ABSTRACT
According to a book on King Alfred's Boethius, the substitution of Wisdom for Philosophy is due in the first place to the fact that there is no Old English equivalent for the Latin term Philosophia. However, this suggestion of inadequacy on the part of the English language is completely baseless. Charlemagne's readers are reading Latin; Alfred's young freeborn men will for the most part not be progressing beyond English and they are not likely to read much of that. Close and accurate translation of a difficult text will simply transfer the problem from Latin into English. For the Old English author, part of the meaning of the Psalms is their poetic quality, their sentence rhythms, their balance. And he tries to convey something of this particular level of meaning in his rendering. The Old English author can also make use of the commonly held view that misfortunes are directly as a result of men's sins.
