Old Latin Intervention in the Old English Heptateuch

Abstract

The Old Testament translations in the compilation known as the Old English Hexateuch or Heptateuch are based on good Vulgate exemplars. That is to say, where variation can be demonstrated between the version associated with Jerome's late fourth-century revision and the pre-Hieronymian ‘Old Latin’ versions, the Old English translations can be shown to derive from exemplars carrying the former. The opening of Genesis–‘On angynne gesceop God heofonan 7 eorðan. seo eorðe soðlice was idel 7 æmti’–illustrates this general rule. Behind it is the Vulgate ‘in principio creauit Deus caelum et terram. terra autem erat inanis et uacua”, not a version with the characteristic ‘old’ readings, such as fecit for creauit and inuisibilis et inconpositas for inani et vacua. Indeed, much of the Old English translation, especially in Genesis, is sufficiently full and faithful for the identification of specific Vulgate variants in the exemplar text to be made with some confidence and for the influence on it of the important Carolingian revisions asssociated with Orléans and Tours to be demonstrated. There is, however, a small number of Old English readings throughout the Heptateuch for which Latin parallels in the thirty or so collated Vulgate manuscripts are unknown or hardly known. Instead, they appear to derive from models available in pre-Hieronymian texts. Uncertainty often surrounds their identification, owing to the complexities both of the translation process and the history of the Latin Bible. Understanding their origins involves consideration of the influence of patristic literature and the liturgy, as well as the availability of ‘contaminated’ exemplar texts.