Today most people think they have a reasonably good idea of what is being referred to by ‘the Bible’ and, especially if practising Jews or Christians, they will have some knowledge of its contents. The Bible is generally described as containing the canonical books of Judaism and Christianity. There are, however, distinct differences in the definition of the canon and hence today there are different versions of the Bible in the various denominations and faiths, such as the Jewish Tanakh, the King James Bible, the New English Bible, the New Revised Standard Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the Living Bible, etc. What is less well known is that these different versions do not all contain the same books: the Catholic Jerusalem Bible (1966) contains the Deuterocanonical books (books added later to the original canon), such as Tobit, Judith, Maccabees (1 and 2), Baruch and others, whereas the Protestant New English Bible excludes these in the canon but includes them in its expanded edition, which contains both the Old and New Testament Apocrypha books, also adding 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses.

The Greek version of the Scriptures used by early Christians was the Septuagint, and the first Latin version was the Vetus Latina or Old Latin version, based on the Septuagint. St Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in the fourth century to prepare a Latin Bible, which became known as the Vulgate, the only authorized version for the Catholic Church until the Reformation. Consequently when ‘the Bible’ is mentioned in late-medieval literature, it is the Vulgate which is being referred to.

In the Anglo-Saxon period there had been a number of close translations and paraphrases of parts of the Bible into English, but such translations were forbidden in the later-medieval period in England. It was not until John Wyclif (died 1384) that there was an English Bible closely translated from the Vulgate. The Wycliffite Bible was translated partially by Wyclif himself (probably the Gospels) while his associates were responsible for the other biblical books. Wyclif, a doctor of divinity of Oxford, was also a priest, who in his major work, Summa Theologia, questioned the temporal rule of the clergy and attacked clerical abuses and failings.