The earliest English Bible was Wycliffe (1382)
Not even close to the first...
Old English
Main article:
Old English Bible translations
Although
John Wycliff is often credited with the first translation of the Bible into English, there were, in fact, many translations of large parts of the Bible centuries before Wycliff's work. Toward the end of the 7th century, the
Venerable Bede began a translation of scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon).
Aldhelm (c. 639709) translated the complete
Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English.
In the 10th century an
Old English translation of the Gospels was made in the
Lindisfarne Gospels: a word-for-word
gloss inserted between the lines of the Latin text by
Aldred, Provost of
Chester-le-Street.
[1] This is the oldest extant translation of the Gospels into the
English language.
[1]
The
Wessex Gospels (also known as the
West-Saxon Gospels) are a full translation of the four
gospels into a West Saxon dialect of Old English. Produced in approximately 990, they are the first translation of all four gospels into English without the
Latin text.
In the 11th century, Abbot
Ælfric translated much of the
Old Testament into Old English. The
Old English Hexateuch is an
illuminated manuscript of the first six books of the Old Testament. The
Old English Heptateuch is a version without lavish illustrations but including a translation of the
Book of Judges.
The English Bible was first translated from the
Latin Vulgate into Old English by a few select monks and scholars. Such translations were generally in the form of prose or as
interlinear glosses (literal translations above the Latin words).
Very few complete translations existed during that time. Rather, most of the books of the Bible existed separately and were read as individual texts. Thus, the sense of the Bible as history that often exists today did not exist at that time. Instead, a more allegorical rendering of the Bible was more common and translations of the Bible often included the writers own commentary on passages in addition to the literal translation.
Main article:
Middle English Bible translations
The
Ormulum is in Middle English of the 12th century. Like its Old English precursor from
Ælfric, an Abbot of Eynsham, it includes very little Biblical text, and focuses more on personal commentary. This style was adopted by many of the original English translators. For example the story of the
Wedding at Cana is almost 800 lines long, but fewer than 40 lines are the actual translation of the text. An unusual characteristic is that the translation mimics Latin verse, and so is similar to the better known and appreciated 14th century English poem,
Cursor Mundi.
Richard Rolle (12901349) wrote an English Psalter. Many religious works are attributed to Rolle, but it has been questioned how many are genuinely from his hand. Many of his works were concerned with personal devotion, and some were used by the
Lollards.
[2]
The 14th century theologian
John Wycliffe is credited with translating what is now known as
Wyclif's Bible, though it is not clear how much of the translation he himself did.
[3] This translation came out in two different versions. The earlier text is characterised by a strong adherence to the word order of Latin, and might have been difficult for the layperson to comprehend. The later text made more concessions to the native grammar of English.
English translations of the Bible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia