The Old English Heptateuch, by Francis Leneghan

The Old English ‘Heptateuch’ is the name given by modern editors to an anthology of prose translations and paraphrases of the first seven books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges) made around the turn of the eleventh century, preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509 (MS L) (c. 1050–1100). An illustrated version of the first six books, known as the Old English ‘Hexateuch’, survives in London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B. IV (MS B) (c. 1000–1050) (to read about this manuscript, see Thijs Porck's blog here). The translations and paraphrases were done by a team of anonymous authors and Ælfric of Eynsham, who was responsible for parts of Genesis and Numbers, as well as Joshua and Judges. Together with the tenth-century Wessex Gospels, this project constitutes the most ambitious work of English biblical prose prior to the late fourteenth-century Wycliffite Bible.

Ælfric also wrote an Old English preface to his translation of Genesis which is included in both manuscripts. Here Ælfric writes to his patron, the West Saxon Ealdorman Æthelweard, that the task of translating Genesis is swiðe pleolic (‘very difficult’) to undertake: although the translation will contain ne mare buton þa nacedan gerecednisse (‘no more than the naked narrative’), the book’s meaning is swiþe deop gastlice to understandenne (‘very profound to understand in the spiritual sense’). The Heptateuch was probably designed to be read by noble lay readers such as Æthelweard, who could take inspiration from its accounts of heroic military leaders of the Israelites such as Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Samson. It would also have been useful to secular priests, whose poor knowledge of the Bible is singled out for criticism by Ælfric in the Preface to Genesis.

            For the most part, the prose translators follow this dictum of sticking closely to their main source, the Latin Vulgate Bible produced by St Jerome in the fourth century. This faithful approach is evident in Ælfric’s treatment of the opening verses of Genesis. The Vulgate text reads as follows:

1. 1. In principio, creavit Deus caelum et terram. ^1.2 Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae super faciem abyssi, et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. ^1.3 Dixitque Deus, “Fiat lux.” Et facta est lux.

[^1.1 In the beginning God created heaven and earth. ^1.2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. ^1.3 And God said: ‘Be light made. And light was made.’]

In rendering this passage into Old English, Ælfric translates ‘word-for-word’, altering only the syntax (word-order) to produce idiomatic vernacular prose:

1. 1. On anginne gesceop God heofenan and eorþan. ^1.2 Seo eorðe soþlice wæs ydel and æmtig and þeostru wæron ofer þære niwelnisse brandnisse, and Godes gast wæs geferod ofer wateru. ^1.3 God cwæþ þa: ‘Geweorðe leoht’, and leoht wearþ geworht.

[^1.1 In the beginning God created heaven and earth. ^1.2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. ^1.3 God said then: ‘Be light made. And light was made.’]

While Genesis is translated faithfully, the following books are treated more selectively in the manner of paraphrase. Increasingly large sections are omitted, notably long genealogies and legal passages, while references to the misconduct of the patriarchs are silently passed over. The result of is a more readable, streamlined version of the opening books of the Old Testament which foregrounds the central theme of obedience to God’s law. For example, the anonymous translator of Leviticus omits the last chapter (Ch. 27), which lists penalties for offences, and brings the book to an end with an emphatic warning of the dangers of disobeying the Lord (Ch. 26):

^{Lev. 26.41} And ic ga ongen eow and gelæde eow on feonda land, oþ eowre lyþre mod ablisige. Þonne gebidde ge for eowrum arleasnissum, ⁴² and ic gyme min wedd þe ic behet Abrahame and Isaace and Iacobe. Ic gime þæs landes; ⁴³ þonne ge hit forlætað, hit licað me þeah hit weste sig. ⁴⁴ Ic eom Drihten eowre God ⁴⁵ þe eow ut alædde of Egipta lande beforan ealles folces gesihþe.’

Ðis synd þa gebodu and domas and laga þe Drihten gesette betwyx him and Israhela folc on Sinai dune.

[‘^{Lev. 26.41} And I will go against you and lead you into the land of enemies, unless your vile mind is ashamed. Then you will pray for your wickednesses, ⁴² and I will take care of my covenant that I promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I will take care of the land ⁴³ when you abandoned it, it pleases me although it is waste. ⁴⁴ I am the Lord your God ⁴⁵ that led you out of the land of Egypt before the sight of all the people.’]

Listen to a recording of this passage.

Ælfric’s homiletic approach becomes more pronounced in the version of Judges, the last book in the Heptateuch. This work draws out the spiritual meaning of the biblical narrative to other parts of the Bible, notably the Psalms. The book—and the Old English Heptateuch as a whole—concludes with an account of the history of Christian kingship, tracing its development from the judges to the first kings of Israel, via the Roman consuls and emperors and the conversion of Constantine, culminating in the reigns of three greatest Christian rulers of the English, Alfred (r. 871–899), Æthelstan (r. 924–939) and Edgar (r. 959–975) (listen to a recording of this passage):

On Englalande eac oft wæron cyningas sigefæste þurh God, swa swa we secgan gehyrdon. Swa swa wæs Ælfred cining þe oft gefeaht wið Denan, oþ þæt he sige gewann and bewerode his leode. Swa gelice Æðestan þe wið Anlaf gefeaht and his firde ofsloh and aflimde hine sylfne and he on sibbe wunude siþþan mid his leode. Eadgar se æðela and se anræda cining arærde Godes lof on his leode gehwær, ealra cininga swioðost ofer Engla ðeode, and him God gewilde his wiðerwinnan a, ciningas and eorlas, þæt hi comon him to buton ælcum gefeohte, friðes wilniende, him underþeodde to þam þe he wolde. And he was gewurðod wide geond land.

