Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical...

8/2/2019 Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical Literature

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/raising-cain-in-genesis-and-beowulf-challenges-to-generic-boundaries-in-anglo-saxon 1/15

Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf:Challenges to Generic Boundaries in

Anglo-Saxon Biblical Literature© 2010 by Heide Estes.

All rights reserved.

This edition copyright © 2010 by The Heroic Age.

All rights reserved.

Heide Estes

Monmouth University

Abstract: Beowulf and other secular heroic poems in Old English are

considered by most contemporary scholars to belong to a different genre

than the poems based on Old Testament narratives. For the Anglo-Saxons,

however, such a division of secular and biblical is artificial. As the eighth

century turned to the ninth, Alcuin protested famously against the recita-

tion of heroic literature, asking “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?” [“What

does Ingeld have to do with Christ?”] But it appears that the two scribes

of the Nowell Codex, working two centuries later, shared no such com-

punction about a division between secular and sacred literatures. Poems

such as Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon incorporate Biblical allusions,

while saints’ lives and poetic renditions of Old Testament narratives bor-

row syntactic and discursive units from poems in the secular and heroic

traditions. In the adaptation from Biblical Genesis to Anglo-Saxon poem,

Abraham is re-imagined as a formidable warrior in the mold of Beowulf

and Byrhtnoth. Rather than reading them as works opposed in purpose

and audience, religious and secular, serious and popular, we must see the

Old English Genesis and Beowulf as parts of the same inheritance in which

Germanic and Biblical legacies are fused into a single cultural matrix.

http://www.heroicage.org/issues/13/estes.php

http://www.heroicage.org/issues/13/estes.php



R AISING C AIN IN GENESIS AND BEOWULF Heide Estes

Beowulf and other secular heroic poems in Old English are considered by most con-

temporary scholars to belong to a different genre than the poems based on Old Tes-

tament narratives. The standard surveys of Anglo-Saxon literature divide religious

and secular literature into separate chapters. In their New Critical History of Old

English Literature (1986[12]), Greenfield and Calder locate Beowulf in a chapter on“Secular Heroic Poetry,” and discuss Biblical literature in chapters on “Christ as Po-

etic Hero” and “Old Testament Narrative Poetry.” Godden and Lapidge, editors of

the Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (1991[11]), give Beowulf its own

chapter, presenting it as distinct from any other literary text of the Old English pe-

riod, and devote two chapters to Biblical literature derived from the Old and New

Testaments, respectively. In their Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (2001[25]),

Pulsiano and Treharne group Old English literature into the broad categories of Sec-

ular Prose, Secular Poetry, Religious Prose, and Religious Poetry. Most recently, Fulk

and Cain (2003[10]) devote chapters to Biblical literature and to “Germanic Legend

and Heroic Lay,” among others, in their History of Old English Literature.

For the Anglo-Saxons, however, such a division of secular and biblical is artificial.

Poems such as Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon incorporate Biblical allusions. By

incorporating Old Testament material, the Beowulf -poet aligns his hero with Old

Testament patriarchs, who are venerable despite the fact that their world has been

superseded. On the other hand, saints’ lives and poetic renditions of Old Testament

narratives borrow syntactic and discursive units from poems in the secular and heroic

traditions. In a survey of scholarship on the “Christian epic,” Ivan Herbison quotes

Sharon Turner, W. P. Ker, and Andreas Heusler, who argue that the borrowing goes the

other direction: Beowulf’s composition, they argue, was made possible by the earlierdevelopment of a tradition of Old English Christian epic poetry in turn influenced

by Latin literature (Herbison 1996[14], 342–361). The poet of Genesis transforms

the figure of Abraham into a warrior chieftain worthy of celebration in heroic verse,

in a world with potential topical relevance to Anglo-Saxons often involved in battles

against Scandinavian pagans. Abraham and Beowulf both become ancestral war-

riors fighting for dominance, or at least stability, among a collection of neighboring

tribes. Each is characterized in contrast to Cain or to a Cain-figure; each belongs to a

world that is worthy, though located most definitively in the past. Secular and bibli-

cal poems alike are, on the other hand, also populated with figures of alterity against

whom the Anglo-Saxons define themselves, including the monstrous Grendel, as wellas Cain, who appears not only in the Old English Genesis but also in Beowulf . Old

Testament poems such as Genesis and Exodus are presented as foundational narra-

tives analogous to Beowulf and other Old English heroic poems. Abraham, Beowulf,

Caedmon — Hebrew, pagan, unlettered shepherd — are all depicted as in ancestral

figures, heroic in one way or another, with whom their “biographers” in prose and

verse align themselves as successors and heirs. The melding of Anglo-Saxon heroic

2



R AISING C AIN IN GENESIS AND BEOWULF

conventions with Biblical narratives in poetry adapted from Biblical texts, as well as

allusions to Christianity in “secular” poems, facilitates this identification.

