4 - Rise and Fall Again in the Old English Daniel

Summary

At the end of Exodus, a third of the way down page 171 of Junius 11, the Israelites share out a hoard of ‘ealde madmas’ (ancient treasures; l. 586b) on the shore of the Red Sea. Moses and his followers ‘on riht sceodon / gold and godweb’ (rightly shared the gold and fine cloth; ll. 587b–588a), enjoying the plunder received following the battle between the raging waters and the helpless Egyptian host. After these final lines, Exodus is followed by a blank page, before the Old English Daniel begins on page 173 in the same hand. While the end of this poem, which details the fall of Belshazzar, has been called incomplete and imperfect by N. R. Ker, the poem's most recent editor, R. T. Farrell, suggests Daniel ends ‘as its author intended’. Despite these different views about the state of Daniel's ending, narrative continuity between Exodus and the beginning of Daniel forms an important bridge in the manuscript cycle.

Daniel does pick up the story that paused on the edges of the Red Sea in Exodus, but it also continues that poem's interest in themes associated with OE ræd, focusing as it does on the need for good counsel for those in positions of prosperity, and on the need for kings and kingdoms to rightfully interpret divine messages through wisdom. Farrell has drawn attention to the Daniel-poet's ‘thematic word-use’, writing that the ‘introductory section’ of the poem (ll. 1–103), which traces the fall of the Israelites from their glory in Jerusalem, establishes ‘central themes’ and ‘words used to describe the Jews here are to appear consistently throughout the text’. One key example is the poet's explanation of the Israelite loss of prosperity being a result of their abandonment of ‘eces rædes’ (eternal counsel; l. 30b) early on in Daniel. Lack of ræd will become associated with the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, who is ‘rædleas’ (l. 177a), later in the poem. Such repetition, Farrell notes, allows the poet to reinforce his lessons ‘by the use of a series of weighted words which are used with absolute consistency to establish an opposition between the forces of good and evil’. But the loss of ‘eces rædes’ by the Israelites in Daniel also recalls the ‘ece rædas’ they achieved with Moses at the end of Exodus (l. 516b).