ENGL 4301 Spring 1997
Due Monday 24 March
On your handout (which cannot be displayed on-line) are six versions of a passage from the Gospel According to John (Chapter 17, verses 1-6). Your assignment is to write a 5-paragraph essay comparing the passages. Each paragraph of your essay should comment on one specific change in vocabulary or in grammatical construction from one English version to another (i.e., from the Old English to later versions, the Middle English to later versions, or from the first three versions to the contemporary English version.
The versions are as follows:
A) the Greek New Testament (source: The Greek New Testament, 2nd edition, eds. Kurt Aland et al., United Bible Societies, 1968) [complete mss. date from the 300s, papyrus fragments from as early as 200]
B) the Latin Vulgate (source: Biblia Sacra, 5th edition, eds. Colunga and Turrado, Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1977) [a translation made in the 300s]
C) Old English (source: The Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. R.M. Liuzza. Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1994) [the precise date is unknown; there are many manuscript versions, the earliest surviving ones dating from before 1050]
D) Middle English (source: A Literary Middle English Reader, ed. A.S. Cook, Boston: Ginn, 1915) [this is the "second Wycliffite" version, ca. 1388]
E) Early Modern English (source: The Holy Bible . . . King James Version, Nashville: The Gideons, 1978) [a revision of the 1500s Protestant translations, completed in 1611. The spelling is modernized.]
F) contemporary English (source: The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version, eds. Victor Roland Gold et al., NY: Oxford UP, 1995)
The Latin and Greek versions are included because of my strong belief that it doesn't hurt to see texts in languages other than English now and then. The reason that we can compare different English versions of Bible texts is of course that the Bible was not originally written in English.
The Latin Vulgate is a translation from the Greek. The Old and Middle English versions are translations from the Latin; the Early Modern and contemporary versions are translations from the Greek.