To begin, then, with the monstrous. Beowulf survives, as is well known, in a single

manuscript of the late tenth or early eleventh century. N. R. Ker dates the NowellCodex of Cotton Vitellius A. xv. at the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh

century (1957[18], 281). Friedrich Klaeber dates the manuscript “about the end of

the tenth century” (1950[19], xcvi). Kevin Kiernan, arguing for an eleventh-century

provenance for the poem itself, suggests that the manuscript “was probably copied

after 1016” (1996[20], 61). The original composition of the poem has been assigned

to dates ranging from the eighth century up to the time of writing of the manuscript

itself. Klaeber was convinced that the poem “cannot well have been composed after

the beginning of the Danish invasions toward the end of the 8 th century” (1950[19],

cvii). More recently, while some scholars still accept an early date, others locate

the poem’s composition in the late ninth or early tenth century, and Kiernan, asnoted above, argues for the eleventh century .1 Whatever its date of composition, the

poem displays a clear sense, as Roberta Frank has argued (1982[9], 53–65), that the

narrative being related takes place in a past that is different from the present. Since

the dating of the poem is so contentious, however, that “present” is also difficult

to pin down. Even the audience for the manuscript is difficult to ascertain. It has

been argued that Danes and Geatland are presented as foundational ancestors for

recent Danish migrants to England; it has also been suggested that Anglo-Saxons

long resident in England were recreating an ancestral past from the same materials.2

The matrix of characters with or against whom the narrator and the putative “original

audience” might identify is also complicated. On the one hand are the monstrousGrendels and the dragon; on the other, the sage Hrothgar and the heroic Beowulf

occupy different shores and, potentially, different tribal alliances. Moreover, both

societies are pagan: Hrothgar’s people sought help against Grendel through “hærg-

trafum” (“temple-sacrifice,” Beowulf , l. 175); Beowulf’s people honor his death by

burning him on a funeral pyre with a vast amount of treasure, clearly a description

of pagan, rather than Christian, rites.

Yet neither Hrothgar nor Beowulf is explicitly identified with pagan practice or belief.

Each of these exemplary men is depicted in ways that separate him somewhat from

his own social network, in regnal status but also in religious terms. Beowulf prays toan indeterminate, apparently singular “lord” who can be interpreted as having Chris-

tian valence. Hrothgar reads a narrative of flood and destruction in the inscription

of the ancient sword Beowulf brings from Grendel’s underwater cave, and then de-

livers a commentary that scholars of the poem often refer to as a “sermon.” Hrothgar

1 For further discussion, see Bjork[4] and Obermeier (1997) and Chase (1982[5]).2 See, for example, Howe (1989[15]) and Niles (1993[22]).

3




tells the tale of Heremod (“battle-minded”), who “breat bolgenmod beodgeneatas /

eaxlgesteallan” (“foul in mood, cut down table-companions and battle-companions,”

Beowulf , ll. 1713–1714), and he goes on to caution Beowulf about the transitory

nature of life on earth, to warn him against pride, and to advise that he choose

“ece rædas” (“eternal benefits,” l. 1760) over earthly ones. As scholars have oftennoted, Hrothgar’s speech to Beowulf sounds distinctly Christian themes, despite his

presumed identification with paganism.3

Scourge of Hrothgar’s Danes, defeated by the Geatish Beowulf, Grendel is alienated

from the community on whose margins he lives and relegated to listening from out-

side the hall to the scop’s tales of creation. A murderer and a cannibal, Grendel

is described as “forscrifen . . . in Caines cynne — þone cwealm gewræc / ece Dri-

hten, þæs þe he Abel slog” (“condemned . . . among the kin of Cain, whose killing

the true God avenged, because he slew Abel,” Beowulf , ll. 106, 107–8). As Grendel

moves toward Heorot while Beowulf awaits him among his sleeping cohorts, we arereminded that Grendel “Godes irre bær” (“bore God’s fury,” l. 709). The references

to Cain indicate a conceptual and cultural link between Beowulf and the Old English

Genesis.

