"Apart from their own transcendent beauty and universal truth, the Psalms have enriched the world by the creation of a literature which, century after century, has not only commanded the admiration of skeptics, but elevated the characters of innumerable believers, encouraged their weariness, consoled their sorrows, lifted their doubts, and guided their wandering footsteps." Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life.
With the exception of the merest anonymous fragments, the appearance of translations into the
vernacular of portions of the Bible is coincident with the beginnings of English literature. Caedmon was the first Englishman it may be the first individual of Gothic race who exchanged the gorgeous images of the old mythology for the chaste beauties of Christian poetry. He was a servant in the monastery at Whitby, and was an old man who knew nothing of the art of verse when the gift of song came to him. He had the care of the cattle; and one evening after he had gone to the stable, he fell asleep, with his mind full of the songs he had heard the others sing, and with his heart sore because he could not sing as they could. As he slept, One came to him who said: "Caedmon, sing me some song." But he could only reply sadly, as he had so often done to his fellow servants, that he could not sing. The Heavenly Visitor, however, assured him that he would sing, and told him to sing of the beginning of created things. Whereupon he began to recite verses to God's praise; and when he awoke, he found that he could not only remember them, but could add to their number. More than that; those in authority who heard his songs declared that heavenly grace had been granted to him, a verdict which won the approval of succeeding ages.
These songs of Caedmon were sung before the year 680, that being the year of his death; and Bede tells that he sang the story of Genesis and Exodus and many other tales in the Sacred Scriptures. He sang, too, the story of Christ and the Apostles, and about heaven and hell. Others after him tried to make religious poems, but none could compare with him; for he learned the art of song not from men, but, Divinely aided, received that gift. His poems are paraphrases rather than translations; but as we read his earnest, passionate words, twice God-given, we cannot but feel something of the awe which fills the heart as we stand at the headwaters of some great history making river. We can only see him now through the mists of the ages, a dim figure indeed. But his work abides; and who can doubt that as he sang of the Creation and of Christ, of the joys of heaven and the woes of hell, to the simple folk of his time, his message was owned by. Him who gave it, and that many a burden was made lighter and many a yearning met; that eyes were filled with the love light, and weary, aspiring hearts drawn upwards to God?
Not long after Caedmon's time we find others working in the field of actual translation. Early in the eighth century, the Psalter was rendered into Anglo-Saxon by Ealdhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne, who died in the year 709; and by Guthlac, a hermit of Crowland, near Peterborough. Three copies of the former translation, belonging to the ninth and tenth centuries, still survive. At Ealdhelm's request, it is said, Egbert, Bishop of Holy Island, about the same time completed a version of the Gospels in Anglo-Saxon. A copy of this work is still preserved in the British Museum. The records also make mention of Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, of whose translation of the greater part of the historical books of the Old Testament two copies, of date about 1000 A.D., are extant. There were probably others who did work of the same sort which has not survived, but which all went to make the grand result grander and richer in the ages to come. The stream was still very tiny; but it was of pure water, and it must have refreshed many a thirsty soul. It is significant, too, that then, as now, when the Word was precious to men's souls, they sought to share their joy and their treasure with others, and to let them know the good news at first-hand in the records of Divine grace.
The great name, however, in these early ages is that of the Venerable Bede, with whom English prose may fairly be said to begin. He was a contemporary of the others who have just been named; and it shows how men's minds were being turned towards God, that go many workers were now busy in the field of translation. The story of how he finished his translation into English of the Gospel of St. John has often been told, and will never be forgotten. When the last day of his life had come, the dying man called his scholars to him, that he might dictate more of his translation to them. "There is still a chapter wanting," he was told, "and it is hard for thee to question thyself longer."
"It is easily done," replied the dying scholar and saint; "take thy pen and write swiftly."
Throughout the day they wrote, and when evening fell, "There is yet another sentence unwritten, dear master," said the scribe.
"Write it quickly," said the master.
"It is finished now."
"Thou sayest true," was the reply, "all is finished for now."
He sang glory to God, and passed to be with his Lord. He was a great scholar, and had brought honor to the monastery at Jarrow-on-Tyne; and he lives for ever in the story of the English Bible. Nor in presence of his love for the Scripture and his yearning that others also should know and love it, can it be too strongly insisted on that a monastery like his had little or nothing in common with the institutions which overshadowed the land seven centuries later. At its best the early monastery was not a place to which men fled from duty, but a place to which they turned that they might be fitted to follow wherever duty led. It was a Mission Institute, a Training College, a Bible Society, all in one. It was there that the literary treasures which have come down to us from these early ages were lovingly penned, and that the love of letters was kept alive in times of ignorance and continuous warfare.
King Alfred the Great has also a place in this Anglo-Saxon legion of honor; for when the document entitled Alfred's Dooms was prepared, he put as the first of the laws of ancient England a translation of the Ten Commandments in forcible, simple Anglo-Saxon. He seems also to have set himself to translate the Psalter, which, with the Gospels, was the favored portion of Scripture then as it is now; but, between the Danes and other cares of the State, he was never able to finish that work. An interesting insight into the spirit of these old Anglo-Saxon translators is afforded in a homily which has come down to us on Reading the Scriptures; the work of Aelfric, himself a translator. "Whoever," he says, "would be one with God, must often pray, and often read the Holy Scriptures. For when we pray, we speak to God; and when we read the Bible, God speaks to us. ... The whole of the Scriptures are written for our salvation, and by them we obtain the knowledge of the truth." If such views were at all common, it is no wonder that so many set themselves to make it possible for others, who were able to read, to study the Scriptures for themselves. There is a simple directness about these words, too, which shows that the Mystery of Iniquity had not yet attained the predominance.
