On Genesis. Bede. (Translated Texts for Historians Vol. 48) Translated with an introduction and notes by Calvin B. Kendall

Abstract

Pp. xii, 359 , Liverpool : Liverpool University Press , 2008 , £16.95 . Calvin Kendall has put historians and readers of Genesis in his debt with this readable and elegant translation of Bede's commentary on Genesis, the latest of several volumes of Liverpool's ‘Translated Texts’ to feature the biblical writings of Bede. In his time, and by his own estimation, Bede was more of a biblical commentator than a historian, so it is good that after some thirteen centuries (!) his commentaries may now be known alongside his Ecclesiastical History in English. The commentary is a verse-by-verse coverage of Genesis 1:1–21:10 (with occasional verses passed over), working with a variety of versions, and heavily indebted to Augustine, who indeed he often quotes at length from Genesis 2 onwards. In the 61 page introduction, Kendall describes the various characteristics of the approach: Bede assumes a fairly literal historicity of the Genesis account, and makes consequent deductions from the flood account concerning relative lifespans or dates of death. However he assumes that there is a deeper allegorical or symbolic significance to most details, especially (characteristically for Bede) any numerical details, as well as laying great store in etymology. The handling of textual details is (for its day) thorough. At one point in the introduction Kendall notes ‘It does not seem to occur to modern commentators any more than it did to ancient ones to wonder whether they have really understood what was being said’– and thus the literal and allegorical shadings of Bede's work are not despised from some supposedly more secure ground of source criticism. Various excursuses in the commentary treat ‘The Six Ages of the World’, whereby Genesis 1 is taken as a template for the whole history of earth; an interpretation of the Cain and Abel narrative as a ‘bearing witness mystically to the Lord's passion and his manner of life in the flesh and to the persecution and perdition of the Jews’, and a spiritual interpretation of ‘the tower of Babylon’ as pertaining to ‘the whole condemned human race’. All in all this is a fascinating window on to an early understanding of Genesis, which stands up rather well in comparison to many dry critical accounts of recent centuries. This is obviously not the place to attempt a critique of Bede's approach. Perhaps it may suffice to say that I expect to find myself turning to this commentary for reflection upon perspectives on Genesis rather more often than I had at first thought when I opened it up.