When reading stories and legends from the Middle Ages about the Holy Grail, most people probably don’t expect to read about time travel — or the Biblical figure of King Solomon. But that’s exactly what Dr. Karen Knudson ’91 discovered while working on her dissertation in medieval literature.
“It’s a fascinating story,” Dr. Knudson recounts. “In one Grail account, Solomon makes a ship that travels forward in time so he can give Sir Galahad the sword of King David. I was curious about the choice of Solomon in this story and others. Why not David himself?”
Prompted by these questions, Dr. Knudson made medieval depictions of King Solomon the topic of her research. This work, at the intersection of Biblical studies and medieval texts, makes her somewhat unique in her academic field.
“To our current culture,” she admits, “an ‘academic evangelical’ can seem a contradiction in terms — especially in medieval literature, where evangelicals have often either ignored Biblical apocryphal texts or been uncomfortable writing about them.”
But Dr. Knudson’s integration of these fields goes back to her time as an undergraduate at Olivet, where she double-majored in Biblical literature and English education. For her, it’s a natural fit to use literature to understand the Bible and vice versa.
Her research led to the discovery of a number of characteristics that made the Biblical figure of King Solomon attractive to medieval authors. Today, Solomon is remembered for his poetic skills and his wisdom, as evidenced by Biblical texts like Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (as well as the apocryphal text Wisdom of Solomon). But in the Middle Ages, wisdom was seen as encompassing a wider scope of knowledge, including a supernatural understanding of the world and (for some medieval authors) the ability to time-travel. Dr. Knudson will be presenting her work on depictions of Solomon in medieval literature this summer at the International Medieval Congress, held in Leeds, U.K.
“Ancient and medieval texts are still important today,” she explains. “Seeing how cultures viewed stories and Biblical figures throughout history gives us a broader base for understanding ourselves and how the Bible has been interpreted in the past.”
Solomon also figures prominently in a senior-level literary special topics course Dr. Knudson teaches, Medieval Magic, in which students read several medieval romances, including grail stories and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
“Studying these texts, students begin to see the ways in which stories — even today — shape our view of Scripture and society,” she says.
A Hippenhammer Faculty Scholarship Grant will support Dr. Knudson’s travel to present her research before an international audience of scholars and students.
“The figure of Solomon and how he was represented in the Middle Ages has a lot to say to us today,” she says. “The human desire for a ‘magician’ to step into a situation and exhibit acts of power is still very much alive.”
It’s important, then, to recognize and analyze these patterns in literature, bringing them into the classroom “so each generation has a broader cultural perspective on their own current moment,” Dr. Knudson emphasizes. As medieval accounts of a time-traveling King Solomon illustrate, ancient texts still offer readers and researchers plenty of surprises.
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