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The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of
Old English literature Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th- ...
. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles ''Genesis'', ''Exodus'', ''Daniel'', and ''Christ and Satan''. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems. The manuscript owes its current designation to the Anglo-Dutch scholar Franciscus Junius, who was the first to edit its contents and who bequeathed it to
Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
. It is kept in the
Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...
under
shelfmark A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from press, meaning cupboard) denotes only t ...
MS Junius 11.


Name and date

The codex now referred to as the "Junius manuscript" was formerly called the "Cædmon manuscript" after an early theory that the poems it contains were the work of Cædmon; the theory is no longer considered credible, therefore the manuscript it is commonly referred to either by its Bodleian Library shelf mark "MS Junius 11", or more casually as "the Junius manuscript" or "Codex Junius". 'Junius' in these is Franciscus Junius, who published the first edition of its contents in 1655. It has been established on palaeographical grounds that compilation of the manuscript began c. AD 1000. Recent work has suggested an earlier, narrow window for the likely compilation date to 960–1000 for Liber I and shortly thereafter for Liber II, based on an integrated dating of the text, paleography, and illustrations. The compilation was in two stages: Liber I contains the poems ''Genesis'', ''Exodus'', and ''Daniel'', and was the work of a single scribe. Liber II contains the poem C''hrist and Satan''. The manuscript contains numerous illustrations that are an example of the Winchester style of drawing, typical of the period and region; it appears that two illustrators worked independently on the manuscript. The first scribe left spaces in the text for other illustrations which were never completed.


Illustrations

The manuscript is partly illustrated with a series of line drawings depicting the events in the text. From spaces left by the scribes, it appears that it was intended that the manuscript be fully illustrated; in the event, the work was left unfinished after only about a third of the artwork had been drawn. This scheme of illustrations, which is unparalleled in other manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon poetry, implies that the manuscript was conceived of as being considerably more important than most vernacular texts; it may have been intended for devotional or didactic use.


Contents

The names of the poems themselves are modern inventions; they are not given titles in the manuscript. As with the majority of Anglo-Saxon writing, the poems are anonymous and their provenance and dating are uncertain.


Genesis

''Genesis'' is a paraphrase of the first part of the
biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...
book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek language, Greek ; ; ) is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its incipit, first word, (In the beginning (phrase), 'In the beginning'). Genesis purpor ...
, from the Creation through to the test of Abraham's faith with the sacrifice of Isaac ( Gen. 22). The work is now recognised as a composite work formed of two originally distinct parts, conventionally referred to as '' Genesis A'' and '' Genesis B''; the latter, lines 235–851 of the poem as we have it, appears to have been interpolated from an older poem to produce the current text. It is ''Genesis B'' which has attracted the most critical attention. Its origin is notable in that it appears to be a translation from a ninth-century
Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...
original; this theory was originally made on metrical grounds, in 1875 by the German scholar Sievers, and then confirmed by the discovery of a fragment of Old Saxon verse that appears to correspond to part of the work in 1894. Thematically and stylistically, it is distinctive: it tells the story of the falls of Satan and
Man A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...
in an epic style, and has been suggested as an influence for ''
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...
'', and even, perhaps, for Milton's ''
Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an Epic poetry, epic poem in blank verse by the English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The poem concerns the Bible, biblical story of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their ex ...
''.


Exodus

''Exodus'' is a retelling of the story of the Israelites' Flight from Egypt and the Crossing of the Red Sea.


Daniel

A short paraphrase of the
book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...
, dwelling particularly on the story of the Fiery Furnace, deals with the first five chapters of the Book of Daniel.


Christ and Satan

A three-part poem detailing the Fall of Satan, Christ's
harrowing of Hell In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell (; Greek language, Greek: – "the descent of Christ into Christian views on Hell, Hell" or Christian views on Hades, Hades) is the period of time between the Crucifixion of Jesus and his Resurre ...
(from the
Apocrypha Apocrypha () are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to ...
l New Testament '' Gospel of Nicodemus''), and Christ's temptation in the desert.


Facsimiles

* ''The Cædmon manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical poetry: Junius XI in the Bodleian '', ed. by Israel Gollancz (London: Oxford University Press, 1927.) Digital facsimiles are available online and offline:
A complete digital facsimile
is available through digital Bodleian. A complete digital facsimile with copious annotations, transcriptions and translations was released on CD format in 2004: *


Editions

* All of the poems from MS Junius 11 are edited to digital images of their manuscript pages, and translated, in the ''Old English Poetry in Facsimile'' project

', Martin Foys et al. (eds.). University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019–)


See also

*
Anglo-Saxon literature Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th- ...
*
Exeter Book The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...
* History of the English Bible *
Nowell Codex The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English literature#Extant manuscripts, Old English poetic manuscripts. It is most famous as the manuscript containi ...
* Old English Bible translations * Vercelli Book


References


Further reading

* . * * . * * * * . * * . * * .


External links


Bodleian Medieval Manuscripts Catalogue Entry

Encyclopædia Britannica Cædmon manuscript
* {{Authority control 1655 books English poetry collections Old English poems Christian illuminated manuscripts Literary illuminated manuscripts Later Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts English-language manuscripts Bodleian Library collection 10th-century illuminated manuscripts