Wycliffe's Bible

Wycliffe's Bible (also known as the Middle English Bible [MEB], Wycliffite Bibles, or Wycliffian Bibles) is a sequence of orthodox Middle English Bible translations from the Latin Vulgate which appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395.

Two different but evolving translation branches have been identified: mostly word-for-word translations classified as Early Version (EV) and the more sense-by-sense recensions classified as Later Version (LV). They are the earliest known literal translations of the entire Bible into English (Middle English); however, several other translations, probably earlier, of most New Testament books and Psalms into Middle English are extant.

The authorship, orthodoxy, usage, and ownership has been controversial in the past century, with historians now downplaying the certainty of past beliefs: that the translations were made by controversial English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford either personally or with a team including John Purvey and Nicholas Hereford to promote Wycliffite ideas, or were created for use by Lollards for public reading at their clandestine meetings, or contained heterodox translations antagonistic to Catholicism.

The term "Lollard Bible" is sometimes used for a version of Wycliffite Bible with inflammatory Wycliffite texts added. At the Oxford Convocation of 1408, it was solemnly voted that in England no new translation of the Bible should be made without prior approval.

Wycliffite Bible texts are the most common manuscript literature in Middle English that still exist. (The second-most common manuscript is Nicholas Love's Meditations on the Life of Christ which Bishop Arundel promoted as an alternative to Wycliffite lives of Christ.)

Over 250 so-called Wycliffite manuscripts survive; only 20 of these are or were complete bibles; two thirds have New Testament material only, with no additional material. Other manuscripts are gospel harmonies, concordances, lectionaries and collections: some of these books contain other material, usually orthodox, but occasionally Wycliffite or Lollard works, sometimes sanitised.

The plain text of all four gospels survives in twenty full Bibles, ninety-three complete New Testaments, and at least twenty-six manuscripts with only parts of the New Testament.

— Mary Rashko (2017)