Genesis dramatizes events drawn from approximately the first half of the Old Tes-

tament book using language and concepts familiar from Old English secular heroic

poetry .4 The poetic Genesis begins with adaptation of the Biblical accounts of Cre-

ation, into which is incorporated an account of the fall of angels; it continues with

the narratives of Cain and Abel, Noah, and the tower of Babel episode. The great-

est part of the poem is concerned with the life of Abraham, but the poem does not

follow the Biblical book of Genesis through to its end, concluding rather with Abra-

ham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac in Chapter 22. (The latter, unversified, half of the book

of Genesis describes the remainder of Abraham’s nomadic life, his death and burial,

and the deaths of his wives.) The Old English Genesis expands, deletes, and reshapes

material in accordance with the interests of the poet and/or scribes. Genealogies

and geographical details are, with interesting exceptions, streamlined or left out

altogether. Some narrative sections are left out; others are dramatized using Old

English poetic conventions or allegorized according to Christian interpretation of the

Old Testament.

The passage in which Cain kills Abel exemplifies poetic expansion of the biblical textusing conventions of Old English heroic verse. In his Latin version, Jerome narrates

3 For a survey of scholarship on pagan and Christian themes in Beowulf, see Irving (1997[ 16], 175–

192).4 In discussing the poetic Genesis, I refer to the entire text as it is now preserved in the Junius

manuscript. Distinctions between the portions scholars refer to as “Genesis A” and “Genesis B” are

not important for my discussion.

4




this part of the episode in a single sentence: “dixitque Cain ad Abel fratrem suum

egrediamur foras cumque essent in agro consurrexit Cain adversus Abel fratrem suum

et interfecit eum” (“Cain said to his brother Abel, ’let us go out,’ and when they were

in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him,” Gen. 4:8). The

Old English poem leaves out the details that Cain speaks to his brother, asking himto leave other human company, and that he kills Abel in the fields, away from their

community. However, the remainder of the episode is much expanded and makes

repeated references to Cain’s state of mind: “Þæt wæs torn were / hefig æt heortan.

Hygewælm asteah / beorne on breostum, blatende nið, / yrre for æfstum” (“That was

bitter to the man, heavy upon his heart. The man’s breast surged with anger, lowered

with hostility, fury over rivalry,” Genesis, ll. 979–982). Similarly, when Grendel kills

one of Beowulf’s war-companions, the description focuses upon Grendel’s state of

mind. Much as Cain’s heart swells with fury at his brother, as Grendel approaches

Heorot, “his mod ahlog” (“his heart exulted,” Beowulf , l. 730), and as he seizes his

victim, “ne þæt se aglæca yldan þohte” (“the monster did not intend to delay,” l.739).

The Old English Genesis adds to the narrative of Cain’s murder of Abel the further

interesting detail that “cwealmdreore swealh / þæs middangeard, monnes swate”

(“middle-earth swallowed the death-gore, the man’s blood,” Genesis, ll. 985–986).

As a cannibal, Grendel himself swallows his victims’ blood; after seizing his victims,

he “bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, / synsnædum swealh” (“bit the bone-joints,

drank blood from the veins, swallowed huge chunks,” Beowulf , ll. 740–743). Both

Beowulf and Genesis refer to blood, to hands, to the welling emotions of the killer.

According to the Biblical text, the earth “aperuit os suum” (“opened its mouth,” Gen.4:11). This suggests the opening of a chasm in the earth into which Abel’s blood

drains. The poetic Genesis, however, takes the suggestion a step further in stating

that the earth “swallowed” the blood of Abel; the parallel between that text and the

language in Beowulf is suggestive.

As we have seen, Grendel lives at the margins of society, yet slaughters his victims in

Hrothgar’s hall, in the center of the Danish community. In an interesting analogue,

the Old English Genesis re-orients the relationship between social center and social

margins in the depiction of Cain’s killing of Abel. According to the Biblical text, Cain

murders Abel in the fields; however, the elimination of this detail in the Old EnglishGenesis allows the suggestion that Cain, like Beowulf, kills within the community.

The implicationis strengthened in the following lines, in which God condemns Cain

to permanent wandering exile: “Þu scealt geomor hweorfan, / arleas of earde þinum,

swaþu Abele wurde / to feorhbanan; forþon þu flema scealt / widlas wrecan, wine-

mumlað” (“Miserably you shall depart, dishonorably, from your land,because you

have become Abel’s slayer; therefore, you shall be banished in flight to long wander-

5




ing, hated by your dear kinsmen,” ll. 1018–1021). The text of Beowulf comments on

Cain’s exile, noting that after he has committed murder, God “hine feor forwræc . . .

mancynne fram” (“drove him away, far . . . from mankind,” Beowulf , ll. 109, 110).

Moreover, among the “eotenas ond ylfe ond orc-neas” (“giants and elves and orcs,’

l. 112) descended from Cain is Grendel, a “mearc-stapa, se þe moras heold, / fen ondfæsten” (“border-walker, he who held the moors, the fens and marshes,” Beowulf , ll.

