Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Between Eden and Jerusalem, death and Doomsday: locating the interim paradise
- 2 Assertions and denials: paradise and the interim, from the Visio Sancti Pauli to Ælfric
- 3 Old hierarchies in new guise: vernacular reinterpretations of the interim paradise
- 4 Description and compromise: Bede, Boniface and the interim paradise
- 5 Private hopes, public claims? Paradisus and sinus Abrahae in prayer and liturgy
- 6 Doctrinal work, descriptive play: the interim paradise and Old English poetry
- 7 From a heavenly to an earthly interim paradise: toward a tripartite otherworld
- Select bibliography
- Index
2 - Assertions and denials: paradise and the interim, from the Visio Sancti Pauli to Ælfric
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Between Eden and Jerusalem, death and Doomsday: locating the interim paradise
- 2 Assertions and denials: paradise and the interim, from the Visio Sancti Pauli to Ælfric
- 3 Old hierarchies in new guise: vernacular reinterpretations of the interim paradise
- 4 Description and compromise: Bede, Boniface and the interim paradise
- 5 Private hopes, public claims? Paradisus and sinus Abrahae in prayer and liturgy
- 6 Doctrinal work, descriptive play: the interim paradise and Old English poetry
- 7 From a heavenly to an earthly interim paradise: toward a tripartite otherworld
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Men ða leofostan Paulus se apostol ealra ðeoda lareow awrat be him sylfum þæt he wære gelædd up to heofonum. oð þæt he becom to ðære ðriddan heofonan. and he wæs gelæd to neorxnawange. and þær ða gastlican dygelnysse gehyrde and geseah. ac he ne cydde na eorðlicum mannum ða ða he ongean com. hwæt he gehyrde. oððe gesawe … Humeta rædað sume men. ða leasan gesetnysse. ðe hi hatað Paulus gesihðe. nu he sylf sæde. þæt he ða digelan word gehyrde. þe nan eorðlic mann sprecan ne mot.
Hwæt wille we eow swiðor secgan be ðisum symbeldæge. buton þæt maria cristes modor wearð on ðisum dæge of ðisum geswincfullum middanearde genumen up to heofenan rice … Gif we mare secgað be ðisum symbeldæge þonne we on ðam halgum bocum rædað þe ðurh godes dihte gesette wæron. ðonne beo we ðam dwolmannum gelice. þe be heora agenum dihte oððe be swefnum fela lease gesetnyssa awriton … dwollican bec ægðer ge on leden ge on englisc.
Ælfric's attacks on the apocryphal stories about Mary's Assumption and Paul's vision of the third heaven exemplify his self-proclaimed and polemical brand of orthodoxy, which Anglo-Saxon scholars have often discussed. It has nevertheless gone largely unnoticed that both dwollican bec which Ælfric rejects describe the afterlife in terms of a paradise quite distinct from the heavenly kingdom of Augustinian exegesis.
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- Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature , pp. 14 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001