþ wæter.’
10 Hig comon to þam flinte
11 and he ætforan him eallum sloh mid þære girde tuwa þone flint and þær fleow sona of þam flinte wæter, swa genihtsumlice þæt heora nytena druncon, and eall Israela folc, of þære anre riðe.
14 Ða sende Moyses ærendrecan to Edom þam cyninge,
17 bæd þat he moste faran forð ofer his land be rihtum wege and ne hreppan his nan þing.
107 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 148–9. [20.1 After the children of Israel came to the desert of Sin, and there Mary died, Aaron’s sister, and is buried there. 2 Then there was no water in the desert for that people 3 and they lamented greatly to Moses. 6 He called then to God 7 and God said to him: 8 ‘Go you and Aaron and gather this people around that stone and the stone will give you water.’ 10 They came to that rock 11 and he before them all struck twice the rock with the rod and there suddenly water sprang out of the rock, so abundantly that their animals drank, and all the people of Israel, from that single stream. 14 Then Moses sent messengers to the king of Edom, 17 requesting that he might travel through his land by the correct way and not touch anything of his.]
The cumulative result of these omissions is that the entire biblical episode with Moses and the rock is recast as another instance of the prophet’s faithfulness to God. As we shall see, however, Ælfric’s decision to gloss over the incident at the waters of contradiction in Numbers will have unforeseen consequences in the translation of Deuteronomy which follows.
108 See below, pp. 196–8. For Ælfric’s brief treatment of Numbers and Deuteronomy in the Treatise on the Old and New Testaments, in which Moses’ disobedience and punishment are similarly glossed over, see below, Chapter Five, p. 224The Old English
Numbers thus demonstrates how English prose authors in the late tenth century drew on the Old Testament ‘as a veiled way of talking about their own situation’, as Godden puts it.
109 Godden, ‘Old Testament’, p. 232. The abridgement of the censuses allows the vernacular version to resonate with the lived experience of kings and ealdormen who were responsible for mustering troops in this period. Similarly, the retention of the detail concerning the division of the priestly tribe of Levi from the fighting men in a passage otherwise heavily abbreviated speaks to contemporary concerns about monks participating in physical battle against the Danes. Above all, the Old English
Numbers provides ample evidence for contemporary readers that all three orders of society must obey God’s laws during a time of national crisis.
Deuteronomy
With the translation of Deuteronomy, we witness something of a return to the more faithful translation style of the Old English prose Genesis and Exodus. The anonymous translator includes at least some material from most of the source text’s thirty-four chapters, though much is nevertheless abridged. Those chapters which are cut in their entirety (Deut. 2 and 26) comprise Moses’ extended account of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert and the end of the Deuteronomic Code respectively – two passages that were evidently deemed repetitive and therefore extraneous. Other major and minor cuts similarly serve to streamline the text, again foregrounding the Heptateuch’s central theme of obedience to God’s laws. In Chapter 16, for example, verses 1–17 (instructions about the correct observance of the Passover feast and other festivals) and 21–2 (against planting a grove or tree near the altar of the Lord, and setting up a statue to oneself) are left out, while the verses that remain from this section, 18–20, contain material more relevant to contemporary readers on the appointment of judges and magistrates, the importance of not accepting bribes, and the necessity of adhering to justice in order to prove oneself worthy of inheriting God’s Promised Land.
By contrast to this general abbreviating tendency, two chapters are translated in full: Chapter 5, a recapitulation of the Decalogue, and Chapter 34, which closes the book with an account of Moses’ death. The fact that only these two chapters are rendered in full indicates that the main aim of the translation was to provide readers with basic instruction in the key tenets of the Old Law and the major historical events of the Old Testament.
Turning to the style of the translation, Deuteronomy is rendered into a confident, fluent Old English prose. On isolated occasions, such as the opening of the Song of Moses, we find balanced phrasing and even lyrical language:
110 Marsden notes the possible influence of Old Latin readings on the translation of the ‘Song of Moses’, pointing to the use of this text in liturgical contexts (Text of the Old Testament, p. 435).32.1 Audite, caeli, quae loquor audiat, terra verba oris mei. 2 Concrescat in pluvia doctrina mea fluat ut ros eloquium meum quasi imber super herbam et quasi stillae super gramina. 3 Quia nomen Domini invocabo: date magnificentiam Deo nostro 4 Dei perfecta sunt opera, et omnes viae eius iudicia: Deus fidelis et absque ulla iniquitate iustus et rectus
[32.1 Hear, O you heavens, the things I speak, let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth. 2 Let my doctrine gather as the rain, let my speech distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass. 3 Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: may you give magnificence to our God. 4 The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right.]
32.1 ‘Gehiraþ heofenas þa þing þe ic sprece and gehire eorþe min word.
2 Weaxe min lar swa ren. Flowe min spræc swa deaw and swa smilte ren swa dropan ofer gærsa ciþas,
3 for þam þe ic clipie Drihtnes naman. Sillaþ mærþe urum Gode.
4 Godes weorc sint fullfremede and ealle his wegas sint domas. God ys getreowe and, butan ælcre unrihtwisnisse, rihtwis. […].’
111 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 173. [32.1 Let the heavens hear the things about which I speak and let the earth hear my word. 2 Let my teaching grow as the rain. Let my speech flow like the dew and like calm rain which drops over sprigs of herbs, 3 because I will call out the Lord’s name. Give magnificence to our God. 4 God’s works are perfected and all his ways are judgements. God is faithful and, without any unrighteousness, righteous.]
Front-placement of verbs (Gehiraþ; gehire; Weaxe; Flowe; Sillaþ), syntactical parallelism (Gehiraþ heofenas […] gehire eorþe; Weaxe min […] Flowe min), a fourfold swa construction, light alliteration on h, w, s and d, and the insertion of the adjective smilte (‘calm’) to modify the noun ren (‘rain’), where the Latin simply has imber, all combine to provide rhythm, structure and texture to this polished piece of Old English prose.
