The cost and translation effort of complete bibles (pandects) favoured the production of selections and compilations of significant passages.
[1] Historian Richard Marsden notes a mediated bible: "Although it is true that there was almost no direct translation of the Bible into the vernacular before the Wycliffites, we simply cannot ignore the astonishingly large and varied corpus of Bible-based vernacular works which had begun to appear from the very early years of the 13th century onwards, under ecclesiastical influence (largely in response to the demands of the Lateran Council of 1215 for a more proactive approach to educating the laity in spiritual discipline).
They included universal Bible histories[...], metrical paraphrases of Old Testament biblical books, devotional texts, versions of the Psalms, Gospel narratives (canonical and apochryphal), and so on.
For Morey, "the Wycliffites are ‘first’ in their coordinated efforts to produce a complete scholarly English Bible" and their project was characterized by "care, prestige, and organization"[3]: 87 rather than operating in a vernacular vacuum.
In the early 1000s, following King Canute's ban, any residual use of English runes ceased, in favour of Latin script augmented with several runic characters, and some Old Norse features of the Northern dialects seeped Southwards.
[9] This favoured treatment of narrative episodes and psalmody over abstract theology, and the use of poetic forms that aided memorization and oral recital.
[22] The 19,000 line Ormulum, produced by the Augustinian friar Orm of Lincolnshire around 1150, includes partial translations and paraphrases of parts of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles from Latin into the dialect of the East Midlands, perhaps intended as declaimed sermons.
In the late 14th century, the first (known, extant) complete Middle English language Bible was produced, probably by scholars at Oxford University.
In the hous of my fadir ben many dwellyngis: if ony thing lasse I hadde seid to you, for I go to make redi to you a place.
(John 14:1-4)William Caxton translated many Bible stories and passages from the French, producing the Golden Legend (1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower (1484).
The availability of these texts, along with renewed interest in the biblical languages themselves, enabled more scholars in their debates and exegesis to include philological considerations.