The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-saxon England)

The early medieval Vulgate Bible had no fixed textual form - multiple copying resulted in a multitude of forms. This 1995 book tackles questions about the transmission of the Vulgate Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England. By tracing the history of the text in the surviving Latin manuscripts we can illuminate monastic and intellectual history. Following an introduction which explains the wider continental history in which the dissemination of the Latin scriptures occurred, Richard Marsden goes on to analyse twenty surviving manuscripts including the Codex Amiatinus, one of the greatest English books and the earliest surviving complete Vulgate Bible. The book provides a comprehensive listing and collation of surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the Old Testament, and it also establishes textual history as a dimension of wider Anglo-Saxon history.