103–104). Grendel’s identification with Cain in the text is more complex than the

simple attribution of kinship; like Cain, Grendel is always a part of and simultane-

ously apart from Heorot’s human community, seen to haunt the margins, condemned

to listen to human song and laughter from outside the hall.

In Beowulf , the opposition between Grendel-kin and the hero is clear and explicit.

Commentators have tried to find Christian attributes to Beowulf’s character, but while

it seems clear that the poem in its present form is the product of a Christian envi-

ronment, there is fairly clear consensus that the character of Beowulf must be readas worthy in a pre-Christian sense. In Genesis, on the other hand, the opposition

between Cain and Abraham is largely implied. The structure of the poem highlights

the correlation between the two. The early chapters of the Biblical Genesis include a

profusion of genealogical and geographical materials that are excised from the more

streamlined treatment in the poem, allowing faster movement from Cain through

Noah to Abraham.

An episode from the poetic Genesis provides a further challenge to the usual generic

classifications of Old English poetry. In the adaptation from Biblical book to Anglo-

Saxon poem, Abraham is re-imagined as a formidable warrior in the mold of Beowulf and Byrhtnoth. Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family are, in the narrative, among

those taken captive by the attack of five kings demanding tribute from Sodom (Gene-

sis 14). A single man escapes in the night and flees to inform Abraham, who musters

an army and mounts a counter-attack under cover of darkness. The Biblical text is

thick with geographic references and the names of fighters on either side, largely

eliminated from the poem. However, the poem expands instead upon the battle

scenes, using language of rattling javelins and carnage-greedy fowl well-known from

secular heroic poetry. “Hlyn wearð on wicum / scylda and sceafta, sceotendra fyll,

guðflana gegrind” (“Din of shields and spear-shafts came to the field, fall of arrow-

shooters, crash of battle-arrows,” Genesis, ll. 2062–2064). Instead of a tribute intwisted gold, Abraham gives the enemy spear-points and sword-thrusts. Beowulf de-

feats Grendel in glorious single combat; Abraham’s genius as a warrior is in his ability

to muster and command an effective fighting force.

Further emphasizing the role of Abraham as a figure of Christian exegesis, the Old

English Genesis does not follow the Biblical Genesis to its end. Instead, the poem

6




concludes with Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, a crucial event in Christian inter-

pretation of the Old Testament, rather than following Abraham’s life through to its

close after the narration of the remaining years of his long nomadic life. Abel and

Isaac are both read as prefigurations of Christ, and so the concluding episode of the

Old English poetic Genesis will, for a Christian audience, bring immediate recall of Cain’s slaying of Abel. Once again, the Old English text embellishes the Latin: In

Jerome’s version, Abraham sees a ram caught by the horns in a thicket and “ob-

tulit holocaustum pro filio” (“offered him up as a burnt offering instead of his son,”

Genesis 22:13). The Old English poem is not much less laconic than the Latin text;

however, it adds reference to “rommes blode” (“the ram’s blood,” l. 2933) which

“brynegield onhread” (“reddened the burnt offering,” l. 2932). This reference to the

power of blood acquires additional prominence in this context because it occurs four

lines before the end of the poem. For an audience trained in Christian interpreta-

tion of the Old Testament, the reference to the blood of the ram that replaces Isaac,

the Jesus-figure, will be a significant and clearly audible echo of the blood of theproto-Christian Abel.

While Abraham is presented in heroic terms in the battle against the Five Kings of

Genesis, in the final scene of sacrifice he is given no heroic stature, but is presented

in humble as well as in spiritual terms. There are minor changes: the “sword” (“gla-

dius,” Gen 22:6) Abraham takes up in the Biblical Genesis becomes in the poem a

“grægan sweorde” (’grey sword,’ l. 2686) with which he girds himself, allowing for

alliteration with “gast” (“spirit”). This narrative is also taken up in the Old English

Exodus, but in that poem, Abraham is transformed within the context of this narrative

into a spear-brandishing hero in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

In Beowulf’s counterattack against Grendel, he “ræhte ongean / feond mid folme”

(“reached out toward the enemy with his hand,” Beowulf , ll. 747–748). In an inter-

esting echo of these lines, in Exodus, Abraham “þone cniht genam / fæste mid folu-

mum” (“seized the boy firmly with his hands,” Exodus, ll. 406–407). As the scene

continues, the poetic Exodus continues to draw on vocabulary familiar from secular

heroic poetry, as the “famous one” then draws his “ealde lafe (ecg grymetode)” (“old

remnant; the sword roared,” l. 408). The word “ecg” appears more than two dozen

times in Beowulf . The Old English Exodus repeats Abraham’s willingness to under-

take God’s command that he kill his son: “Abraham æðeling up aræmde, / wolde se

eorl slean eaferan sinne, / unweaxenne, ecgum reodan, / magan mid mece” (“Noble

Abraham rose up; the warrior would slay his young son, his kinsman, with a sword,

redden its edge,” Exodus, ll. 411–414. Reference to “reddening” a hall with blood

also occurs in Beowulf (l. 1151); like “ecg,” “mece” is a frequently occurring word

for “sword” in that poem.

