Whose consent? Not Judith's, but God's!

Earthly treasures as an image of heavenly

Judith sends them into battle

Her victory treated as a military one

Trophies and loot

that's a long time!

dramatic irony

beasts of battle

Holofernes's head displayed publicly, as trophy

Trinity

Christ

Reference to Christ

Look at his description in this portion

Not in MS; X, XI, & XII are, later, so this must be part of IX

Cynewulf—and we—also discover the cross, thru books

Great respect for Jewish historical knowledge and writing. Thinking of Josephus here?

men AND women: Elene is not the only woman

Elene as gift-giver

crux gemmata

anti-Jewish

Judas as warrior now too

Other Judas

Time of Jesus's death Matt 27:45–50

Rood as gold-hoard

Parallel w/ Constantine

Judas's prayer in Hebrew. Invokes Scripture: creation, fall of angels

Quick to turn over Judas!

torture

Genesis, Paradise

stiff again

stone imagery vs bread

Elene begins threats

imagery: stiff, stony

Stephen is Judas's brother Family set apart from other Jews How OLD is Judas??

Explanation of majority choice; Sachius demurred

Judas already knows what they've done wrong—and remains obstinate because admitting will mark the end of Jewish power

Read sympathetically?

Elene's speech: Hebrew Bible as prophesying Christ

Condemns Jews generally here & following

Condemns all the Jewish wise men

Elene as military leader

Elene as military

kenning

kenning

Elene's first appearance; not named until 4th line after

Jews all lumped together as deceived & crucifiers

Beasts again

Start of dream

Third beast; wolf & raven earlier

Germanic or Roman bldgs as made by giants?

Beasts of battle motif

Scyld's origins as "feasceaft," destitute, contrast with his rich conquests later in life: the "meodosetla" he takes (5) and the "gomban" ("tribute," 11) he receives. The opening lines thus establish reversal of fortune as a theme while showing Scyld as a powerful warrior and successful war leader. Edward B. Irving describes how appropriate "the Scyld proem" (as he calls it, 44) is for the rest of the poem in foreshadowing what Beowulf will do and experience, A Reading of Beowulf, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: The Chaucer Studio, 1999), 44–5. Francis Leneghan argues for the originality of the Scyld episode in “Reshaping Tradition" and argues that Scyld's status as a foundling in a ship and his climb to rule parallels Moses.

We move from hearing of "Gardena" in general to their exemplar and greatest hero, Scyld Scefing. Roy Liuzza notes that the name means "Shield, Son of Sheaf," in his translation, 2nd ed. (Peterborough, ONT: Broadview Press, 2013), note 2 on page 49. The name connects the Danes' hero with both war ("Shield") and agricultural production ("Sheaf"): he makes his people victorious and well-fed. For more on the name, see Francis Leneghan, “Reshaping Tradition: The Originality of the Scyld Scefing Episode in Beowulf,” in Transmission and Generation in Medieval and Renaissance Literature: Essays in Honour of John Scattergood, edited by Karen Hodder and‎ Brendan O'Connell (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012), 21–36.

God's role in the reversal of fortune is explicit here: God sends Scyld as a comfort to the Danes for previous bad fortune (perhaps the rule of Heremod, which appears later in the poem, at 1709–24). The poet suggests that God protects even those who are not Christian, for we will see that the Danes are not, and some are even said to offer sacrifices to demons after Grendel's attack (175–88). On reversal of fortune as a structural device in the opening of the poem, see Irving, A Reading of Beowulf, 32.

A lovely example of the power of alliteration: Beowulf's name is associated even before the hero appears with fame ("Beowulf was breme") and power or renown ("blæd") using sound.

Youth is contrasted with age ("ylde") two lines later: men must behave in certain ways in their youth to affect their later fortune. Fortune is not completely outside one's control.

This editor chose to keep the manuscript reading "Beowulf"; the editors of Klaeber 4 emended to "Beow." In their Commentary on line 18f (page 113), they note that "Beow" fits the meter in "Beowulf"'s second appearance at 53, and that traditional genealogies provide the name "Beow." However, I prefer the choice (as does Liuzza in his translation): whether poet or scribe, someone has made the name match that of the poem's protagonist. An earlier hero foreshadows a later.

This use of the dative through me momentarily. With "Scyld gewat," it sounds like the archaic "Scyld betook himself," but it's not a direct object (because not an accusative) as a reflexive would be. I take it as a dative of interest: instead of saying a place where Scyld departed from or for, the construction indicates that Scyld departed himself—separated from life, or died.

Scyld came on a ship as an infant, and now his body will leave on a ship. The reversal of fortune motif comes full circle in a sense, for he leaves as he came. Yet a little after this passage, we do read of a difference: his arrival with nothing contrasts explicitly with his rich send-off (43–6).

"frofre" reappears just seven lines after its first appearance. Scyld had his comfort, but he also was comfort to the people. Again, reversal of fortune appears at the very start of the text.

Because Old English scribes did not distinguish between "God" and "good," this usage may give modern readers pause: we may look for a noun to go with "god" thinking that it is the adjective "good." But it really is the noun "God."

The relationship of the two genitives is unclear: did "we learn of the might of the Spear-Danes, of the people-kings," as two separate things: the deeds of some people-kings (who may have been all Danes, or note) and the deeds of Danes? Or did "we learn of the might of the people-kings OF the Spear-Danes," which is narrower? The poem leaves the choice to the reader.

The grammar here is a little confusing: "gefrunon," "we learned," or "we heard," has two different kinds of objects. The first is a simple direct object: "we heard the might." The second is a clause "we heard how the nobles did courageous deeds."

The two consecutive datives make the sentence ambiguous. They could be in apposition: Scyld may be taking mead benches from "troops of enemies, many peoples." However, he could just as easily taking mead benches "by troops of enemes from many peoples." R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles note both possibilities in their note to 4–5, Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), in their Commentary, page 111.

Here and at 1, "Hwæt.", the edition uses periods instead of commas. Many editions and translations use exclamation points at one or both places, which changes the tone. Eric Weiskott notes that the exclamation point was hundreds of years in the future when the manuscript was written: “Making Beowulf Scream: Exclamation and the Punctuation of Old English Poetry,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 111.1 (2012), 25–41. DOI: 10.5406/jenglgermphil.111.1.0025

I wish this page said whose edition this is and when it appeared. Without that information, I do not know how scholarly or dated the edition may be.