Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1957, Page 489
SUMMARY
471
of Prov. This can only be explained as being due to the faet that the type
for the printing of this book was set on the basis of A which has a rather
long lacuna (chapter XX,24-30). In the process of proofreading, this
omission must have been found, and in order to gain space for the
inclusion of the missing portion of chapter XX, a large number of notes
in the remainder of the text were either shortened or eliminated complete-
ly. Such a revision may be an indication of a shortage of paper. The addi-
tion of the twenty scriptural passages at the end of Eccli., on the other
hånd, is not indicative of a similar desire to save paper, for which reason
it is reasonable to assume that this book was printed before Prov. The
following exemplars were found to have been employed in the revision
of the Icelandic Eccli. text: Tidemand’s translation in its 1550 form,
though in an annotated edition, probably the edition of 1576, and, though
only to a limited extent, Justus Jonas’ Latin text of 1538 (possibly a later
edition). For the revision of Prov., the Latin-German edition of 1574, and
Hans Siunesøn’s annotated edition of 1552 of the 1550 text were used.
Characteristic of many of the alterations made in the Prov. text is the faet
that they seem to have been made alone on the basis of the context and
that they often result in a wording which can neither be considered a lin-
guistic nor a semantic improvement.
The appearance of Eccli. and Prov. in the printed Gudbrandsbiblia of
1584 justifies a closer description of this work, the 16th century’s greatest
Icelandic literary accomplishment. A considerable amount of misunder-
standing has reigned, especially on the subject of the illustrations used
in this Bible. Prov. is introduced in Gudbrandsbiblia with a woodeut of
King Solomon enthroned (ill. 22 b), and the present writer has therefore
found it natural to investigate the origin of this and the other woodeuts.
The result of the investigation, which covered all 27 of the prints in the
Bible (two of which appear twice), is that the cuts used in the reproduc-
tion of ill. 1-12 and 14-15 originate from Hans Lufft’s octavo edition of
the Old Testament (Wittenberg, 1523). The cuts 2-15 were also used in
the illustration of Hans Tausen’s translation of the Pentateuch (Magde-
burg, 1535). The woodeut from the Hans Lufft Old Testament cor-
responding to ill. 13 in Gudbrandsbiblia has, in the Hans Tausen
Pentateuch, 1535, been replaced by another cut, which is also used
in the Gudbrandsbiblia. Certain of these woodeuts have been slightly
restored. Ill. 17-22 can be traced to Melchior Lotther the Younger’s