Moreover, Abraham is linked quite specifically with Cain in the poetic Exodus: when

7




Abraham is building the fire on which he will sacrifice Isaac, the narrative is inter-

rupted with reference to Cain: “fyrst ferhðbana no þy fægra wæs” (“the first sword-

slayer was no more doomed to death,” Exodus, l. 399). The juxtaposition of Cain and

Abraham in Exodus suggests the possibility that the two Biblical figures are concep-

tually linked in the minds of Anglo-Saxon readers of the Bible. While the oppositionbetween Cain and Abraham is more suggestive than explicit in the poetic Genesis,

the unambiguous combination of the two figures in Exodus lends weight to an inter-

pretation that the thematic and linguistic links between the two are, in Genesis, not

accidental.

In addition to the Abraham material, the poetic Exodus includes a narration of Noah

— “snottor sæleoda” (“wise sailor,” l. 374) — and his survival of the Flood; in ad-

dition, of course, there is material from Chapter 14 of the Biblical Exodus, in which

Israelites cross the Red Sea. Scholars of the poem have often focused upon the cross-

ing of the Red Sea as the central element of the poem, an interpretation given weightby the inclusion in the poem of the Noah episode, another miraculous survival of

watery peril and another Old Testament narrative read by Christians as prefigura-

tive of the baptism of the Gospels. The episode in which the Israelites cross the Red

Sea is a crucial one in Christological interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures or “Old

Testament.”5 Like Noah, who alone of his people is virtuous enough to survive the

Flood, Moses is understood as a direct ancestor of post-Biblical Christians, while, as

Ælfric[1] notes, Paul comments in his first epistle to the Corinthians, “seo reade sæ

hæfde getacnunge ures fulluhtes” (“the Red Sea prefigures our baptism,” I Cor. 10:

1–2).6

In Exodus, Moses is described in martial terms similar to those employed of Abrahamin Genesis. He is introduced as “herges wisa, / freom folctoga” (“army’s leader, valiant

commander,” ll. 13–14). To him, God “gesealda wæpna geweald wið wraðra gryre,

/ ofercom mid þy campe cneomaga fela” (“gave the power of weapons against the

hostile terror; with them, he overcame in battle a great many kinsmen,” ll. 20–21).

At the shore of the Red Sea, as battle with the Egyptians appears imminent, Moses

commands his warriors to prepare for battle:

. . . Moyses bebead eorlas on uhttid ærnum bemum folc somnigean , frecan

arisan, habban heora hlencan, hycgan on ellen, beran beorht searo . . .

(ll. 215–219)

[Moses commanded warriors at dawn, with brass trumpets, the people to

gather, the warriors to arise and take hold of their linked armor, to think

on valour, to wear their bright armor.]

5 The term is Rosemary Radford Ruether’s; see her Faith and Fratricide (1974[26], passim).6 For Ælfric’s translation, see his homily “Dominica in Media Quadragesime,” (1979, 115).

8




In his final speech, Moses refers to God’s help in the Israelites’ defeat of the Egyp-

tians: “Micel is þeos menigeo, mægenwisa trum, / fullesta mæst, se ðas fare lædað”

(“great is this multitude, God [is] strong, greatest of helps, who leads this journey,”

ll. 554–555). The depiction of Moses as spiritual ancestor is overlaid with his char-

acterization as a venerable battle-chieftain; this reading is supported by the analo-gous presentation of Noah as seafarer and as “þrymfæst þeoden” (“glorious/mighty

leader,” l. 363) and of Abraham as fierce warrior as he approaches the scene of sac-

rifice. The depiction of Abraham and Moses as war leaders comparable to any found

in secular heroic poetry makes clear that the poem is not simply a religious reading

of several Old Testament events. Instead, it must be seen as a fusion of Christian

and Anglo-Saxon heroic traditions and values, drawing upon narratives from the Old

Testament. Like Genesis, then, Exodus can be read as a challenge to the ways in which

scholars think about Old English poetic genre.

