Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 36

GRIPLA34
tion into Norse-Icelandic was essentially a plain version of Scripture without
commentary. In that case, it must have resembled Stjórn II, and it is natural to
conclude in consequence that this text represents the remains of such early
work. It must have covered at least the Pentateuch (cf. the concluding words
of Stjórn II, Unger 1862:349), and it may quite possibly have extended, like
Stjórn III, to the end of Kings. Later redactors introduced commentary, first of
the kind found in Stjórn III and finally on the grand scale found in Stjórn I.
Seip (1957:18) seems to have held a similar view of development on these
lines, and Kirby (1986:62) has produced further arguments in its favour,
pointing i.a. to the following passage to show that the author of Stjórn III
made use of an older translation:
fietta hús var smí›at me› meira vitrleik ok vísdóm marghátta›ra lista
ok háleitra hagleik, segir sá er sƒgunni hefir snúit til sinnar tungu af
látínu, en mín fáfræ›i kunni skilja e›a sk‡ra (Unger 1862:56414–17).
(This house was built with greater ingenuity and understanding of
many and varied arts and with sublimer skill than my ignorance can
comprehend or describe, says the man who turned this account from
Latin into his native tongue.)
It does indeed seem natural to take this as a reference by the Stjórn III author
to an earlier translation, and probably then to a version like that found in
Stjórn II. If this was so, it follows that Stjórn II must originally have reached
to the end of the books of Kings.
Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica was finished in the 1170s and gained
papal approbation in 1215. If extra matter in Stjórn II can be safely attributed
to this source, it can hardly have been introduced by an Icelandic writer before
the thirteenth century was under way. Seip on the other hand maintained that
the oldest Norse biblical translation was made before about 1150 (1957:17),
but his arguments are too tenuous to be convincing. A few correspondences
between readings in Stjórn and others in texts of acknowledged twelfth-
century date are inadequate evidence on which to base his claim that the
Pentateuch was translated so early. There is comparable fragility in the argu-
ments of other scholars who have seen connections between Stjórn and Sverris
saga and have therefore been inclined to date the earliest biblical translation to
King Sverrir’s reign (1184–1202).27 The soundest conclusion we can reach at
27 See the works by Paasche 1957 and Knirk 1981.