An Old Norse Biblical Compilation

Book excerpt: One of the great achievements in the field of religious letters and literature of medieval Scandinavia was the appearance of Bible translations. The present study examines the origin and the sources of a West-Scandinavian translation of great parts of Genesis and Exodus from the first decades of the fourteenth century. It sheds light upon how the sources were drawn on and how scholastic theology may have influenced the work, and thus it offers new insights into the process of transmitting the Biblical message into European vernaculars.