The Old English Genesis and Exodus are followed in manuscript by additional Bib-lical poems, Daniel and Christ and Satan, a sequence that supports modern generic

classifications of “religious” versus “secular” literature. However, the sequence of

texts in the Beowulf manuscript has long baffled scholars working in terms of post-

Anglo-Saxon generic classifications. The manuscript contains five texts: in prose,

an acephalous Life of St. Christopher, The Wonders of the East, and an Old English

translation of the Latin Letter of Alexander to Aristotle; and in verse, Beowulf and Ju-

dith. Christopher and Judith are “religious,” and the other texts “secular.” Judith is a

war-like woman from an Old Testament narrative, re-envisioned as a Christian war-

rior, and Christopher has the head of a dog; Alexander lived in pre-Christian times;

Wonders describes faraway places and monstrous races clearly visualized as “other” yet including the Red Sea; and Beowulf is written in Old English yet memorializes

Scandinavians, against whom the Anglo-Saxons were at war when the manuscript

was written down. As a result of the diverging genres and contents, the combination

of texts in the Codex has caused consternation among modern scholars.

As the eighth century turned to the ninth, Alcuin protested famously against the

recitation of heroic literature, asking “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?” [“What does

Ingeld have to do with Christ?”] But it appears that the two scribes of the Nowell

Codex, working two centuries later, shared no such compunction about a division

between secular and sacred literatures: one copied all three prose texts and half of Beowulf , and the second finished Beowulf and wrote out Judith. Since Judith is miss-

ing not only its last few lines but also a longer portion from its beginning, it has been

theorized that it was at some point moved from the beginning of the manuscript —

or that it came from another source altogether.7 A generation ago, Kenneth Sisam

7 For a survey of scholarship on codicological and paleographical questions about Judith and the

Nowell Codex, see Judith, ed. Griffith (1997[13], 1–4); and Lucas (1990[21], 463–478).

9




(1953[27]) called the manuscript a book of monsters, arguing that it originally com-

prised Beowulf , Wonders, and the Letter, with Christopher and Judith added later.

More recently, Kevin Kiernan (1981[20]) argued that the manuscript was assem-

bled from three separately copied codices, one including Beowulf , another the three

prose texts, and a third, Judith and perhaps some other poems, while Andy Orchard(1995[23]) argued that the manuscript reflects a set of related interests including

monstrosity and excess. All of the texts in the manuscript are concerned with pagans

of the past, to the East of Anglo-Saxon England, as Hildegard Tristram has noted

(1989[28], 129–155). As Kathryn Powell has recently argued, moreover, all are con-

cerned with “rulers and foreigners” (2006[24], 3). The contents of the manuscript

as a whole traverse numerous boundaries, not least that between religious and secu-

lar texts. Moreover, much as Beowulf incorporates Christian allusions into a secular

narrative, Judith includes language of secular battle poems within an Old Testament

narrative re-imagined in Christian terms.

Like Exodus in its treatment of Moses, the Old English poetic version of Judith presents

Judith as a heroine with martial qualities who is also closely identified with God,

though in this case God is imagined in specifically Christian, rather than Hebrew,

terms. The Assyrian warriors deliver Judith to Holofernes’ tent, whereupon he falls

into bed too drunk to enact his intentions of raping her; instead, she sees her op-

portunity to move forward with her own plan. She is called “nergendes / þeowen”

(“the Savior’s maiden,” ll. 73–74) just before she draws his “scearpne mece / scurum

heardne” (“sharp sword, hard battle-storm,” ll. 78–79); then, she prays for strength:

Ic ðe, frymða god, ond frofre gæst, bearn alwaldan, biddan wylle, miltse

þinre me þearfendre, ðrynesse ðrym. (ll. 83–86)

[God of creation, spirit of comfort, son of God, I, needy, wish to ask you

for your mercy, glory of trinity.]

The prayer is clearly addressed to the Christian trinity rather than the singular “Domine

Deus Israhel” (13:7) of Jerome’s Latin version of the Book of Judith, locating Judith

as a proto-Christian heroine much as Abraham and Moses are envisioned as ancestral

figures for later Christians.

Following her prayer for help, Judith arranges Holofernes’ body for best access to

his neck in a scene that becomes horrifyingly funny. “Sloh þa wundenlocc / þone

feondscaðan fagum mece” (“Then the curly-haired one slew the enemy with shining

sword,” ll. 103–104). “Næs ða dead þa gyt” (“[He] was not yet dead then,” l. 107),

so she strikes again on the other side of the neck, “þæt him þæt heafod wand / forð

on ða flore” (“so that his head rolled forth across the floor,” ll. 110–111). Once

10




Holofernes has finally been dispatched, the text reminds its audience that Judith has

won “foremærne blæd . . . swa hyre god uðe” (“illustrious glory . . . as god granted

[it] to her,” ll. 122, 123).