We endiað nu þisne cwide, þus þancience ðam Almihtigan ealra his godnissa, se ðe æfre rixað on ecnisse. AMEN.

[There were also kings in England often victorious through God, just as we have heard said. So was King Alfred who often fought against the Danes until he achieved victory and protected his people. So also was Æthelstan who fought against Anlaf and slew his army and put him to flight and he dwelt in peace afterwards with his people. The noble and single-minded king Edgar raised up God’s praise everywhere among his people, the greatest of all the kings of the English, and God gave him power over his adversaries always, kings and nobles, so that they came to him without battle, suing for peace, submitting themselves to him as he wished; and he was honoured far and wide throughout the land.

We end now this speech, thus thanking the Almighty for all of his goodnesses, he who rules forever in eternity. AMEN.]

In this passage, Ælfric makes the political relevance of the Old Testament to contemporary English readers plain: if kings wish to be victorious against their wiðerwinnan (‘adversaries’), they too must obey God’s laws and raise up Godes lof (‘God’s praise’).

Select bibliography

Digitised manuscripts

London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B. IV (Old English Illustrated Hexateuch):

https://www.bl.uk/research/digitised-manuscripts/ [currently unavailable]

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509 (Old English Heptateuch):

https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/8bb9aff1-d6ab-4b6b-8322-09fa69...

Editions

Crawford, S. J., ed. The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament, and his Preface to Genesis, EETS o.s. 160 (London: Oxford University Press, 1922).

Gallagher, John J., and Michael Everson, eds. The Old English Bible I: The Heptateuch (Genesis to Judges), Corpus Textuum Anglicorum 1 (Dundee: Evertype, 2024).

Griffith, Mark. 'Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis: Commentary with Text, Translation, Sources and Analogues and Parallel Passages in Ælfric’s Works', SELIM 30 (2025), 1–71.

Marsden, Richard, ed. The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s ‘Libellus de veteri testament et novo’, EETS o.s. 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Thwaites, Edward, ed. Heptateuchus, Liber Job, et Euangelium Nicdemi: Anglo-Saxonice; Historiæ Judith Fragmentum: Dano-Saxonice, edidit nunc primum ex MMS codicibus (Oxford: Oxford Sheldonian Theatre, 1698).

Criticism

Anderson, Rachel. ‘The Old Testament Homily: Ælfric as Biblical Translator’, in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J Kleist, SEM 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 121–42.

Anlezark, Daniel. ‘Reading “The Story of Joseph” in MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College 201’, in The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Hugh Magennis and Jonathan Wilcox (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 61–94.

Barnhouse, Rebecca. ‘Pictorial Exegesis in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch’, Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 6 (1999), 109–32.

——. ‘Shaping the Hexateuch’, in The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches, ed. Rebecca Barnhouse and Benjamin C. Withers (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University/Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), pp. 91–108.

Barnhouse, Rebecca, and Benjamin C. Withers, eds. The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University/Medieval Institute Publications, 2000).

Fúsik, Ondřej. ‘Referencing Female Characters in the Old English Heptateuch Translation of Genesis: Evidence against Translation Automatisms’, in Translation Automatisms in the Vernacular Texts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, ed. Vladimir Agrigoroaei and Ileana Sasu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 156–61.

Godden, Malcolm. ‘The Trouble with Sodom: Literary Responses to Biblical Sexuality’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 77 (1995), 96–119.

Griffith, Mark. ‘Ælfric’s Use of Sources in the Preface to Genesis, together with a Conspectus of Biblical and Patristic Sources and Analogues’, Florilegium 17 (2000), 127–54.

——. ‘Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis: Genre, Rhetoric and the Origins of the ars dictaminis’, ASE 29 (2000), 215–34.

Hargreaves, Henry. ‘From Bede to Wyclif: Medieval English Bible Translations’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 48 (1965), 118–40.

Langeslag, Paul S. ‘Reverse-Engineering the Old English Book of Judges’, Neophilologus 100 (2016), 303–14.

Leneghan, Francis. Old English Biblical Prose: Translation, Adaptation, Interpretation, Anglo-Saxon Studies 54 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2026)

Major, Tristan. ‘Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: Ælfric and Bible Translation’, Florilegium 23 (2006), 47–60.

Marsden, Richard A. ‘Old Latin Intervention in the Old English Heptateuch’, ASE 23 (1994), 229–64.

——. The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, CSASE 15 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

——. ‘Cain’s Face, and Other Problems: The Legacy of the Earliest English Bible Translations’, Reformation 1 (1996), 29–51.

——. ‘Ælfric as Translator: The Old English Prose Genesis’, Anglia 109 (2009), 319–58.

——. ‘The Bible in English’, in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 2: From 600 to 1450, ed. Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 217–38.

——. ‘Biblical Literature: The New Testament’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2^nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 234–50.

McMullen, A. Joseph, and Chelsea Shields-Más. ‘Tamar, Widowhood, and the Old English Prose Translation of Genesis’, Anglia 138 (2020), 586–617.

Pareles, Mo. Nothing Pure: Jewish Law, Christian Supersession, and Bible Translation in Old English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024).

Raith, Josef. ‘Ælfric’s Share in the Old English Pentateuch’, Review of English Studies 3 (1952), 305–14.

Scheil, Andrew. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

Shepherd, Geoffrey. ‘English Versions of the Scriptures before Wyclif’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 2: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, repr. 2008), pp. 362–87.

Withers, Benjamin C. The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B. iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

Francis Leneghan is Professor of Old English at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Dynastic Drama of ‘Beowulf’ (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020) and Old English Biblical Prose: Translation, Adaptation, Interpretation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2026), and co-editor (with Amy Faulkner) of The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c.850–950 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), (with Mark Atherton and Kazutomo Karasawa) Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) and (with Tamara Atkin) The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017).