This thesis is the first study to define the characteristics of early English vernacular theology and explore how it lays the foundations for later literary tradition. Through close-reading analysis of four Old English biblical poems, this thesis reveals the sophisticated and distinctive theology of the early Anglo-Saxon Church. Linguistic and metrical dating evidence suggests that Genesis A, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan, which are case studies for the four chapters in this thesis, pre-date the reign of King Alfred the Great (871–99). This study situates these poems independently in their compositional contexts of the eighth to mid-ninth centuries rather than in the codicological context of their extant manuscript, MS Junius 11, which was copied during the Benedictine Reform (c. 960–c. 990). This thesis thus offers a comprehensive analysis of Old English biblical poetry for its spiritual implications and in its compositional context, which scholars have yet to carry out.

Despite not sharing authorship and provenance, the four poems share an overarching vernacular theology, evident in the patterns which commonly recur in the Old English expansions of the Latin biblical source. Supplementing extensive work on the possible influence of Western Latin patristic exegesis and Late Antique biblical epics on Old English biblical verse, this thesis considers a more capacious set of analogues or possible sources for the poems, including the Hebraic, Greek, apocryphal, Syriac, Irish and Germanic-heroic traditions. Old English biblical verse thus witnesses to the dynamism and cultural vibrancy of early Anglo-Saxon England. The poems’ complexity as creative re-writings of Scripture suggests that they are primarily the imaginative output of visionary monastic poets engaged in deep theoria (rumination) on the sacred text, rather than catechetical works. These poems thus illuminate early English monasticism as intellectually advanced, by revealing the extent of eighth-century theological literacy in the vernacular.