Junius manuscript

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 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.

[1] The compilation was in two stages: Liber I contains the poems Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, and was the work of a single scribe.

[2] The manuscript is partly illustrated with a series of line drawings depicting the events in the text.

[7] Thematically and stylistically, it is distinctive: it tells the story of the falls of Satan and Man in an epic style, and has been suggested as an influence for Beowulf, and even, perhaps, for Milton's Paradise Lost.