Demonstrates the essential nature of biblical translation and adaptation to Old-Norse-Icelandic literature.The historical narratives of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have much in common with Icelandic saga literature: both are invested in origins and genealogy, place-names, family history, sibling rivalry, conflict and its resolution. Yet the comparison between these two literatures is rarely made, and biblical translations in Old Norse-Icelandic have been neglected as a focus of literary study. This book aims to redress this neglect. It shows how the likeness between biblical narrative and saga narrative has shaped the reception of the Old Testament in medieval Iceland, even through multiple layers of translation and exegesis. It draws on a wide variety of texts, including homilies, saints' lives, world histories, encyclopaedic works, and the biblical translations collectively known as Stjórn, to explore how medieval Icelanders engaged with Old Testament narrative in the light of their own vernacular tradition of storytelling. And above all, it argues that the medieval Icelanders understood and recognised in these well-known biblical stories a narrative art that was strikingly akin to their own.

Introduction: Biblical Literature and Stjórn1. Hebrew Sagas and Icelandic Sagas: Convergent Evolution2. From Hebrew Bible to Old Testament: Traditions of Exegesis3. Types and Shadows: The Old Testament in Homilies and Saints' Lives4. World History and Biblical History: Exegesis and Encyclopaedic Writing5. In the Beginning: Primeval History in Genesis 1-116. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: Family History in Genesis 12-507. Heroes, Heroines and Royal Biography: From Judges to 2 KingsEpilogue: Biblical Literature and Saga LiteratureAcknowledgements BibliographyIndex