Rushworth Gospels

The Rushworth Gospels gloss is an important witness to regional Old English biblical language. Written between the lines of a Latin Gospel book, which serves as its base text, it covers all four Gospels and depends throughout on that Latin Gospel text as its predecessor or source translation. Its method is that of interlinear translation: word-for-word and very literal, following the Latin closely rather than shaping independent English prose, so that the gloss functioned as an aid to reading and understanding the Latin rather than as a substitute for it. A notable feature is that different sections exhibit different dialectal features, a pattern traditionally explained by the work of more than one glossator. Together with the comparable gloss in the Lindisfarne Gospels, it stands among the earliest surviving renderings of the Gospels into English and remains a principal source for the study of Old English dialects and vocabulary.