Anglo-Saxon Studies

Francis Leneghan

Anglo-Saxon Studies

ISSN 1475-2468

General Editors

Catherine Cubitt

John Hines

David Petts

Andrew Rabin

‘Anglo-Saxon Studies’ aims to provide a forum for the best scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the period from the end of Roman Britain to the Norman Conquest, including comparative studies involving adjacent populations and periods; both new research and major re-assessments of central topics are welcomed.

Books in the series may be based in any one of the principal disciplines of archaeology, art history, history, language and literature, and inter- or multi-disciplinary studies are encouraged.

Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the editors or the publisher at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration.

Professor Catherine Cubitt, katy.cubitt@uea.ac.uk

Professor Emeritus John Hines, hines@cardiff.ac.uk

Doctor David Petts, d.a.petts@durham.ac.uk

Professor Andrew Rabin, andrew.rabin@louisville.edu

Boydell & Brewer, editorial@boydellandbrewer.com

Recently published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

Details

Old English Biblical Prose

Stable URL:https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-307500

Open Access license

Provides the first in-depth study of the earliest attempts to make the sacred words of the Bible available to English readers, clerical and lay, in prose writing.

"This is a hugely valuable study - deeply informative about an important tradition of biblical translation from the early medieval period, bringing together material that has previously been considered in isolation, and drawing out a big-picture account of the ebb and flow of biblical translations into the vernacular. Will be a useful point of reference for any interested reader and includes surprises and delights for even the most specialist readers." Professor Jonathan Wilcox, University of Iowa

The story of the English Bible begins not with the King James Version or Wycliffe but in the Old English period. Between the ninth and eleventh centuries, a remarkably diverse corpus of biblical translations, paraphrases, adaptations and summaries were produced in Old English. Yet while Old English biblical verse has been extensively studied, the much larger corpus of vernacular biblical prose remains neglected by historians of the Bible and medievalists.

This book provides the first in-depth study of the genre. Dispelling the notion that access to the Bible was restricted to the Latinate clergy in the early medieval period, it demonstrates how Old English biblical prose made key elements of Scripture available and meaningful to laypeople. Through case studies of the Prose Psalms, Mosaic Prologue to the Domboc, Wessex Gospels, Heptateuch and Treatise on the Old and New Testaments, as well as many other works, it highlights the crucial contributions of well-known figures such as King Alfred and Ælfric of Eynsham while also showcasing the work of anonymous authors who translated, adapted and interpreted the Bible, sometimes in creative and surprising ways. Cumulatively, these case studies show how vernacular biblical prose played a central role in the emergence of English national identity before the Norman Conquest.

This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.

Author

Francis Leneghan

PublisherD.S.Brewer

Print publication date Jan, 2026

Print ISBN 9781843847601

EISBN 9781805439271

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Anglo-Saxon Studies

Old English Biblical Prose

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