The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.
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]
- ^ 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
- ^ Stanton 2002, p. 126, 162.