Middle English Bible translations
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Middle English - it was not a fertile time for Bible translations but saw the first major translation, Wyclif's Bible, from John Wyclif. The period of Middle English begins with the Norman conquest and ends about 1500. The influence of French as the preferred language in Britain at the time limited English literature of all types.
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the English language underwent rapid change, evolving into the Middle English best known in the works of Chaucer.
John Wycliffe
To John Wycliffe belongs the honor of organizing the first complete translation of the Bible into Middle English in the 1380s. The translation was a collaborative effort, and it is not clear which portions are actually Wycliffe's work. Church authorities officially condemned the translators of the Bible into vernacular languages and called these heretics Lollards. Despite their prohibition, revised versions of Wycliffite Bibles remained in use for about 100 years.Impact of humanist scholarship
In the century just after Wycliffe's translation, two great events occurred which bore heavily on the spread of the Bible. One was the revival of learning, which made popular again the study of the classics and the classical languages. Critical and exact Greek scholarship became again a possibility. Under the influence of Erasmus and his kind, with their new insistence on classical learning, there came necessarily a new appraisal of the Vulgate as a translation of the original Bible. For a thousand years there had been no new study of the original Bible languages in Europe. The Latin of the Vulgate had become as sacred as the Book itself. But the revival of learning threw scholarship back on the sources of the text. Erasmus and others published versions of the Greek Testament which disturbed the Vulgate's position as a final version.The other great event of that same century was the invention of printing with movable type. It was in 1455 that Johannes Gutenberg printed his first major work, an edition of the Latin Vulgate, now called the Mazarin Bible. One can see instantly how printing affected the use of the Bible. It made it worth while to learn to read—there would be something to read. It made it worth while to write—there would be some one to read what was written.
- The Ormulum produced by the Augustinian monk Orm of Lincolnshire includes translations into the dialect of East Midland of some passages from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles used in the Mass in a lengthy set of homilies. The manuscript may have been written about 1150. It is written in the poetic meter iambic septenarius.
- Richard Rolle of Hampole (or de Hampole) was an Oxford-educated hermit and writer of religious texts. He translated several parts of the Bible including the Psalms in the early 1300s. Rolle's Psalms was translated into a Northern English dialect but later copies have been adapted into Southern English dialects. Rolle's Psalms was written as a Latin gloss with English appearing between the Latin text.
- At the same time another version of Psalms, the West Midland Psalms, was translated by an anonymous author in the West Midlands region. This version is also a gloss.
- Also in the early years of the 1300s, an English translation appeared, also by an anonymous translator, of the French language version of Revelation which was popular in England as well as France.
- Wyclif produced the first complete English language Bible in the late 1300s, often called Wyclif's Bible. His New Testament was completed in 1380 and the Old Testament a few years later. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was translated by Nicholas Hereford with Wyclif completing it and translating the New Testament himself. Some 30 copies of this Bible survive despite the fact that it was banned by the church along with the Lollards who used it.
- Wyclif's Bible was revised in the last years of the 1300s, perhaps by John Purvey. This edition was also banned and became even more popular than the first. Some 130 copies still exist, including some belonging to the British royal family.
- Be not youre herte affraied, ne drede it. Ye bileuen in god, and bileue ye in me. In the hous of my fadir ben many dwellyngis: if ony thing lasse I hadde seid to you, for I go to make redi to you a place. And if I go and make redi to you a place, eftsone I come and I schal take you to my silf, that where I am, ye be. And whidir I go ye witen: and ye witen the wey. (John 14:1-4)
- After the controversy was begun by Wyclif, a unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the New Testament was produced in English. The oldest remaining copy dates to about 1400.
- William Caxton translated many Bible stories and passages from the French which appeared in the Golden Legend which he published in 1483 and in The Book of the Knight in the Tower, published 1484.
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