Anglo-Saxon Biblical Lore: An Edition

Abstract

Seventeen extant manuscripts contain short texts in Old English that relate information about Biblical texts and figures: chronological information, details about the sizes of various Biblical structures, and other kinds of lore about people and events in both the Old and New Testaments. The texts vary from one manuscript to the next, and the manuscripts themselves vary widely in other contents, some containing single texts or related materials, others catalogued in recent codicological work as “miscellanies”. The appearance of these short texts in several such miscellaneous collections of materials may provide a window into the circumstances of creation and the purpose of these manuscripts. The variability of the surviving texts of Biblical lore might suggest oral transmission, or a long history of textual transmission, but it also might suggest the work of memory—of a text read, or heard, and only copied later. It may be most productive to posit variable modes of transmission for different scribes working with different kinds of materials, rather than assuming a period of fairly uniformly practised oral transmission giving way, however gradually, to similarly uniform scribal practice. In this edition, Ihave printed the full texts of lore from several of the manuscripts containing the longest texts and the widest selection of unique material. The shorter passages with more thorough overlap with portions of these longer texts are collated with them.