Other relatively minor alterations to Deuteronomy occur at the level of syntax. For example, in Chapter 12 verses 1–31, commandments on the treatment of defeated enemies, the offering of sacrifices and prohibitions on the consumption of food and drink are all omitted, leaving only the core injunction of obedience to God’s law:
12.32 Quod praecipio tibi, hoc tantum facito Domino: nec addas quicquam nec minuas. [What I command you, you must do only that to the Lord: neither add anything, nor diminish.] | ‘Wirceað ealle þa þing þe Drihten eow bebead and ne ice ge nan þing þærto, ne ne waniað. […]’ 112 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 163.[Do all the things which God instructed you and do not add anything to that, nor diminish it.] |
Reversing the syntax, so that the substantive clause (þe Drihten eow bebead) comes after the imperative (wirceað ealle þa þing), allows the translator to begin the injunction with an imperative verb (wirceað), thus integrating this verse into a powerful sequence of front-placed jussives:
11.1 Lufiað Drihten eowerne God and
wircað his bebodu and his æ and his domas on ælcne timan.
2 Oncnawað todæg þa þing þe eowre bearn nyton, þa þe ne gehirdon Drihtenes lare eowres Godes […].
5 And
gumunað hwæt he eow dide on þam westene […].
12.32 Wirceað ealle þa þing þe Drihten eow bebead and
ne ice ge nan þing þærto, ne ne
waniað […].
13.4 Filigeað Drihtne eowrum Gode and
ondrædað hine and
healdaþ his bebodu and
gehirað hine and
þeawiað him.
113 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 162. [11.1 Love the Lord your God and follow his commandments and his law and his judgements at all times. 2 Know today the thing that your children do not, when they did not hear the law of the Lord your God. […] 5 And remember what he did for you in that desert […]. 12.32 Do all the things which God instructed you and do not add anything to that, nor diminish it […]. 13.4 Follow the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey him and serve him.] (Emphases added).
In the Latin source, the imperative verb sometimes appears in clause-initial position (1.1: ama itaque Dominum Deum tuum et observa praecepta eius; 1.2 cognoscite), though the Old English verb gumunað (‘remember’, 1.5) has no equivalent in the Vulgate. Within the same sequence, the translator once more rearranges the DIRECT OBJECT + IMPERATIVE VERB structure of the first clause of 13.4 (Dominum Deum vestrum sequimini et ipsum timete mandata illius custodite) to sustain the pattern of opening each injunction with a jussive. Through small but consistent choices such as these, the translator produces a trimmed-down, communicative version of the final book of the Pentateuch, reiterating and elaborating the key elements of Mosaic law first outlined in Exodus.
Like the translator of Leviticus, the author of the Old English Deuteronomy had a strong sense of an ending, bringing the vernacular version of the biblical book to a stirring conclusion in a manner which differs substantially from the source. Following a recapitulation of the Decalogue and the Deuteronomic Code (Deut. 12–30), the Vulgate source concludes with four chapters comprising the Song of Moses (Deut. 32.1–43), the Blessing of Moses (Deut. 33.1–25) and an account of the prophet’s death and burial (Deut. 34). The Old English translator renders all the individual verses of the Song of Moses and the account of the patriarch’s death, but reduces the Blessing of Moses (Deut. 33.1–29) to a single, introductory verse (Deut. 33.1: Moyses þa gebletsode ær his deaþe Israhela bearn, þa twelf mægða, ælc mid sindrigre bletsunge), thereby foregrounding the key narrative elements of Moses’ vision of the Promised Land, God’s prevention of him from entering it on account of his sin at the rock (Num. 20) and the patriarch’s subsequent death. The scribe of MS L indicates the final section of the text with a line of capitals two lines up from the bottom of fol. 97v:
32.48 DRIHTEN WÆS ÐA SPRECENDE
114 On the use of the past continuous construction in the opening of the Mosaic Prologue to the Domboc, see Chapter Two, pp. 59–62. TO MOISE, þus cweðende:
49 ‘Astih to me on þisne munt Abarim, þe ys on Nebo dune on þam lande Moab, ongean Iericho, and geseoh Chanaan land, þe ic forgife Israhela bearnum to agenne, and swelt on þam munte.
50 And þu bist beþeod to þinum folcum, swa swa Aaron þin broþur wæs dead on þære dune Or and wæs gelogod to his folcum,
51 for þam þe git agilton ætforan me on Israhela bearnum middan, æt þæs wiðersæces wæterum on Chades on þam westene Sin, and ge ne wurðedon me onmang Israhela bearnum.
52 Ðu scealt geseon þæt land and þu ne cymst þæron.’
33.1 Moyses þa gebletsode ær his deaþe Israhela bearn, þa twelf mægða, ælc mid sindrigre bletsunge,
34.1 and astah siþþan uppan þone munt Nebo on Fasgan cnæp, ongean þa burh Iericho, and Drihten him æteowode eall Galaad land oð Dan,
2 and eall Neptalim land and Effraim and Mannassen and eall þæt land oð þa itemistan sæ,
3 and þone suðdæl and þa rumnisse Iericho feldes and palmtreowa birig, oð Segor.
115 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 175–6. [32.48 The Lord was speaking then to Moses, saying thus: 49 ‘Go up into this mount Abarim, that is on Nebo hill in the land of Moab, over against Jericho, and see the land of Chanaan, which I will deliver to the children of Israel to possess, and die in that mountain. 50 And you will be gathered to your people, just as Aaron your brother was dead on that Mount Or and was gathered to his people, 51 because you trespassed against me in the midst of the children of Israel, at the waters of contradiction in Cades in the desert of Sin and you did not worship me among the children of Israel. 52 You shall see that land and you will not come therein.’
33.1 Moses then blessed before his death the children of Israel, those twelve tribes, each with a separate blessing, 34.1 and went up then into that Mount Nebo to the peak of Phasga, over against the city of Jericho, and the Lord showed him all the land of Galaad as far as Dan, 2 and all the land of Nephtali and Ephraim and Manasses and all that land as far as the furthermost sea, 3 and the southern part and breadth of the plan of Jericho and the city of palm trees, as far as Segor.]
As we have seen, in his translation of Numbers 20 Ælfric omitted those verses in which God criticised Moses for disobeying his instruction, in keeping with the Heptateuch’s general tendency to downplay the misconduct of the patriarchs. A reader working their way through the Heptateuch sequentially would therefore be surprised by the reference in the translation of Deuteronomy to Moses’ trespass
æt þæs wiðersæces wæterum on Chades on þam westene Sin116 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 175. (‘at the waters of contradiction in Cad in the desert of sin’, Deut. 32.51). Such inconsistencies between different parts of the Heptateuch highlight the complex and seemingly protracted circumstances of its creation. In the remainder of this chapter, I will explore how
in the final two books of the Heptateuch Ælfric sought to resolve such issues by moving away from both formal- and functional equivalence translation towards paraphrase and homiletic exegesis.
