Junius manuscript

The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, 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. It is kept in the Bodleian Library under shelfmark Junius 11.

The name of the codex now popularly called the "Junius manuscript" was formerly formerly called the "Cædmon manuscript", after an early theory that the poems it contains might be the work of Cædmon; the name has stuck even though the theory is no longer considered credible. In more recent works it is commonly referred to either by its Bodleian designation "MS Junius 11", the "Junius manuscript", or "Codex Junius"; 'Junius' here 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 930-960, based on a coincidence of the style of illustrations.

The compilation was in two stages: the initial version of the manuscript contained Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, and was the work of a single scribe. Later the final poem, Christ and Satan, was added by several other scribes. The manuscript contains numerous illustrations that are a fine demonstration of Anglo-Saxon drawing on religious topics; 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.

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