Genesis B - Content and Controversy Surrounding The Text

Content and Controversy Surrounding The Text

Genesis B depicts the fall of Lucifer from heaven, at which point he is renamed "Satan" and assumes authority as the ruler of hell. The text goes on to describe the temptation and subsequent fall of Adam and Eve from God’s grace, but the account presented in this manuscript differs largely from any other version. Oldrieve addresses this controversy in terms of the language used to describe Satan’s bodily form. According to Genesis B, Satan appears to Adam as an angel, as opposed to the serpent which typically represents Satan. Woolf even goes as far as to compare Satan to Loki of Norse mythology, stating that the similarities between the two are “undoubtedly sufficient”. The controversies, however, are not as superficial as the depiction of the devil, which is still crucial to the overall meaning of the poem, but complicate much more significant plot points and characters. One of these major differences that Hill cites is the portrayal of Eve; while Genesis A claims that Eve is motivated by the desire to be more God-like, Genesis B shows that she was tempted by Satan and is instead trying to help save Adam by fulfilling God’s wishes. Oldrieve’s conclusion that Eve was so deceived by the devil and his words that she believed she saw an angel instead of a serpent blend these two controversies and offer further support of Eve’s innocence and lack of manipulation, much like the discrepancy noted by Hill.

The issue of language, the philology, is also a concern of Timmer’s, a scholar referenced several times throughout other scholars’ interpretations of Genesis B. He immediately discusses the discrepancies between versions of the fall of Adam and Eve and attributes them to problems with the translation from Old Saxon to Old English, offering reason as to how specific words are construed to have a meaning different than those found in any other Old English manuscript (19). A different explanation is offered by Doane; she argues that many of the discrepancies are a result of the extended time period between the oral telling of the story and the transcribing of the story by the Old Saxons, causing embellishment to heighten the literary drama of the text.