Joshua
The Book of Joshua relates how Moses’ appointed successor led the people of Israel, focusing on his wars and eventual conquest of the land of Canaan, ending with his death and burial. In the
Treatise, Ælfric explains that he translated this book for Æthelweard, just as he had with Genesis. As a heroic military leader, Joshua has an obvious appeal for such readers.
117 For analysis of the illustrations accompanying Ælfric’s Joshua in the Hexateuch and its relationship to earlier illustrated bibles, see George Henderson, ‘The Joshua Cycle in B.M. Cotton MS. Claudius B. IV’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 31 (1968), 38–59. Although scholars have grouped Ælfric’s
Joshua and
Judges together as ‘paraphrases’ in order to distinguish them from the more faithful translation style of the preceding five books, the first of these two works in fact follows the functional equivalence approach taken in the preceding translations of the Pentateuch. Indeed, the rendering of Joshua is generally more faithful to its Vulgate source than the preceding translations of Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy, in which far more biblical material is excised. From Chapter 5 onwards, Ælfric begins to merge two or more biblical verses into one, with larger alterations tending to cluster around the end of chapters. Hence, on several occasions Ælfric either merges the last or near-to-last verses (e.g. Jos. 1, 8, 9, and 12) or drops the final or penultimate verse entirely (e.g. Jos. 2, 10, 11 and 23).
Ælfric’s economical approach to Joshua is on clear display in his treatment of Chapter 9. He begins by translating the first seven verses, with some abbreviation. For example, in verses 1–2, where the Vulgate provides a long list of the regions in which the various kings ruling beyond the Jordan dwelt, Ælfric provides only the basic outline of the story:
9.1 Quibus auditis cuncti, reges trans Iordanem, qui versabantur in montanis, et in campestribus, in maritimis ac litore maris Magni hii quoque qui habitabant iuxta Libanum Hettheus et Amorreus et Chananeus Ferezeus et Eveus et Iebuseus 9.2 congregati sunt pariter ut pugnarent contra Iosue et Israhel uno animo eademque sententia. [9.1 Now when these things were heard of, all the kings beyond the Jordan, that dwelt in the mountains, and in the plains, in the places near the sea, and on the coasts of the great sea, they also that dwell by Libanus, the Hethite, and the Amorrhite, the Chanaanite, the Pherezite, and the Hevite, and the Jebusite 9.2 gathered themselves together, to fight against Joshua and Israel with one mind, and one resolution.] | 9.1 þes hlisa wearð þa cuð þære leoda cynegum þe begeondan Iordane eardiende wæron, 9.2 and gesamndon hi ealle anmodlice to gefeohte togeanes Iosue and Israhela bearnum. 118 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 184. [9.1 These things were heard of by the kings of the peoples who were dwelling beyond the Jordan, 9.2 and they all joined together with one mind to fight against Joshua and the children of Israel.] |
By omitting the names of places and peoples, as well as compressing the Latin doublet uno animo eademque sententia into the single adverb anmodlice, Ælfric produces a more focused narrative that is more likely to hold a reader’s attention.
The account of the siege of Gabaon that follows, in which Joshua is cast as the saviour of the city, has close parallels with the various descriptions of Danish attacks on English cities
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
119 See, for example, ASC MS A’s descriptions of the sieges of York (867), Nottingham (868), Reading (871), Exeter (877, 894), Rochester (885) and London (994, 1013, 1016). Table 5 shows how Ælfric employs alliteration in this passage to heighten the drama of the scene, while consistently abbreviating verses to maintain movement (alliteration is indicated in bold; omitted sections are struck out; alterations of wording are indicated by italics):
Table 5. Comparison of Joshua 10.5–10 in Vulgate and Ælfric’s Joshua.
Vulgate | Ælfric’s Joshua |
Jos. 10. 5 Congregati igitur ascenderunt quinque reges Amorreorum rex Hierusalem rex Hebron rex Hieremoth rex Lachis rex Eglon simul cum exercitibus suis et castrametati sunt circa Gabaon obpugnantes eam. [So the five kings of the Amorrhites being assembled together, went up: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jerimoth, the king of Lachis, the king of Eglon, they and their armies, and camped about Gabaon, laying siege to it.] | Ða comon þa fif cynegas mid firde to Gabaon and wicodon þær onemn, woldon hi oferwinnan. [Then the five kings came with armies to Gabaon and camped alongside there, they wished to conquer it.] |
6 Habitatores autem Gabaon urbis obsessae miserunt, ad Iosue qui tunc morabatur in castris apud Galgalam et dixerunt ei, ‘Ne retrahas manus tuas ab auxilio servorum tuorum ascende cito, et libera nos, ferque praesidium convenerunt enim adversum nos omnes reges Amorreorum qui habitant in montanis.’ [But the inhabitants of the city of Gabaon, which was besieged, sent to Joshua, who then abode in the camp at Galgal, and said to him: ‘Withdraw not your hands from helping your servants: come up quickly, and save us, and bring us succour: for all the kings of the Amorrhites, who dwell in the mountains, are gathered together against us.’] | Ða sende seo buruhwaru sona to Iosue, biddende þæt he come and þa burh geheolde. [Then the citizens sent quickly to Joshua, asking that he should come and rule the city.] |
7 Ascenditque Iosue de Galgalis et omnis exercitus bellatorum cum eo, viri fortissimi. [And Joshua went up from Galgal, and all the army of the warriors with him, most valiant men.] | Iosue þa ferde mid his fyrde þiderweard, [Joshua then went with his army there,] |
8 Dixitque Dominus ad Iosue: ‘Ne timeas eos in manus enim tuas tradidi illos nullus tibi ex eis resistere poterit.’ [But the Lord said to Joshua: ‘Fear them not: for I have delivered them into your hands: none of them shall be able to stand against you.’] | and Drihten him cwæð to: ‘Ne ondræd þu þe nan þing: on þine handa ic hi betæce. Ne mæg heora nan þe wiðstandan.’ [And the Lord said to him: ‘Do not fear anything for yourself: I have delivered them into your hands. None of them will be able to withstand you.’] |
9 Inruit itaque Iosue super eos repente tota ascendens nocte de Galgalis. [So Joshua going up from Galgal all the night, came upon them suddenly.] | Iosue him þa feng on mid gefeohte, [Joshua came upon them with battle] |
10 Et conturbavit eos Dominus, a facie Israhel, contrivitque plaga magna, in Gabaon, ac persecutus est per viam ascensus Bethoron, et percussit usque Azeca et Maceda. [And the Lord troubled them, at the sight of Israel, and he slew them with a great slaughter, in Gabaon, and pursued them by the way of the ascent to Bethoron, and cut them off all the way to Azeca and Maceda.] | and Drihten hig aflymde fram Israhela bearnum. Hi feollon þa swiðe on þam fleame ofslagene.* [and the Lord put them to flight from the sons of Israel. Many of them died then, slain in that pursuit.] |
*Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 185.
