The Hebrew Bible came to the Icelanders not only through successive translations, but also through successive layers of exegesis that transformed it into the Old Testament: Christian Scripture that speaks of Christ and the Church. In fact, translation and exegesis are closely linked, to the extent that the latter might be thought of as a development of the former: exegesis as a translation of the reality that lies behind the words. All early Christian exegesis is dependent on translation: the Scripture of the early Church was not the Hebrew Bible, but the Greek Septuagint (LXX), a translation supposedly made independently by 72 scholars, who all miraculously produced the same text. Some of the earliest biblical exegetes were actively involved in translation and textual criticism: one of Origen’s great achievements was the compilation of the Hexapla, a multiple-column parallel Bible in which the LXX was set out alongside the Hebrew, a transliteration into Greek, and three other Greek translations. Likewise, Jerome was initially asked to translate the LXX into Latin, but turned instead to the Hebrew Bible – a choice that attracted criticism at the time, most notably from Augustine. His translation, which became the Vulgate, was not fully accepted by the Church until the sixth century, by which time it had accrued some of the sanctity that originally applied to the LXX. Augustine, who knew very little Hebrew, used Old Latin translations probably made in North Africa, although in his De doctrina christiana he did recommend learning Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin, before taking on the task of biblical exegesis. By the twelfth century, it was rare to read the Bible without some form of commentary, whether prefaces, glossaries, lists of Hebrew names, or the huge interpretative framework of the Glossa Ordinaria, which incorporated both interlinear and marginal annotations. In this chapter, I look at some of the ways in which the Old Testament was read in the Middle Ages, from Origen and Augustine, to Hugh of St Victor and Peter Comestor, to the vernacular translations known as Bibles historiales. I focus, in particular, on the development of allegorical readings, and the rediscovery in the twelfth century of the Bible as historical narrative.

Types and Figures

The earliest allegorical readings of the Old Testament are within the New Testament itself.