Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha (review)

The apocryphal texts that circulated in the Anglo-Saxon period held different status and appeal for different writers. The apparent popularity of such apocryphal narratives as the Visio Pauli (which in its various redactions provides a possible source for Guthlac A, the Vision of Leofric, and several homilies found in the late tenth-century Vercelli and Blickling manuscripts) would seem to indicate a generally positive attitude toward apocryphal materials. Going against this particular trend, the celebrated homilist Ælfric (writing in the late tenth- and early eleventh-centuries) saw the widespread use of certain apocryphal texts (at least in didactic contexts) as a cause for serious concern. Though Anglo-Saxon authors seem to have inherited a healthy suspicion of apocryphal texts from the Latin Fathers, Ælfric's labeling of certain apocryphal texts as lease gesetnysse (false compositions) certainly presented a more rigorous, if idiosyncratic, viewpoint. However, judging from the frequency with which apocryphal materials were cited and translated in Anglo-Saxon texts, it seems clear that both textual and visual artists generally regarded them as rich repositories of both image and theme.

The constant stream of new studies devoted to individual apocryphal texts and their Anglo-Saxon adaptations continues to illuminate the importance of this so-called "hidden corpus" (to cite the literal meaning of "apocrypha"). However, the problem of pinpointing specific paths of textual transmission for many apocryphal texts in Anglo-Saxon England (combined with the complexity of finding sources for loose or selective adaptations) has made it difficult to gain a sense of a defined corpus of texts consulted by authors in this period. Frederick M. Biggs's SASLC (Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture) volume offers the fullest catalogue to date of the apocrypha (defined as the non-canonical books excluded from the Vulgate) that are thought to have been known either directly or indirectly by Anglo-Saxon authors. The texts treated in this volume consist of an impressive range of apocryphal works composed in Latin, Greek, Coptic, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, Old English, and Irish. The study not only demonstrates a greater diversity and selection of antecedent texts than has hitherto been imagined, but it also lays a more solid groundwork for the continued study of Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward the orthodoxy and status of these sometimes controversial apocryphal materials.

The volume supplements, corrects, and expands several important resources. It updates a previous entry on the "Apocrypha" published in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version, ed. Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, and Paul E. Szarmach (1990). In addition to revising and filling in some of the entries in that publication, the new volume also appends a considerable bibliography, which takes full advantage of the most recent and forthcoming work by scholars in the field (providing some 500 bibliographic entries). The volume comes with a helpful introduction by Thomas N. Hall, which orients the reader to the most recent electronic and textual resources and databases for conducting research in this field.

Biggs's edition also corrects and thoroughly augments the list of apocrypha documented by J. D. A. Ogilvy's Books Known to the English 597–1066 (1967), treating some forty-five additional texts. New entries include those on 2 Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Versus sibyllae de iudicio, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Apocalypse of the Virgin, as well as several so-called apocryphal "traditions" such as the Apocrypha Priscillianistica, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Seven Heavens Apocryphon, and the Three Utterances Apocryphon, to name just a few. Biggs's edition also surpasses the entries for the "apocrypha" contained in the on-line Fontes database (http://fontes.english.ox.ac.uk/data/), though readers will find it helpful to consult that resource for precise line references where antecedent apocryphal texts appear as sources for Anglo-Saxon ones.

The entries themselves are written by some of the foremost experts in the field on the subject of apocryphal texts and traditions in...