VERSIONS
375
VERSIONS
'see Mayor and Luniby, "Boda; hist, eccl.", 178).
2) The "Glossed Psalters" have come down to ua
n twelve MSS., si.x of which represent the Roman
r'salter, and six the Gallican. The oldest and moat
mportant of these MSS. is the so-called Vespasian
I'salter, written in Mercia in the first half of the ninth
century. (3) The Paris Psalter advances be.yond
he glosses in as far as it is a real translation of Ps.
, 1-1, 10, ascribed by some scholars to King Alfred
d. 901), though others deny this view. Cf. William
if Malmesbury, "Gesta regum Anglorum", II, 123.
4) The Lindisfarne Gospels, called also the Durham
iook, the Book of St. Cuthbert, present the Latin
ext of the Gospels dating from Redfrith, Bishop of
lindisfarne (698-721), with the so-called Northum-
irian Gloss on the Gospels, added about 9.50 by
Udred. Cf. Dr. Charles O'Conor, "Bibl. stowensis",
I (1818-19), 180. (5) The Rushworth version of the
jospels contains an independent translation of the
irst Gospel, with glosses on the second, third, and
ourth Gospels, based on the Lindisfarne glosses,
""aerman, a priest of Harewood (Harwood), made the
ranslation of St. Matthew and furnished the glosses
m St. Mark, i, 1-ii, 1.5; St. John, xviii, 1-3; the rest of
he work is taken from Owun's glosses. (6) The
Vest-Saxon Gospels are a rendering of the Gospels
iriginating in the south of England about the year
000; seven manuscripts of this version have come
town to us. Cf. W. W. Skeat, "The Gospels in
inglo-Saxon etc." (Cambridge, 1871-87). (7) ^1-
ric himself states in his work " Do vetere testamento",
s'ritten about 1010, that he had translated the Penta-
euch, Josue, Judges, Kings, Job, Esther, Judith, and
he Books of the Machabees. The translator fre-
[uently abridges, slightly in Genesis, more notably
n the Book of Judges and the following books; he
.dopts a metrical form in Judith. Cf. Niedner in
'Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie" (185.5-56).
B. Eleventh lo Fourteenth Century. — The second leriod coincides with the Anglo-Norman time, xtending from the tenth to the thirteenth or four- eenth century. During this time, IVench or the ^.nglo-Norman dialect reigned supreme among the ipper classes, and in academic and official circles, rhile English was confined to the lower classes and he country-districts. The Bible renderings during he twelfth, thirteenth, and early fourteenth centuries I'ere in French, whether they were made in England T brought over from France. Before the middle of he fourteenth century the entire Old Testament and
great part of the New Testament had been trans- ited into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period cf. Berger, "La Bible frangaise au moyen Sge", 'aris, 1884, 78 sqq.). As to English work, we may ote two transcripts of the West-Saxon Gospels uring the course of the eleventh centurj' and some opies of the same Gospels into the Kentish dialect lade in the twelfth century. The thirteenth century « an absolute blank as far as our knowledge of its yUglish Bible study is concerned. The English which merged about the middle and during the second alf of the fourteenth century was practically a new inguage, so that both the Old Enghsh versions rhich might have remained, and the French versions itherto in use, failed to fulfil their purpo.se.
G. Fourteenth Century and After. — The third eriod extends from the late fourteenth to the six- eenth or early seventeenth century, and has furnished s with the pre-Wyclifite, the Wychf, and the Tinted versions of the Bible.
(1) Pre-Wyclifite Translations. — Among the pre- ^'yclifite translations we may note: (a) The West •lidland Psalter, probably written between 1340 and 3.50; some attribute it to William of Shorcham. It ontains the whole P.salter, eleven canticles, and the ithanasian Creed, and is preserved in three manu- cripts (cf. Bulbring, "The Earliest Complete English
Prose Psalter", I, London, 1891). (b) Richard
Rolle's (d. 1349) English version of the "Comnient.ary
on the Psalms" by Peter Lombard spread in nvmier-
ous copies throughout the country (cf. Bramley,
"The Psalter and Certain Canticles . . . by Richard
RoUe of Hampole", Oxford, 1884). (c) Here belongs
a version of the Apocalypse with a commentary; the
latter was for .some time attributed to Wyclif, but
is really a version of a Norman commentary from the
first half of the thirteenth century. Its later revisions
agree so well with the \\yolitite version that they
must have been utilized in its preparation, (d) The
Pauline Epistles were rendered in the North Mid-
lands or the North; they are still extant in a MS. of
the fifteenth century, (e) Another version of the
Pauline Epistles, and of the Epistles of St. James and
St. Peter (only the first) originated in the south of
England somewhere in the fourteenth century (cf.
the edition of A. C. Paves, Cambridge, 1904). (f)
A scholar of the north of England translated also
commentaries on the Go.spels of St. Matthew-, St.
Mark, and St. Luke, (g) Several MSS. preserve to
us a version of the Books of Acts and the Catholic
Epistles, either separately or in conjunction with a
fragmentary Southern version of the Pauline Epistles
and part of the CathoUc Epistles, mentioned under
(5). Cf. A. C. Paues, "A Fourteenth-Century English
Biblical Version", Cambridge, 1904. (h) Besides
these versions of particular books of Holy Scripture,
there existed numerous renderings of the Our Father,
the Ten Commandments, the Life, Passion, and
Resurrection of Christ, and of the parts read on
Sundays and Feastdays in the Mass. In general, if
we may believe the testimony of Archbishop Cran-
mer, Sir Thomas More, Foxe the martyrologist, and
the authors of the Preface to the Reims Testament,
the whole Bible was to be found in the mother tongue
long before John Wyclif was born (cf. "American
Ecclesiastical Review", XXXII, Philadelphia, June,
1905, .594).
(2) Wyclifite Versions. — The Wyclifite versions embrace the earlier and the later version of this name, (a) Early Version. — The Early Version was probably completed in 1382, the Later Version about 1388 (cf. Madden and Forshall, "The Holy Bible . . . made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his P^ollowers", Oxford, 18.50; Gasquet, "The Old English Bible and other Essays", London, 1897, pp. 102 sqq.). It is quite uncertain what part Wyclif himself took in the work that bears his name. As far as the New Testament is concerned, Wyclif's author- ship of the Early Version is based on his authorship of the "Commentary on the Gospels", the text of which is said to have been used in the Early Edition; the style of this text is claimed to resemble the style of the tr.an.slation of the Book of Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse. But the style of the text of the "Commentary" resembles that of the Later Version rather than that of the Early Version; besides, pas- sages from both the Old and the New Testament of the Early Version are quoted in the "Commentary on the Gospels". It would be folly, therefore, not to assign the authorship of the "Commentary" to a time posterior to the Early Edition. As to the Old Testament, the translator's original copy and a coeval transcript are still extant, but both break off at Baruch, iii, 19, with the words: "explicit translacionem Nicholay deherford". It is claimed that a similarity of style and mode of translating shows that Nicholas of Herford translated the Old Testament up to Bar., iii, 19. It is claimed, furthermore, that the remain- ing portion of the Old Testament was translated by one hand, the one who made the version of the New Testament. But both these claims rest on very slender evidence. The extant translator's copy is written in not less than five h.ands, differing in orthog- raphy and dialect. Nicholas, therefore, translated