The work of these Anglo-Saxon translators, and of others like them who live only in the grand result, was doubtless meant principally for use in the Church service, there being no reading public then; and they must have cheered and guided many in these early ages. The light would be all the brighter because the surrounding darkness was so dense. The Norman Conquest, however, wrought a great change. The Saxon manuscripts were despised by the new rulers in Church and State; and by-and-by they became unintelligible to the common people themselves. In little more than a century after the Invasion, in addition to the Latin Church hymns the Norman population had a prose translation of the Psalms in their own Anglo-Norman, and the French mediaeval literature was rich in translations of portions of the Bible. But that, of course, meant nothing for the masses of the English people. Meanwhile, however, the fusion was gradually going on which led to the supremacy of the English language; and, in spite of all that Bible translation has done to guide and fix the language at every stage in its development, it is probable that Wycliffe's Bible in 1382 appeared almost as early as any version could which was to be the Bible of the whole nation, and to retain its place among the English people.
Another influence was likewise at work which may also have had something to do with the cessation of Bible translation among the Anglo-Saxons. Increasingly as Romanism developed on the lines which it still unhappily follows, and sacerdotalism was casting its baleful shadow all over the land, a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures was regarded with suspicion by the ecclesiastical authorities. As mutterings of dissatisfaction, too, began to be heard among the awakening nations, the influence of the Bible was felt to be hostile alike to the tyrant and the priest. It cannot be claimed for the Mediaeval Church that she ever encouraged a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures. The utmost she ever did was to tolerate a knowledge of the Psalter, of Service Books, and, in the fifteenth century, of the Plenaria. These were little books with translations of some paragraphs from the Gospels and Epistles read in the Church service, accompanied by legends and popular tales. It is quite beyond dispute that a knowledge of the Bible in the vernacular, especially by the uneducated, was almost always regarded as a sign of heretical tendencies. In the year 1229, a Council at Toulouse had decreed: "We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testaments, except perhaps the Psalter, or Breviary for the offices, or the hours of the Blessed Virgin, which some out of devotion wish to have; but having any of these books translated into the vulgar tongue we strictly forbid.
During the period usually described as that of Old English, from 1250 to 1350, in spite of all the reactionary forces at work, portions of Scripture continued to be rendered into the vernacular by zealous Christian men eager that their countrymen should hear the voice of God for themselves. That it was so often the Psalter which was thus translated may indicate that this was deemed the line of least resistance. Towards the end of the thirteenth century an author, now unknown, made a translation of the Psalms into verse; the language being simple and full of expression. Then, about the year 1325, two translations of the Psalter into English prose appeared almost simultaneously. The one was by William of Shoreham, a country parish priest in the county of Kent; the other was the work of Richard Rolle, known as the hermit of Hampole. The former wrote the Psalms verse by verse in Latin and English; the translation being generally verbal and faithful. The latter had in the first instance written a commentary on the Psalms. This led him afterwards to translate and publish it with an English commentary. In his ' Psalms in Human Life,' Mr. Prothero says that Rolle's work on its spiritual side illustrates one of the movements which led up to the Reformation.
Somewhat later, too, there was a translator, John of Trevisa in Cornwall, who so far as the history of Scripture is concerned is somewhat elusive. He turned the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden into English verse about 1387 ; and in the preface to the Authorized Version he is mentioned on behalf of the Translators as one of their forerunners in the good work. Much about that time, even in our King Richard the Second's days, John Trevisa translated them the Gospels, that is into English. The first reference to his work as Bible translator is by Caxton in 1482; but whatever he did, it is not certain that any of his work remains.
When Sir Thomas More asserted that it was not the case that Wycliffe was the first who carried through a translation of the whole Bible into English for the use of the laity, he added that he himself had seen beautiful manuscripts of the English Bible which belonged to a date long prior to that of Wycliffe. This was not only accepted later by a man so learned as Archbishop Ussher, but Henry Wharton his editor, in turn credited John of Trevisa with having been the translator of one of those pre-Wycliffe manuscripts which they also had both seen. By-and-by, however, Wharton came to see that both he and Ussher, as well as More, had been wrong, and that what they had all seen were nothing more than copies of Wycliffe's version. There is documentary proof that at the time of the Reformation there were several of these Wycliffe manuscripts in the hands of Roman Catholic prelates. Certain it is that neither Wycliffe nor the men of his generation knew anything about any predecessor in this field. Had there been earlier versions of the whole Bible in existence, the wrath of the Reformer's enemies because of what he did would have been altogether unmeaning.
For the whole period prior to Wycliffe, who first rendered the whole Bible into English and made it the people's book, the state of the case cannot be better summarized than has been done by Professor Lechler of Leipzig, with whose statement this article may be brought to a close. "The whole result for this period, as well of the Anglo-Saxon as of the Norman and Old English tongue, stands as follows:
- A translation of the entire Bible was never during this period accomplished in England, and was never even apparently contemplated .
- The Psalter was the only book of Scripture which was fully and literally translated into all the three languages Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Old English.
- In addition, several books of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament, were translated partially or in select passages, as by Aelfric, leaving out of view poetical versions, and the translation of the Gospel of John by Bede, which celebrated work has not come down to us.
- Last of all and this fact is of great importance in none of these translations was it designed to make the Word of God accessible to the mass of the people, and to spread Scriptural knowledge among them. The only object which was kept in view was partly to furnish aid to the clergy and to render service to the educated class.
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