The insertion of the adverb sona in verse 6 supplies alliteration with sende and seo. Similarly, in the same verse Ælfric alters the direct object of the final clause so that instead of the inhabitants of Gabaon asking Joshua to save them, they implore him to save or rule the burh. This small but significant translation choice in turn provides further alliteration through the repetition of burh and buruhwaras and the added verb biddende while also emphasising the defence of the fortified city, a theme to which English audiences around the turn of the millennium could readily relate. The omission of the specific geographic details of the battle further increases this episode’s relevance to the lived experience of the military leaders among Ælfric’s readers, for whom Joshua’s heroic exploits could serve as an inspirational model. As we shall see, Ælfric would make explicit the link between Old Testament leaders of the Israelites and English rulers who protected their people against the Danes in the conclusion to his paraphrase of Judges.
The most substantial omissions occur towards the end of the narrative. Notably, the long account of the division of the Promised Land by lot in Chapters 13–20 is cut in its entirety, save for Jos. 14.2, which is moved into Chapter 21. Similarly, in Chapter 23 several verses detailing the division by lots and inheritance of land (3–5) and the divine punishments that will befall the Israelites if they worship false gods (8–16) are omitted, while verses relating Joshua’s old age and imminent death (1–2) and his instructions to the Israelites to take courage and observe the laws of Moses (6–7) are retained. These translation choices allow Ælfric once more to foreground the figure of Joshua as a model war leader for his readers to admire and perhaps emulate.
As is the case in some of the preceding books of the Heptateuch, the final section of Joshua (Chs 23–4) is given special treatment, as it is here that the central theme of obedience is made most clear. Whereas Chs 12–22 are cut in their entirety, in the penultimate chapter (23) Ælfric strips the narrative to its essential elements, bringing its doctrinal message of obedience to the fore. Alliteration (marked in bold) is again used in this passage for rhetorical force:
23.1 Ða æfter langum fyrste siððan hig on friþe wunodon and Iosue ealdode, 2 þa het he cuman him to Israhela bearn and þa yldostan heafodmenn 6 and manode hig georne þæt hig Moyses æ on eallum þingum heoldon, swa swa se ælmihtiga God him on Sinai dune gesette and dihte. 7 He bæd hig þa georne þat hig bugan ne sceoldon fram Godes bigengum to þam bysmorfullum hæþengilde, on þæs folces wisan þe þær wearð ofslagen.
[23.1 When they had dwelt in peace for a long time since and Joseph had grown old, 2 then he commanded the children of Israel to come to him and the oldest chief men, 6 and instructed them eagerly that they should keep Moses’ law in all things, just as the Almighty God had set it down for him on Mount Sinai and commanded. 7 He eagerly instructed that they should not turn from God’s practices to shameful heathen idolatry, in the manner of those people that were slain.]
Ælfric has translated the first two verses of Jos. 23 fairly closely, only leaving out repetitious references to the nations being subdued and Joshua’s advanced years, as well as a list of all the various elders of the Israelites whom he called to hear his speech. However, he then cuts all of verses 3–5, which comprise the opening section of Joshua’s speech reminding the Israelites of all that God has done for them. In place of these details, Ælfric jumps ahead to verse 6, which contains the core injunction in which Joshua warns the Israelites to obey Moyses æ (‘Moses’ law’). In translating this verse, he omits the injunction et non declinetis ab eis nec ad dextram nec ad sinistram (‘and turn not aside from them neither to the right hand nor to the left’), instead providing his readers with a simple, unequivocal command to obey the law of God. Verse 7, in which Joshua forbids the Israelites from turning to idolatry, is translated in full, though again Ælfric adds a final explanatory clause, on þæs folces wisan þe þær wearð ofslagen (‘in the manner of those that were slain’), linking this injunction with Ex. 32.25–9 in which 3000 Israelites are slain by the Levites for worshipping the golden calf. The remaining parts of Jos. 23, verses 8–16, containing Joshua’s instructions that the Israelites should cleave to the Lord, a list of the various punishments which God will mete out to enemies of Israel and warnings against entering into marriage or friendship with them, are deemed extraneous and therefore cut. Also omitted is the opening segment of the final chapter (Jos. 24.1–15), in which Joshua gathers the elders and makes another speech before them, reiterating many of the instructions he had issued in the previous chapter, as well as listing his achievements and reminding them how he had led them out of Egypt, defeated their enemies and delivered them into Canaan, before once more warning them against worshipping false gods.
By omitting the final part of Ch. 23 and the opening of Ch. 24, Ælfric deftly merges Joshua’s two final speeches, presenting the Israelites’ reply in 24.16 as if it were their response to his first speech. In verse 16, he again inserts the adverb anmodlice, creating alliteration with ælmihtigan as well as underscoring the Israelites’ covenant with God:
24.16 Responditque populus et ait, ‘Absit a nobis ut relinquamus Dominum et serviamus diis alienis.’ [And the people answered, and said, ‘God forbid we should leave the Lord, and serve strange gods.’] | Hig þa anmodlice cwædon þæt hig þam ælmihtigan Gode æfre woldon þeowian on eallum heora life […]. [They then in one mind said that they would always serve the Almighty for all of their lives […].] |
In his rendering of verse 31, Ælfric further endeavours to bring across the spiritual meaning of Joshua to his readers by rendering the Vulgate’s statement that God had done works (opera) for Israel (in Israhel) as a more universal reflection that God had performed miracles or wonders (wundra) for them (on him):
24.31 Servivitque Israhel Domino cunctis diebus Iosue et seniorum qui longo vixerunt tempore post Iosue et qui noverant omnia opera Domini quae fecerat in Israhel. [And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and of the ancients that lived a long time after Joshua, and that had known all the works of the Lord which he had done in Israel.] | Hig didon eac swa on Iosues dagum and on þæra ealdra dagum þe æfter him leofodon, þe þa wundra cuðon þe God worhte on him. [They also did so in Joshua’s days and in the days of their elders who lived after him, who knew those wonders that God had performed for them.] |
Cumulatively, multiple small changes of this nature serve to universalise the underlying moral themes of the biblical narrative, encouraging readers to see beyond the literal sense and to understand that God has always performed wonders for those who abide by his teachings. In his
Treatise,
Ælfric would further clarify the spiritual meaning of his translation of Joshua, explaining that ‘in it one may see God’s great wonders performed with deeds’ (
on þam man mæg sceawian Godes micclan wundra mid weorcum gefremode)
as well as offering a typological interpretation:
Iosue hæfde ðæs Hælendes getacnunge, mid þam þe he gelædde to þam lande þat folce þe him behaten wæs120 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 209. (‘Joshua had the betokening of the Saviour, when he led that people to that land that was promised to them’). Although this spiritual significance of the Book of Joshua is never made explicit in the Heptateuch version, the reader is nonetheless guided towards it through the many major and minor alterations that Ælfric makes throughout his translation. However, Ælfric’s dissatisfaction with this selective method of scriptural translation – occupying a position somewhere between word-for-word and sense-for-sense, with much material omitted but little by way of interpretation added – is suggested by his radically different approach to Judges.