Judith and her servant leave the Assyrian encampment to return to their own city of Bethulia, and are described as “ellenþrist” (“courageous,” l. 133), “collenferhð”

(“bold,” l. 134), and “eadhreðig” (“triumphant,” l. 135). They are then described as

“beahhroden” (l. 138) a term that, Helen Damico argues, should be translated here

as “shield-adorned” rather than with the usual meaning of “ring-adorned,” as they

share Valkyrie-like qualities of woman warriors (1990[6], 185). Patricia Belanoff has

argued that secular and religious traits are blended in the characterization of Judith

to a point that suggests ambivalence in her depiction: “Nominally Judith is a Chris-

tian heroine, but in truth she comes to us trailing clouds of glory associated with the

traditional heroes of Germanic history” (1993[3], 247–264). Judith’s presentation

as a woman warrior who, in the Biblical account, uses her sexual appeal in orderto encourage Holofernes’ appetite for drink, does lead to fissures in her poetic pre-

sentation as a heroine, as I have argued elsewhere (2003[8], 325–350). However,

the interplay of religious and secular imagery and narrative, rather than forming an

aspect of that ambiguity, follows the similar fusion of forms in several other Biblical

and secular poems alike.

In Genesis and Exodus, Biblical figures are seen as venerable forebears, and there is a

fusion of material from Hebraic, Christian, and Anglo-Saxon (pagan) traditions. And

at the same time that this synthesis of material aligns the Old Testament narratives

with the world-view of Anglo-Saxons in the audience for these poems, it also allowsfor an elevation of pagan Germanic heroes as forebears who can be venerated even

though their world is gone. Moses and Hrothgar are brought into a literary kinship

in which the idea of each enriches the character of the other. Not just a dead Dane,

Hrothgar becomes, like Moses, a necessary carrier of important traditions which can

be inherited in somewhat altered form by English Christians. This, in turn, allows

living Anglo-Saxon kings to claim kinship with other pagan forebears and even with

pagan gods, who are brought into a single line with Old Testament patriarchs — not

just metaphorically, but quite literally.

Early entries of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle frequently trace the ancestry of kings to

the god Woden.8 We owe many of the surviving manuscripts of the Chronicle to

King Alfred, who ordered several copies made and disseminated, and subsequently

maintained and continued at regional centers of learning around England; his own

genealogy prefaces several of the surviving copies. In Alfred’s genealogy, the figure

of Woden is historicized, reduced to a single item in a list of patriarchs going through

8 See the entries for 552, 560, 597, 626, and 755.

11




an extra-Biblical son of Noah, born in the ark, and thence back to Adam himself, “et

pater noster id est Cristus” (“and our father, that is Christ”).9 These scribes, as well

as Asser, Alfred’s official biographer, thus appropriate Biblical genealogies and Bib-

lical authority as authentication for the legitimacy of English kingship. Asser opens

his biography of Alfred by addressing it to his king, whom he calls “Domino meo venerabili piissimoque omnium Brittanniae insulae Christianorum rectori, Ælfred,

Anglorum Saxonum regi” (“my esteemed and most holy lord, Alfred, ruler of all the

Christians of the island of Britain, king of the Angles and Saxons” (Asser[ 2], 1; trans-

lation from Stevenson 1959, 67). By using this form of address, Asser underscores his

point that the various strands of genealogy he weaves together for Alfred culminate

specifically in Christian and Anglo-Saxon rule.

The inclusion of Old Testament material in a “secular” poem such as Beowulf , and of

heroic diction in poems like Genesis, Exodus, and Judith, based upon Biblical narra-

tives, gives a hint about how pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors can be analogously re-deemed. Beowulf and Hrothgar can be seen as corresponding to Abraham or Moses,

but in religious terms may be best understood in relation to Daniel, in being singular

exemplary figures among a larger group that worships at heathen temples and prac-

tices pagan burial practices, or that falls into sin and turns its back on God. Anal-

ogously, the incorporation of language from heroic poetry into the Old Testament

narratives of Genesis and Judith in which Abraham becomes a proto-Christian while

Judith is reimagined as a Christian heroine, suggests another way to recuperate the

Anglo-Saxon pagan past.

Analogously, though his people worship heathen idols in their efforts to conquerGrendel, Beowulf is favored by a singular “Lord,” and Hrothgar, in praising or warn-

ing him, sermonizes in a vein that can be interpreted as Christian. Much as Abraham

and Moses are exemplary among Israelites and are read as Christian forebears, it

is possible to read Beowulf and Hrothgar as worthy ancestors of Christian Anglo-

Saxons, singular heroes among a people not always exemplary. Rather than reading

them as works opposed in purpose and audience, religious and secular, serious and

popular, we must see the Old English Genesis and Beowulf as parts of the same in-

heritance in which Germanic and Biblical legacies are fused into a single cultural

matrix.

