Sermons on Joshua (review)

Short Notices 293 becomes progressively more irritating. Finally, there are the needlessly cryptic subtitles. Chapter T w o in Part I, T w i n Mysteries: Ceci n'est pas un Fresne', is an interesting comparison between Marie de France's lai, Le Fresne, and the later romance, Galeran de Bretagne, but it doesn't need the subtitle. The subtitles in Part II reveal the evolution ofthe term 'rains' from the branch of the Forbidden Tree of Paradise which, planted in the world by Eve, becomes the Tree of Life, to the golden bough which allows forgetfulness in the Virgilian epic. This process of evolution similarly can be seen in the changes in the story of the Grail (the subtitle of Rockwell's book) until in the prose version the Grail has a 'semblance de calice'. The 'semblance', however, is not the Grail, for 'language is incapable of describing the ineffable truth of the GraiT (p. 227). Would that the language of this book was more capable of describing the author's premise. Margaret Burrell Department of French University of Canterbury Sermons on Joshua, 2 vols. (Plain Texts Series 12 and 13), ed. Tony London, Birkbeck College, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1998; paper; pp. 31 and 38. Free to A N T S members, not for sale to public. The five sermons edited in these two volumes are adapted from the first eight homilies on Joshua by Origen. These homilies would have been known through the Latin translation of the Greek by Rufinus. While following the basic framework of Origen's homilies in the choice of episodes and Scriptural quotations, the Anglo-Norman author composes an independent commentary which, Tony Hunt points out, shows some signs of having an English origin. The first sermon, which is the longest and forms something of an introduction to the others, is concerned with the Mystery of Jesus. It is based on the events of Exodus 17.8ff, and the commentary deals with the allegorical significance of various names of persons and places, including the linguistic ambiguity Joshua-Jesus, before turning to a discussion of confession, penance and vices, but ending on an encouraging note. The second sermon, on the 294 death of Moses and the two-and-a-half tribes, takes as a starting point the text of Joshua 1; the third is built on Joshua 2, and is concerned with the house of Rahab, the crossing of the Jordan, and the renewal of circumcision; the fourth, taken from Joshua 5-6, deals with the destruction of the walls of Jericho, and the fifth, using Joshua 7, with the sacking of Ai and the tree on which the king of Ai was hanged. These sermons survive in three thirteenth-century manuscripts, but the edition is based on the text of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS, Douce 282, which is the most accurate and complete of the three. Limitations of space in the series, which is intended for members of the AngloNorman Text Society, allows for only a minimum of critical apparatus. Accordingly there is no glossary, but this is no real loss, as the vocabulary of the sermons is not difficult. There is, however, a bibliography and a l i s t of significant variants and rejected readings for each sermon. Because of their density, these sermons are not an easy read, though the syntax itself is fairly simple. Hunt's edition allows us an interesting glimpse at their pedagogic style: they are addressed in places to 'seignurs', 'amis freres', or even 'freres pecchurs', and the reader or listener is led step by step through the argument, as the spiritual or symbolic significance of events is explored, etymologies are explained, and all quotations from the Bible are scrupulously followed by a translation into Anglo-Norman. Leslie C. Brook Department of French Studies University of Birmingham ...