Judges
The Book of Judges recounts how, following the death of Joshua, the Israelites repeatedly fell back into disobedience and idol worship. God justly punishes this disobedience by delivering the Israelites into the hands of their enemies, before showing his favour by appointing a series of judges to rule over them. Each judge leads the Israelites to victory before the pattern of backsliding begins again. As with all the books of the Heptateuch, many of the key themes of Judges would have had special resonance for the English nobility of Ælfric’s day, who were themselves engaged in a ‘holy war’ against the Danes.
Unlike the other books in the Heptateuch, however, Ælfric’s
Judges is not a translation but a homiletic paraphrase closer to his treatments of Judith and Esther contained in his homilies and the abbreviated summaries of Kings and Maccabees
in the
Lives of Saints.
121 For a study of Ælfric’s Judges as both homily and biblical translation, see Paul S. Langeslag, ‘Reverse-Engineering the Old English Book of Judges’, Neophilologus 100 (2016), 303–14. On this group of biblical paraphrases, see Rachel Anderson, ‘The Old Testament Homily: Ælfric as Biblical Translator’, in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J. Kleist, SEM 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 121–42. Anderson, ‘The Old Testament Homily’, 136, emphasises the separateness of Judges from the biblical translations of Genesis-Joshua that precede it in MS L. Whereas all the other biblical translations in MS L including Ælfric’s
Joshua are written continuously as if they were one text, the copy of Ælfric’s
Judges begins on a new folio with the preceding page left blank. Both
Judges and the
Treatise which follows it in MS L appear to be derived from a different exemplar than the translations of Genesis-Joshua, leading Marsden to conclude that neither was part of the original project.
122 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. clx–clxi. Clemoes places Ælfric’s Joshua in the period 992–1002, together with Genesis and its preface and the Lives of Saints (containing Kings and Maccabees), and dates Numbers and Judges 1002–5 (‘Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, pp. 55–6). Kleist dates Joshua, Kings and Maccabees c. 993–998 and Esther, Judith, Numbers and Judges c. 998–1002 (Chronology, pp. 131–4, 136–7). On the dates of the various parts of the Heptateuch, see above, pp. 148–9. Another copy of Ælfric’s Judges is preserved on fols 108r–116r Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 115, a late eleventh-century collection of Ælfrician homiletic and instructional materials, where it follows his sermon De populo Israhel, a condensed version of Exodus and Numbers. For discussion of De populo Israhel, see Scheil, Footsteps of Israel, pp. 295–312. Indeed, as we shall see, while the rest of the Heptateuch was composed for lay readers and poorly educated secular clergy, the paraphrase of Judges, composed entirely in Ælfric’s late, rhythmical style, was probably written with a monastic audience in mind.
In place of the opening three chapters of the biblical source, which relate the wars and conquests of Judah, the death of Joshua, the Israelites’ return to idol worship and the first appointments of judges, Ælfric provides his own succinct introduction summarising these events and linking them to other parts of the Bible, as well as signalling the text’s spiritual meaning. In style and approach, this opening section is thus more characteristic of a homiletic paraphrase than a translation in the conventional sense. In addition to regular alliteration (in bold), Ælfric makes use of extensive repetition and parallel phrasing (underlined), producing a polished piece of literary prose:
Æfter ðam ðe
Moyses se
mære heretoga
þæt Godes folc gelædde of
Pharones þeowette ofer ða Readan
Sæ and God him æ ge
sette, and
æfter þam þe Iosue be Godes sylfes gewissunge
þæt mankyn gebrohte mid swiðe
micclum sige to þam behatenan earde and hi þæron
wunedon, þa
wurdon hig
ealles to
oft
on yfel awende and mid yfelum weorce þone ælmihtigan God þearle gegremedon. And
God hi eac sona
hæðenum leodum let to anwealde, swa þæt þa
hæðenan hæfdon heora geweald swa oft swa hig
abulgon þam ælmihtigan Gode, oð þæt hig eft oncneowon heora
yfelan dædan and ge
bugon to Gode,
biddende his miltse. Ða
funde he him
sona
sumne
fultum æfre and he hig a
hredde of þam reðan þeowte þæra
hæðenra leoda þe heora hæfdon geweald. Hig næfdon nanne cyning him gecoren ne þa git, for ðam þe God sylf was heora wissiend þa and gesette him
deman þe
demdon þam
folce to swiþe langum
fyrste, oð þæt hi
sylfe gecuron
Saul him to cyninge, swa swa us
secgað bec, be Godes geþafunge on
Samueles timan.
123 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 190, ll. 1–17. Marsden provides line numbers for Ælfric’s Judges due to its homiletic style. [After Moses the famous war leader, who (had) led that people of God out of Pharaoh’s servitude across the Red Sea and God (had) established the law for them, and after Joshua, who through God’s own instruction (had) brought that people with very many victories to that promised land and they (had) remained there, then it happened that they all turned to evil too often and with evil deeds they greatly angered the Almighty God. And God also quickly delivered them into the power of heathen peoples, so that those heathens had power over them for as long as they angered that Almighty God, until afterwards they knew their evil deeds and turned to God, praying for his mercy. Then he quickly found some help for them always and he delivered them from the terrible servitude of those heathen peoples who had rule over them. They had not chosen any king for themselves yet, because God himself was their ruler then and established judges for them who judged that people for a very long time, until they chose for themselves Saul as a king, just as books tell us, by God’s permission in the time of Samuel.]
