Note to Anon (FoGT) 13^III

[All]: According to the prose text of FoGT, the pair of stanzas, 13-14, is based upon a passage in the Apocryphal Book of Baruch. After the two stanzas have been cited, the prose text goes on to offer an allegorical interpretation of them: Skógr merker ivða enn sior challdeos. Þioðer þær, sem eyddv ʀiki challdeorum merkia sand, en gvðzpiallig [kenning] elldinn, sv er ístað kom lǫgmaals ivða ‘The forest signifies the Jews, and the sea the Chaldeans; those peoples who destroyed the kingdom of the Chaldeans signify [recte ‘are signified by’] sand, while the evangelical [teaching] which supplanted the law of the Jews signifies [recte ‘is signified by’] fire’. Paasche (1928, 199-200) identified the source of this pair of stanzas, not as from Baruch, but from the apocryphal Apocalypse of Ezra (or Esdras), usually known as 4 Ezra. A passage in ch. 4, verses 13-17 (Charles 1913, II, 565), describes an exchange between the trees of the forest and the sea, each intent upon encroaching upon and destroying the other, but each frustrated by the forces of fire and sand respectively. Paasche (1928, 200) comments that the author of the prose text may have misremembered his source, because there is a somewhat similar passage in Baruch ch. 36. Meissner (1932, 102-4), apparently in ignorance of Paasche’s article, argued that the stanzas were influenced by this very passage (Baruch II, Charles 1913, II, 500), in which Baruch has a dream vision during which a fountain beneath a vine engulfs all but one cedar tree in a forest, the cedar eventually succumbing to fire. Although there is some similarity between the Icelandic stanzas and the Baruch passage, the parallel is not exact. The source, if any, of the allegorical interpretation in the prose text of FoGT has not been identified.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Charles, R. H., ed. 1913. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
3. Meissner, Rudolf. 1932. ‘Zwei Prophetenzitate in der 4. Gramm. Abhandlung der Snorra Edda’. ZDA 69, 97-106.
4. Paasche, Fredrik. 1928. ‘Esras aabenbaring og Pseudo-Cyprianus i norrön litteratur’. In Brøndum-Nielsen et al. 1928, 199-205.
5. Internal references
6. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, The Fourth Grammatical Treatise’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=34> (accessed 1 June 2024)