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fame bngiiafre were read in their reli;fiou3 aflemblies. The 

 whole fcriptiire is faid by fome to have been traiillated into 

 the Anglo-Saxon by Bede, about the year ^oi ; though 

 otiicrs contend that he only trandated the Gofpels; and others 

 afcribe to him only the golpvl of St. Joh:i. 



We have certain books, or parts of the Bible, by feveral 

 other tranflators ; as, r. The Pfalms, by Adelm, bifliop of 

 Shireborn, contemporary with Bcde, about the year 706 ; 

 though by others this verfion is attributed to king Alfred, 

 who lived ne?r two hundred years after, and who is faid by 

 Mr. Fox (ubi infra) to have trandated both the Old and Ncv/ 

 Tcllament into his native language ; and by others to have 

 tranflated the greatcft part of the Now Telbment : but the 

 authority on which thtfe affertions is founded is too precarious 

 to claim any great degree of confidencr. On equally uncer- 

 tain authority it has been faid, that the whole Bible was 

 tranflated into the Saxon language in the reign of Athelftan. 

 Bale, however, " Script. Brit." cent. 2. c. 27, cites the tefti- 

 Diony of Malmcfbury to this purpofe ; a;id archbiftiop Ulher 

 refers this to the year 930. Some bcoits of the Bible' were 

 tranflated by EadtVied, or Egbert, bifliop of Lindisfarne, 

 about the year 680, according to the conjecture of Mr. Sel- 

 dcn. A ceKbrated verfion of the four Gofpels in the Saxon 

 language, faid to be made by one Aldred, a prieft, is re- 

 ported to have been found in the celebrated code of bifliop 

 Eadfried. Adelm is faid to have written a letter to Ead- 

 fricd, extant in " Wharton's Audarium Hift. Dogm. 

 Uffcrii," p. 351 ; in which he exhorts him, for the common 

 benefit and ufe of all people, to put the fcriptnres into the 

 vulgar language, which Butler, in his book again ft the vulgar 

 tranllation, fays he did. And archbifhop Uiher, ia his 

 " Hift. Dogm." c. 5. informs us, that the Saxon tranfiation 

 of the Evangelills, done by Eadfried, without dillribution 

 of chapters, was in the poffeffion of Mr. Rob. Bowyer. In 

 the Cotton library is a book of the four Gofpels, faid by 

 Wharton, in his " Anglia Sacra," part i. p. 695, to be 

 written by bilhop Eadfried himfclf, and which had been 

 adorned with pictures, gold, and jewels, by Ethclwoldf, bi- 

 fliop of Winchcfter. Eadfried, or Egbert, died in 721. But 

 fomebaw doubted the exidence of fuch an Anglo-Saxon MS. 

 A verfion of the Pfalms in Anglo-Saxon was publiflied by 

 ■Spclman in 1640. 2. The Evangeli.^s, flill extant, done 

 from the ancient Vulgate, before it was revifcd by St. Jerom, 

 bv an author unknown, and publlilied by Matth. Parker in 

 1571. This was printed from a MS. now in the Bodleian 

 library, under the direftion of archbidiop Parker, by John 

 Fox the martyrologiit, with the following title, " The Gof- 

 pels of the fowre Evangelills, tranflated in the olde Saxons' 

 tyme out of the Latin into the vulgare toung of the Saxons, 

 and now publiflied for tellimonie of the fame ;" at London, 

 by John Daye, 1571. This edition has a preface by John 

 Fox, and is dedicated to queen Elizabctii. Another edition 

 of this verfion was publiflied at Dort in 1665, by Dr. Thomas 

 Marfliall, who tells us that he could afeertain neither its au- 

 thor nor age. An old Saxon verfion of feveral books of the 

 Bible, was made by Elfric, abbot of Malmefoan-, and after- 

 ward?, viz. in 9^5, nrchbi fhop of Canterbury ; feveral fragments 

 of it were publiflied by Will. Lilly, or W. L'lfle, in 163S, 

 the genuir^e copy by Edm. Tluvaites, in 1699, at Oxford. 



Wm. L'lfle obfervcs, on occafion of this publication, that 

 if that good ordinance firft enatled by God, Deut. x, 5. for 

 the prelervalion of the book of the law, by keeping a 

 copy of it in the ark, had been continued, and flandard 

 B.bles had been preferved in our cathedral churches, as it has 

 been fince appointed by king Alfred, we might now have 

 ftiewed the \\hole book of Gtd, or the entire Old and New 

 Tcflair.eiit in Sixon, which was the Englifli of thofe times, 



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tranflated both by that king, and the archbifliop of Canter- 

 bury, Elfrk. Elfric tranflated the Pentateuch, Jofluia, 

 Judges, Ruth, four books of Samuel, entitled in Latin, liber 

 regum, a fifth book called Verba Dierum, or Chronicles, the . 