While the opening sentence echoes the linking passage that Ælfric provides in his stint of Numbers, this prologue nevertheless marks a major departure from the rest of Heptateuch both in style and content.
124 See above, p. 190.The homiletic method becomes more evident as the paraphrase proper begins, in which Ælfric uses terms of address suggestive of oral performance to introduce sections of biblical paraphrase, such as
We willað nu secgan swutelicor be þisum (‘We now wish to speak more clearly about this’) (Jud. 3.5), and
Ðeos racu us secgð, þe we nu ær rædon (‘This narrative says to us, which we have now read before’) (Jud. 6.1–4). Another striking departure from the generally conservative translation style on display throughout the rest of the Heptateuch is the inclusion of regular homiletic inserts which relate the Old Testament narrative to other parts of the Bible, in particular the Psalms, which are supplied in Latin and then translated and interpreted, as in the manner of the
Catholic Homilies.
125 For a notable exception to this rule in Ælfric’s treatment of Lot and Sodom, see above, pp. 170–7. Hence, in between the paraphrase of Jud. 5.32 and 6.1–4, Ælfric uses the account of God’s delivery of the Israelites from their enemies in Chs 4 and 5 as an opportunity to introduce the words of the Psalmist, combining two psalm verses (Ps. 82.3 and 82.10):
We
secgað nu eac þæt we
singað be þisum on urum
sealm
sange, swa swa hit
sang Dauid þurh þone
Halgan
Gast,
God
heriende þus: ‘
Ecce inimici tui sonauerunt et qui oderunt te extollerunt capud. 82.10 Fac illis sicut Madian et Sisare sicut Iabin in torrente Cison’ (Ps. 82.3). Ðæt ys on urum gereorde, he cwæð to his Drihtene: ‘Efne nu Drihten þine fynd
hyldað and þa þe þe
hatiað a
hebbað
heora
heafda. Do him swa swa Madian and swa swa Sisaran and swa swa Iabin æt þam burnan Cyson.’ Hwæt sind Godes
fynd buton
þa fulan hæðenan and
þa leasan cristenan þe hyldað ongean God, and mid unrihtwisnisse
þa earman ofsittað and
Godes lima dreccað, Gode to forsewennysse, a
hebbende
heora
heafda on
healicre modignesse? Ac þe
sealm us
segð hu him
sceal getiman, swa swa ðam
eagran Sisaran and þam
arleasan Iabine, þæt hi beon a
dilegode fram
Drihtenes
halgum mannum, þa þe hi
huxlice
her on life ge
drehton.
126 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 192–93, ll. 91–104.[We say now just as we sing about this in our psalmody, just as David sang it through the Holy Spirit, praising God thus: ‘Ecce inimici tui sonauerunt et qui oderunt te extollerunt capud. 82.10 Fac illis sicut Madian et Sisare sicut Iabin in torrente Cison’ (Ps. 82.3). That is in our language, he said to his Lord: ‘Ps. 82.3 Behold Lord, now your enemies hold against you and those that hate you raise up their heads. 82.10 Do to them as (you did) to Madian and to Sisara and to Jabin and at the brook of Cisson.’ What are God’s enemies except those foul heathens and those false Christians who hold against God, and with unrighteousness oppress the wretched and torture God’s limbs, in contempt of God, raising their heads in haughty pride? But this psalm says to us what will befall them, just as befell the evil Sisarans and the impious Jabins, so that they were destroyed through God’s holy people, when they disgracefully oppressed them here in life.]
While the Prose Psalms had prioritised the historical level of interpretation before moving to moral and Christological interpretations, Ælfric works in reverse, proceeding from the moral interpretation (We secgað) to the historical, which he then connects with the Holy Spirit. This progression from the moral level to the historical is then repeated as Ælfric explains the moral application of the Psalm verse to the lives of his audience before concluding with the biblical context of the punishment meted out to the Sisarans and Jabins. The equation of the oppressors of the Israelites in Judges with the enemies of David and þa fulan hæðenan (‘those foul heathens’) encourages contemporary English readers to view themselves as God’s chosen people, delivered from the hands of the Vikings – a theme to which he will return in the conclusion to the work. The psalm citation and ensuing exegesis also allow Ælfric to draw out a moral lesson from the narrative of Judges, warning the audience of the terrible punishments that will befall them should they become leasan cristenan (‘false Christians’) and succumb to pride.
Another psalmic interlude is added to the paraphrase of Judges 7–8, which describes the victory of Israel over Madian under the leadership of Gideon in heavily abridged form. This passage reports the deaths in battle of twegen ealdormen (‘two ealdormen’) (Jud. 7.25), described only as duos viros (‘two men’) in the Vulgate source, and of Madian, Oreb and Zeb, as well as the defeat of twegen ciningas (‘two kings’), Zebee and Salmana. The mention of these leaders of the enemies of Israel in the Vulgate source again prompts Ælfric to cite Ps. 82, which in turn leads him into a homiletic exegesis on the moral and spiritual implications of the Judges narrative more generally:
Be þisum we singað eac on þam foresædan sealme ongean Godes wiðerwinna þe willað æfre þwyres, swa swa se Halga Gast us sæde þurch Dauid: ‘
Pone principes eorum sicut Oreb, Zeb et Zebee et Psalmana’ (Ps. 82.12). Ðæt ys on Engliscre spræce, ‘Sete ðu ure Drihten heora ealdormen swa swa Horeb and Zeb and swa swa Zebee and Salmana.’ Ðæt is on angite þæt þa yfelan heafodmen, Godes wiðerwinnan, wurdon þa gescinde and swa swa þas ealdormen wurdon þa gescinde.
127 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 194–95, ll. 150–7.[About this we sing in that aforesaid Psalm against God’s adversaries who always wish after evil, just as the Holy Spirit said to us through David: ‘Pone principes eorum sicut Oreb, Zeb et Zebee et Psalmana’ (Ps. 82.12). That is in English speech, ‘Make their ealdormen, our Lord, like Horeb and Zeb and Zebee and Salmana.’ That is in the sense that the evil chief men, God’s adversaries, became ashamed just as those ealdormen became ashamed.]
