Judith

Le Fin!

Judith

Ælfric of Eynsham

Anglo-Saxon Period

• Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955 – c. 1010) was an English abbot (Head of a monastery), prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres.
• In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself."
• Author of many Anglo-Saxon poems, religious stories, as well as many biblical translations.

Authorship and Date

• Once again, most scholars believe the poem to have been written by either Cynewulf or Cædmon, but do not know which.
• There are arguments for both, as well as arguments against both.

Destruction and Preservation

The only existing copy of the poem is in the Beowulf manuscript, immediately following Beowulf. Damage to the manuscript was caused by the Cotton fire of 1731 and readings have been lost. In order to account for these lost words, modern editions of the poem are supplemented by references to Edward Thwaites' 1698 edition.

History

Judith was first discovered as an appendage to the Nowell Codex. Though it is certain that the poem is a derivative of the Book of Judith, in the apocrypha.

The poem is incomplete: the version in the manuscript is 348 lines long, divided in three sections marked with the numbers X, XI, and XII. The numbers correspond to the 10th verse of chapter twelve, the 11th verse of chapter thirteen, and the 12th verse of chapter fourteen. Only the last three out of twelve cantos have been preserved. What remains of the poem opens in the middle of a banquet. Had the first nine cantos been preserved, it is often thought that Judith would be considered one of the most laudable Old English works

Books of the Apocrypha

1 and 2 Esdras

Tobit*

Judith*

Wisdom of Solomon*

Sirach* (also called Ecclesiasticus)

Baruch*

Letter of Jeremiah

Song of the Three Young Men

Susanna

Bel and the Dragon

Prayer of Manasseh

1 and 2 Maccabees*

Additions to the book of Esther*

Additions to the book of Daniel*

The Apocrypha denotes a set of books not considered authoritative, or divinely inspired, in Judaism and Protestant Christian churches, and therefore, not accepted into the canon of Scripture. A large portion of the Apocrypha, however, was officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as part of the biblical canon at the Council of Trent in A.D. 1546. Today, Coptic, Greek and Russian Orthodox churches also accept these books as divinely inspired by God.

Apocrypha

Judith

• The Old English poem found in the same manuscript as the heroic poem Beowulf, the Nowell Codex (London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. XV), dated ca. 975-1025.
• The Old English poem is one of many retellings of the Holofernes–Judith tale as it was found in the Book of Judith, still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles.
• Most notably, Ælfric of Eynsham, late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon abbot and writer, composed a homily, in prose, of the tale (which we are reading).