Den fornsvenska Apostlagärningarna i den svenska bibelöversättningens historia

Abstract

An Old Swedish translation of Acts of the Apostles is preserved in MS Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, A 110, which was written the year 1385 or some years after in the newly established birgittine Vadstena monastery. One part of Chapter 9, in which Saul is struck to the ground by God on his way to Damascus, also appears in two fifteenth century manuscripts in a collection of legends, most of them derived from Legenda aurea. This legend text has been believed to have been copied from the Acts translation (Ståhle 1940), but a close study reveals that the legend text likely predated the Acts translation and was incorporated in it. The time and place of of the Acts translation is discussed from various perspectives and it is suggested, in line with Anderssons’s (2001) interpretation of the MS A 110, that it was carried out for the use within the Vadstena monastery, inaugurated in 1384.