In homiletic interludes such as these, Ælfric
adds his own spiritual exegesis to the scriptural narrative in a manner which clearly distinguishes this work from the rest of the Heptateuch. Indeed, whereas the other books appear to have been made for private reading by members of the laity or poorly educated secular clergy, as Stewart Brookes notes, the references to the singing of psalms in
Judges suggest it was composed for reading aloud in a monastic refectory.
128 Stewart Brookes, ‘Reading Between the Lines: The Liturgy and Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and Homilies’, Leeds Studies in English 42 (2011), 17–28, at 19–20.Ælfric’s sensitivity to the concerns of a monastic audience lies behind the numerous alterations he makes to the final section of his paraphrase of Judges, an extended summary of the story of Samson and Delilah (Jud. 16). Elements which are deemed otiose or inappropriate for such an audience, such as Samson’s intercourse with a prostitute in Gaza (16.1) are silently glossed over, while Ælfric’s repeated blaming of Delilah for tempting Samson recasts the biblical narrative to make it more relevant to monks and nuns engaged in constant struggle against sin.
129 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 196–97, ll. 217–18, 224–5. The Douay-Rheims retains the Latin spelling Dalila, which I have modified here to the more common English spelling Delilah. The paraphrase of the story of Samson ends with an extended exegesis of its spiritual meaning which has no precedent in the biblical source: here Ælfric explains that Samson
hæfde getacnunge ures Hælendes Crist þe on his agenum deaðe þone deofol gewylde and his mihte oferswiðde and hine mankynnes benæmde130 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 198, ll. 253–5. (‘had the signification of our Saviour Christ who through his own death had power over the devil and conquered his might and took away mankind from him’), while his carrying of the doors from the gates of Gaza (Judg. 16.3)
to bysmore his feondum (‘to humiliate his enemies’) betokens how the Jews who killed
urne Drihten (‘our Lord’) quickly placed him in a sepulchre with a guard:
ac he tobreac hellegatu mid his hefonlican mihte and of þam deofle genam þone dæl þe he wolde Adames ofspringes. And he eaðelice aras of ðam deaðe gesund on þam þriddan dæge and astah to heofenum and to his halgan fæder, gewunnenum sige, to wuldre him sylfum and his halgum þegnum, þam ðe he alysde. Nelle we secgan na swiðor be þisum buton þæt se Israhel þe we embe spræcon mislice ferde oð þæt hi fengon to ciningum, swa swa on Cininga Bocum ys full cuð be ðam.
131 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 198, ll. 257–66.[but he broke the gates of hell with his heavenly might and seized from the devil that portion that he wanted of Adam’s offspring. And he easily arose alive from that death on the third day and ascended to heaven to his Holy Father, dwelling in victory, to the glory of himself and his holy servants, those that he saved. We do not wish to say any more about this except that the Israel about which we spoke fared diversely until they came to kingship, just as the Books of Kings makes clear concerning that.]
This reference to the Books of Kings leads Ælfric into a lengthy discourse on the history of Christian kingship with no known source: the Romans first ‘had for themselves
consuls whom we call c
ounsellors’ (
hæfdon him ‘consulas’ þæt we cweðað ‘rædboran’) and then ‘
cesares over them that we call
emperors’
(
‘cesares’ ofer hig þæt we cweðað ‘caseras’) up until the time of Constantine, ‘the first Caesar that turned to Christ, and books tell us that he was victorious through the Saviour Christ that he had chosen’ (
se forma casere ðe to Criste beah, and us secgað bec þæt he sigefæst was þurh þone Hælend Crist þe he gecoren hæfde).
132 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, pp. 198–99, ll. 267–86. Ælfric then charts the triumphs of Constantine’s
æftergengan (‘successors’), who were equally victorious on account of their faith, and the subsequent flourishing of Christendom and decline of devil-worship. In particular, the Byzantine emperors Theodosius I (
r. 379–395) and II (
r. 402–450), are presented as model Christian rulers. To illustrate this point, Ælfric recounts an episode in which angels led Theodosius II’s troops across a marsh to storm the Western Emperor John’s fortress at Ravenna and rescued a captured
ealdorman, comparing this event to Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea.
133 The ultimate source for this passage is Socrates Scholasticus’ Church History (c. 440), a work which was known to Ælfric via Cassiodorus’ Latin translation in his Tripartite Ecclesiastical History (c. 550), together with the histories of Sozomen and Theodoret. For citations of this work in various Ælfrician homilies, see Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 264. On imperial themes in Socrates’ work, see Luke Gardiner, ‘The Imperial Subject: Theodosius II and Panegyric in Socrates’ Church History’, in Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, ed. Christopher Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 244–68. For discussion of Cassiodorus’ version, see Désirée Scholten, ‘Cassiodorus’ Historia tripartita before the Earliest Extant Manuscripts’, in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 34–50. Through God’s intervention, Theodosius II defeated the king of the Persians, drowning a great army of Saracens in the River Euphrates and slaughtering his ‘immortals’ until he ‘turned to the will of the caesar’ (
beah to þæs caseres willa).
134 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 199, l. 317. The clear resonance between Theodosius II’s wars with the Huns and the ongoing wars between the English and the Vikings is underlined in Ælfric’s comment that since that time ‘those heathen adversaries’ (
þa wiðerrædan hæðenan) have occasionally attempted to go ‘raiding’ (
on heregoð) within the Roman emperor’s dominion (
anwealde). Ælfric’s account of the victories of these Byzantine emperors demonstrates that God has always favoured leaders who have faith in him.
In order to bring this message home, Ælfric’s Judges – and the text of the Old English Heptateuch itself – concludes with an encomium on the glories of the three greatest Christian kings of the English, Alfred, Æthelstan and Edgar. Each of these rulers is praised for protecting their people against foreign attackers, just as the biblical judges and Byzantine emperors had done before them. As a key instigator of the Benedictine Reform, Edgar is singled out for special attention on account of his promotion of the religious life (alliteration is marked in bold):
On Englalande eac oft wæron cyningas sigefæste þurh God, swa swa we secgan gehyrdon. Swa swa wæs Ælfred cining þe oft gefeaht wið Denan, oþ þæt he sige gewann and bewerode his leode. Swa gelice Æðestan þe wið Anlaf gefeaht and his firde ofsloh and aflimde hine sylfne and he on sibbe wunude siþþan mid his leode. Eadgar se æðela and se anræda cining arærde Godes lof on his leode gehwær, ealra cininga swioðost ofer Engla ðeode, and him God gewilde his wiðerwinnan a, ciningas and eorlas, þæt hi comon him to buton ælcum gefeohte, friðes wilniende, him underþeodde to þam þe he wolde. And he was gewurðod wide geond land.