O O O

9 For insightful discussion of the “euhemerization” of Woden, see Davis (1992[7], 23–36) and John-

son (1995[17], 35–69).

12



References

[1] Ælfric. 1979. Dominica in Media Quadragesime. In Ælfric’s Catholic homilies:

The second series, text, ed. Malcolm Godden. EETS s. s. 5. New York: OxfordUniversity Press. 8

[2] Asser. 1959. Life of King Alfred. Ed. W. H. Stevenson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

12

[3] Belanoff, Patricia A. 1993. Judith: sacred and secular heroine. In Heroic poetry

in the Anglo-Saxon period: studies in honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., ed. Helen

Damico and John Leyerle. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western

Michigan University. 247–264. 11

[4] Bjork, Robert E. and Anita Obermeier. 1997. Date, provenance, author, audi-ences. In A Beowulf handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 13–34.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 3

[5] Chase, Colin, ed. 1982. The dating of Beowulf . Toronto: University of Toronto

Press. 3

[6] Damico, Helen. 1990. The valkyrie reflex in Old English literature. In New read-

ings on women in Old English literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hen-

nessey Olsen, 176–190. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 11

[7] Davis, Craig R. 1992. Cultural assimilation in the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies. Anglo-Saxon England 21: 23–36. 12

[8] Estes, Heide. 2003. Feasting with Holofernes: digesting Judith in Anglo-Saxon

England. Exemplaria 15.2: 325–350. 11

[9] Frank, Roberta. 1982. The Beowulf -poet’s sense of history. In The wisdom of po-

etry: essays in early English literature in honor of Morton W. Bloomfield, ed. Larry

D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, 53–65. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publica-

tions, Western Michigan University. 3

[10] Fulk, R. D. and Christopher M. Cain, ed. 2003. A history of Old English literature.New York: Blackwell. 2

[11] Godden, Malcolm and Michael Lapidge, ed. 1991. The Cambridge companion to

Old English literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2

[12] Greenfield Stanley B. and Daniel G. Calder, ed. 1986. A new critical history of

Old English literature. New York: New York University Press. 2




[13] Griffith, Mark, ed. 1997. Judith. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 9

[14] Herbison, Ivan. 1996. The idea of the ’Christian Epic’: towards a history of an

Old English poetic genre. In Studies in English language and literature: ’doubt

wisely,’ papers in honour of E. G. Stanley , ed. M. J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler, 342–361. New York: Routledge. 2

[15] Howe, Nicholas. 1989. Migration and mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England.

New Haven: Yale University Press. 3

[16] Irving, Edward B., Jr. 1997. Christian and pagan elements. In A Beowulf hand-

book, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 175–192. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press. 4

[17] Johnson, David F. 1995. Euhemerisation versus demonization: the pagan gods

and Ælfric’s De falsis diis. In Pagans and Christians: the interplay between Chris-

tian Latin tradition and traditional Germanic cultures in early medieval Europe,

ed. T. Hofstra, et al., 35–69. Egbert Forsten: Groningen. 12

[18] Ker, N. R. 1957. Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford:

Clarendon Press. 3

[19] Klaeber, Friedrich. 1950 [1921]. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd Ed.

Boston: D. C. Heath. 3

[20] Kiernan, Kevin. 1981. Beowulf and the Beowulf manuscript. New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press. 3, 10

[21] Lucas, Peter J. 1990. The place of Judith in the Beowulf -manuscript. Review of

English Studies 41: 463–478. 9

[22] Niles, John D. 1993. Locating Beowulf in literary history. Exemplaria 5: 79–109.

3

[23] Orchard, Andy. 1995. Pride and prodigies: studies in the monsters of the Beowulf

manuscript. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 10

[24] Powell, Kathryn. 2006. Meditating on men and monsters: a reconsideration of

the thematic unity of the Beowulf manuscript. Review of English Studies n. s. 57,

228: 1–15. 10

[25] Pulsiano, Phillip and Elaine Treharne, ed. 2001. A companion to Anglo-Saxon

literature. New York: Blackwell. 2

14




[26] Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1974. Faith and fratricide: the theological roots of

anti-Semitism. Minneapolis, Minn.: Seabury Press. 8

[27] Sisam, Kenneth. 1953. Studies in the history of English literature. London: Ox-

ford University Press. 10

[28] Tristram, Hildegard. 1989. Der insulare Alexander. In Kontinuität und Trans-

formation der Antike im Mittelalter, ed. Willi Erzgräber, 129–155. Sigmarinen:

Thorbecke. 10

15

Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical...

Documents

Transcript of Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical...