About the Wycliffe Translation

The Wycliffe Translation was made from the Latin Vulgate, rather than the original texts of the books of the Bible and so takes some translation errors from the Vulgate. It was made by or under the supervision of John Wycliffe, whoose name it is called by, and finished in 1384. The attribution of the translation to Wycliffe caused his body, after his death, to be exhumed and cremated, the ashes scattered in the river(a superstition at that time was that people whoose bodies were cremated could not go to heaven). His bible started modern bible translation, but had very little influence on other translations, except for a little influence on the Douay-Rheims translation, and other bibles that were influenced by the Douay-Rheims translation. The Wycliffe bible's language is difficult for the modern reader because it is so archaic; that and the fact that it was translated from the vulgate, at times very literally and not good english, makes it not very good as anybody's primary bible, and so the rest of the introduction will assume that your main translation is not this one. The epistle to the Loadaciens is taken from a later version of the translation edited by John Purvey in about 1400.

About the Language and Spelling used here

The Middle English of this bible can be very difficult, so I have included some information about the language used here. Almost all of the words used in this translation are the forerunners of words still in use or archaic but still known in the language, while most others are compounds that are not used(but the meaning of them can be easily determined) or have or don't have a prefix or suffix that they do have in Modern English(For example, ginneth for begins. It doesn't have the prefix be- and has the suffix -eth, which makes it a little strange). There is a glossary for many of the other words. The spelling can be strange, but most of them can be understood by modern readers, even though they are strange, but some of the conventions will be helpful to a modern reader. The letters are written CAPITAL/lowercase. V/v and U/u were considered the same letter, as were I/i and J/j, and the vowel I/i could be written Y/y. The sound that we usually write with Th/th or TH/th was written with the letter thorn or þorn(Þ/þ). Gh/gh, GH/gh, and Y/y were sometimes written with the letter yogh or yoȝ(Ȝ/ȝ), and some words that have a G/g in Modern English had a yogh or yoȝ in Middle English. S could be written S/s or S/ſ(they might not display differently).

Bible (Early Wycliffe)/Introduction to this Edition