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Podcast: Trinity Long Room Hub Podcasts
Episode: Translating the Bible in Old English Prose: A Book for Many?
Description: Recorded November 19, 2024.
A lecture by Francis Leneghan (University of Oxford) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series.
The rich corpus of Old English biblical prose remains a missing chapter in the history of the translation of the Bible. This paper will explore how, centuries before the Reformation, Old English prose authors sought to make the sacred words of the Bible available to a wide range of readers, lay and clerical. From the reign of King Alfred (871–99), a partial prose translation of the Psalms survives as well as a free rendering of sections of Exodus and the Acts of the Ap...