 Pialtcr, three books of Solomon, vi/,. Proverbs, Ecclefian.c3, 

 the chief of all fongs, the books cf Wildom and Ecclcfialli- 

 cus, the prophets Ifaiah, Jerenjiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the 

 tv.-elve Prophets, Ezra, Job, Tobias, Ellhtv, Judith, and 

 Maccabees. Hence we ir.ay conclude, with little doubt, 

 that the books of the New Teftament were before tranflated 

 into Saxon, and commonly read in that language. The Pen- 

 tateuch, J';fliua, and Judges, of Elfric's tranfiation, are pre- 

 ferved, fays Uflier, in Cotton's library ; where is alio a 

 Pfalter, with feveral hymns of the Old and New Tcfl;ament, 

 with the Apoftlcs' and Athanafian creed, with an Engliflx 

 interlineary tra;:flation. The book appears, by a note at the 

 end of it, to have been wiitten in the year 1049. The Anglo- 

 Saxon verfion, above-mentioned, is divided into feftions, over 

 each of which is placed a rubric, direcling when it fliould be 

 read ; and this circumftance fliews, that at this time the Holy 

 Scriptures were read in the public fervice of the church in a 

 language which the people underfl.ood. Various readings 

 from this verfion of the four Gofpels were firft quoted by 

 Mill (Prolog. § 1462.), who took them from the papers of 

 Marfliall. With refpecl to its antiquity, the learned are not 

 agreed : fome have referred it to the fixth or feventh centuiy, 

 fince Bede died A.D. 735, but others, more generally, to 

 fome part of the eighth century. For an account of the 

 MSS. of the Anglo-Saxon verfion, fee Le Long. Bibl. 

 Sacr. torn. i. p. 422, 423. ed. 1723 ; and for a complete cata- 

 logue of Anglo-Saxon MSS. in general, Wanlcy's Appendix 

 to Hlckes's Thefaurus, publiflied at Oxford in 1705, folio. 

 Lewis's Hift. Eng. Tranfl. of the Bible, p. 5, &c. 



Bibles, Eitgiyii. The firft Englifli Bible we read of was 

 that tranflated by J. Wickliff'e, about the year 1370, ac- 

 cording to fome, and 1380, according to others; but never 

 printed, though there are MS. copies of it in feveral public 

 ar.d private libraries. The MS. of the Old Teftament, 

 ending with the fecond book of the Maccabees, in St. Joiin's 

 college Oxford, is faid to have been written by Wickliffe 

 himfclf. This circumftance, though exprcflfed on the top of 

 the leaf before Genefis, is very doubtful.' This tvanflatioa 

 was made from the Latin Bibles then in common ufe, not be- 

 caufe Wickliffe tliought the Latin to be tlie original, or of 

 the fame authority with the Hebrew and Greek text, but 

 beeaufe he did not undcrPtand thofe languages well enougli 

 to tranflate from them. He likewife cnofe to tranflate word 

 for word, as had been before done in the Anglo-Saxon tranf- 

 lation, without obferving the idioms of the feverallanguages, 

 fo that this tranflation is in fome places not very intelligible 

 to thofe who do not underftand Latii. Before the inven- 

 tion of priating, tranferipts were obtained with difficulty, 

 and copies were fo rare, that the price of one of Wicklilfe's 

 Englifli New Teftaments appear?, from tlie regiftry of Wil-. 

 liam Alnewick, bifhop of Norwich, in 14.29, to have been 

 four marks and forty pence, or 2I. 16s. 8d. This tranfla- 

 tion gave fuch offence, that a bill was brought into the Houfe 

 of Lords, 13 Ric. 11. A.D. 1390, for fupprefling it. But by 

 the oppofition of the duke of Lancafter, the king's uncle, 

 the bill was thrown out of the houfe. Wickliffe's followers 

 were encouraged, by this favourable circumftance, to revife 

 the tranflation of their mafter, or rather to make another not 

 fo ftrift and verbal, but more free and accommodated to the 

 fenfe. The MS. copies of this tranflation are more rare than 

 thofe of the other ; but they are found in the Bodleian 

 library, and in other libraries both of Oxford and Cambridge. 

 J. dc Trevifa, vicar of Berkley in Glouceft.erniiie, who died 



about 



