Old+English+Translations

In the beginning ** the land we now know as Great Britain was inhabited by the Celtic people. The coming of the legions under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar opened the region to the influence of Rome. As Rome was converted to Christianity, the Celtic people followed suit, but the influence was short lived as the Romans pulled back and new influences arrived. In the fifth and sixth centuries waves of Germanic invaders, the Anglo-Saxons, drove the Celts out of England, and into the pockets of the regions now known as Wales and Scotland.

Christianity returned to England, the land the Anglo-Saxons named “angle-land”, in the seventh century with the coming of two waves of missionaries. In North England the influence came with the arrival of St Patrick and the Irish Christian Celts. In the south it came with St Augustine and the Roman church. Both groups brought the Latin Bible with them. Shortly thereafter some of the earliest attempts to translate the Bible stories into the Old English vernacular began.

Earliest Translators: Caedmon Aldhelm The Venerable Bede

Later Translators: Alfred the Great Aldred Later Glosses Ælfric of Eynsham The Wessex Gospels

With the coming of the Normans under william the Conqueror in 1066, the stage was set for the evolution of our language into Middle English, and the first full English translation of the Bible.