Many of these translations were in fact Bible glosses, prepared to assist clerics whose grasp of Latin was imperfect and circulated in connection with the Vulgate Latin Bible that was standard in Western Christianity at the time. Old English was one of very few early medieval vernacular languages the Bible was translated into,[1] and featured a number of incomplete Bible translations, some of which were meant to be circulated, like the Paris Psalter[2] or Ælfric's Hexateuch.[3]
Cædmon (~657–684) is mentioned by Bede as one who sang poems in Old English based on the Bible stories, but he was not involved in translation per se.
Bede (c. 672–735) produced a translation of the Gospel of John into Old English, which he is said to have prepared shortly before his death. This translation is lost; we know of its existence from Cuthbert of Jarrow's account of Bede's death.[6]
As England was consolidated under the House of Wessex, led by descendants of Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder, translations continued. King Alfred (849–899) circulated a number of passages of the Bible in the vernacular. These included passages from the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch, which he prefixed to a code of laws he promulgated around this time. Alfred is also said to have directed the Book of Psalms to have been translated into Old English, though scholars are divided on Alfredian authorship of the Paris Psalter collection of the first fifty Psalms.[14][15]
Suae ðonne iuih gie bidde fader urer ðu arð ðu bist in heofnum & in heofnas; sie gehalgad noma ðin; to-cymeð ric ðin. sie willo ðin suae is in heofne & in eorðo. hlaf userne oferwistlic sel us to dæg. & forgef us scylda usra suae uoe forgefon scyldgum usum. & ne inlæd usih in costunge ah gefrig usich from yfle
At around the same time (~950–970), a priest named Farman wrote a gloss on the Gospel of Matthew that is preserved in a manuscript called the Rushworth Gospels.[16]
In approximately 990, a full and freestanding version of the four Gospels in idiomatic Old English appeared in the West Saxon dialect and are known as the Wessex Gospels. Seven manuscript copies of this translation have survived. This translation gives us the most familiar Old English version of Matthew 6:9–13, the Lord's Prayer:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin nama gehalgod. To becume þin rice, gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg, and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum. And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. Soþlice.
The three related manuscripts, Royal 1 A. xiv at the British Library, Bodley 441 and Hatton 38 at the Bodleian Library, are written in Old English, although produced in the late 12th century. Hatton 38 is noted as being written in the latest Kentish form of West Saxon.[17] They cover the four Gospels, with one section (Luke 16.14–17.1) missing from both manuscripts, Hatton and Royal.[18]
In 1066, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the end of the Old English language. Translating the Bible into Old English gradually ended with the movement from Old English to Middle English, and eventually there were attempts to provide Middle English Bible translations.
References
^Stanton 2002, p. 101: "There was very little translation of the Bible into any Western vernacular in the Middle Ages, and as with other kinds of texts, English was precocious in this regard. The portions of the Bible translated into Old English are among the earliest vernacular versions of the Latin Bible in Western Europe"
^MS fonds latin 8824, not to be confused with the Byzantine Paris Psalter
^See also Roberts 2011, which looks at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader.
Colgrave, B., ed. (1958), The Paris Psalter: MS. Bibliothèque nationale fonds latin 8824, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. 8, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, OCLC717585.
Dekker, Kees (2008), "Reading the Anglo-Saxon Gospels in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries", in Hall, Thoman N.; Scragg, Donald (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers, Kalamazoo, MI, pp. 68–93, ISBN978-1580441377{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
Dobbie, E. Van Kirk (1937), The Manuscripts of Caedmon's Hymn and Bede's Death Song with a Critical Text of the Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, New York: Columbia University Press, OCLC188505.
Stanton, Robert (2002), The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, ISBN9780859916431.
Stevenson, Joseph; Waring, George, eds. (1854–1865), The Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels, vol. 28, 39, 43, 48, Durham: Surtees Society {{citation}}: External link in |volume= (help).
New digital editions, with manuscript images, of much of Old English biblical verse, including Junius 11 poems and metrical psalms and psalm excerpts, are available in the Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project, eds. Martin Foys, et al.(Madison, WI: Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, 2019-), with translations from the Old English Poetry Project, Aaron Hostetter (trans.).
