Jewish Lore and Arthurian Legend
by Joshua Waxman

 

 

 

 

 

When examining various Biblical and Arthurian legends, one notices numerous interesting parallels, that, given the chronology of their appearance, suggest that the Arthurian legends derived from the Biblical ones. In support of this thesis, one should note that the clergy, who were the authors of the early Arthurian stories, were familiar with the Bible and had an established pattern of having borrowed plots and replacing the main characters.

In a number of Arthurian legends, incidents that are described in the Jewish sources are repeated, with minor or major modifications. According to Moses Gaster, the clergy in the early Middle Ages had almost exclusive possession of written knowledge. Few people besides them knew how to write. "The historiographers and chroniclers were as a rule monks and priests, and they wrote as often as not for the special edification of those readers and for the praise and honor of those places, with which they stood in close contact." They would write about local saints and heroes to the exclusion of distant ones. They turned to religious literature for the inspiration for their stories, because the greatest praise for these saints was to liken them to the heroes of the Bible and of religious legends. Because the general populace would not relate to a story set in ancient times, the writers translated the stories into contemporary settings, language, behavior, and mode of dress. Moreover, Gaster believes that there exists in this literature "a surprising poverty of invention. The situations and incidents told of one hero are repeated ad nauseam by every subsequent poet." Often, an entire cycle of stories told about one hero is applied to a different hero, with the only change being the names of the kings and knights. Gaster maintains that it was the task of the writer to borrow and modify existing tales so as to give the tales "local character." (Gaster 967)

One prominent example of such recasting of a Jewish legend in the garb of a story palatable to contemporary audiences is the story of King Vortigern and Merlin, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. (Gaster 969) This story comes from a much earlier tale about King Solomon and Ashmedai, which is transformed by recasting the setting, characters, and actions to a more modern and acceptable form. Here are summaries of the King Solomon and Ashmedai story, as well as the King Vortigern and Merlin story.

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