We endiað nu þisne cwide, þus þancience ðam Almihtigan ealra his godnissa, se ðe æfre rixað on ecnisse. AMEN.
135 Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. 200, ll. 327–38.[There were also kings in England often victorious through God, just as we have heard said. So was King Alfred who often fought against the Danes until he achieved victory and protected his people. So also was Æthelstan who fought against Anlaf and slew his army and put him to flight and he dwelt in peace afterwards with his people. The noble and single-minded King Edgar raised up God’s praise everywhere among his people, the greatest of all the kings of the English, and God gave him power over his adversaries always, kings and nobles, so that they came to him without battle, suing for peace, submitting themselves to him as he wished; and he was honoured far and wide throughout the land.
We end now this speech, thus thanking the Almighty for all of his goodnesses, he who rules forever in eternity. AMEN.]
Ælfric’s positioning of these three West Saxon kings as heirs to Constantine implies a
translatio imperii of Christian emperorship from Rome to Wessex, in keeping with the styling of English rulers as emperors of Britain in charters and coins of this period.
136 On imperial themes in West Saxon literature and political thought in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the import of the Old English translation of the Orosian world history, see Francis Leneghan, ‘Translatio Imperii: The Old English Orosius and the Rise of Wessex’, Anglia 133 (2015), 656–705; Francis Leneghan, ‘End of Empire? Reading The Death of Edward in MS Cotton Tiberius B I’, in Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature, ed. Mark Atherton, Kazutomo Karasawa and Francis Leneghan, SOEL 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 403–34; and Omar Khalaf, ‘Ælfred se casere: Kingship and Imperial Legitimation in the Old English Orosius’, in Age of Alfred, ed. Faulkner and Leneghan, pp. 457–75. For the expression of West Saxon imperialism in maps as well as literature, see Helen Appleton, ‘The Northern World of the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi’, ASE 47 (2018), 275–305; and Helen Appleton, ‘Mapping Empire: Two World Maps in Early Medieval England’, in Ideas of the World, ed. Atherton, Karasawa and Leneghan, pp. 309–34. Moreover, Ælfric’s identification of the Constantinian dynasty with Samson and the other judges connects these English kings with the biblical leaders chosen by God to defend Israel prior to the establishment of the monarchy. Whereas the preceding sections of the Heptateuch emphasise the duties of earthly leaders, the conclusion to Ælfric’s
Judges thereby encourages its primarily monastic audience to view themselves as members of a chosen people protected by
cyningas sigefæste þurh God (‘kings victorious through God’).
137 On Ælfric’s conception of the Three Orders of Society, see above pp. 188–9 and below, pp. 221–4.The incorporation of elements of this passage from Ælfric’s
Judges into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle annal on the death of Eadwig and accession of Edgar (MSS D and E 959) demonstrates the alertness of at least one contemporary reader to the political implications of Ælfric’s homily on Judges.
138 For the argument that Wulfstan was the author of this passage as well as the poetic annals for 975 (Death of Edgar) and 979 (on the death of Edward the Martyr), see Daniel Anlezark, ‘Wulfstan and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Wulfstan of York, ed. Andrew Rabin and Catherine Cubitt (forthcoming). The chronicle passage is sometimes printed as verse due to its rhythmical features; verbal parallels with Judges are in italics:
139 For discussion of the textual links, see Marsden, ed., Heptateuch, I, p. clxii.On his dagum hit godode georne, and God him geuðe
þet he wunode on sibbe þa hwile þe he leofode,
and he dyde swa him þearf wes, earnode þes georne.
He arerde Godes lof wide and Godes lage lufode
and folces frið bette swiðost þara cyninga
þe ær him gewurde be manna gemynde.
And God him eac fylste þet cyningas and eorlas
georne him to bugon and wurden underþeodde
to þam þe wolde, and butan gefeohte
eal he gewilde þet he sylf wolde.
He wearð wide geond þeodland swiðe geweorðad,
forþam þe he weorðode Godes naman georne
and Godes lage smeade oft and gelome
and Godes lof rædde oftost a simle
for Gode and for worulde eall his þeode.
140 Susan Irvine, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 7, MS E (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), p. 56.[In his (i.e. Edgar’s) days things prospered readily, in that he dwelled in peace for as long as he lived. And he readily merited this, doing as was his duty. Far and wide he exalted God’s praise and loved God’s law and improved the people’s security much more than those kings who were before him within the memory of men. And God helped him too, so that kings and earls readily submitted to him and were subjected to that which he wanted. And without battle he controlled all that he himself wanted. He became greatly honoured widely throughout the land of the nation, for he readily honoured God’s name, and deliberated God’s law over and over again, and promoted God’s praise far and wide, and counselled all his nation wisely, very often, always continuously, for God and for the world.]
Complementing the two more widely recognised chronicle poems composed in honour of Edgar,
The Coronation of Edgar (ASC 973 MSS ABC) and
The Death of Edgar (ASC 975 MSS ABC),
141 On these two Edgar poems, see Mercedes Salvador-Bello, ‘The Edgar Panegyrics in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations, ed. Donald Scragg. Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 8 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), pp. 252–72; Scott Thompson Smith, ‘The Edgar Poems and the Poetics of Failure in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, ASE 39 (2011), 105–37. On the annal for 959, see Thomas A. Bredehoft, Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), pp. 85–7. this passage follows Ælfric in casting the English king as a God-fearing ruler who promoted the church’s mission and protected his nation (
þeod), and who merited God’s favour by obeying his law (
Godes lage). In its incorporation of elements of Ælfric’s
Judges, this Chronicle passage thus provides strong evidence for how Old English biblical prose contributed to the development of ideas of nation and kingship in early medieval England.
Despite its separate origins and distinct audience, when read in the context of MS L, the concluding section of Ælfric’s
Judges makes plain the relevance of these Old Testament stories to the lives of a wide range of contemporary English readers, including the lay nobility and gentry and those in monastic orders whom they had a duty to protect.
142 Noting that the central lesson of Ælfric’s Judges is that God’s favour towards rulers depends on their service, Langeslag concludes: ‘This lesson applied to all audiences, but it was especially pertinent to men of worldly power, such as ealdorman Æthelweard’ (‘Old English Book of Judges’, 313).