Personification in the Bible Personification in the Bible Personification, the attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions and natural forces like seasons and the weather, is a literary device found in many ancient texts, including the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament. Personification is often part of allegory, parable and metaphor in the Bible. A famous example of personification is the personification of Wisdom as a woman in the Book of Proverbs, or natural forces in the Book of Job. An early example of zoomorphism in the Hebrew Bible is when sin is likened to an animal "crouching"
Bible translations in the Middle Ages of the "Bible historiale" and, even more so, the usually lushly illuminated "Bible moralisée" were large, deluxe manuscripts, which only the wealthiest nobility (such as the French royal family) could afford. There are a number of partial Old English Bible translations (from the Latin) surviving, including the Old English Hexateuch, Wessex Gospels and the Book of Psalms, partly in prose and partly in a different verse version. Others, now missing, are referred to in other texts, notably a lost translation of the Gospel of John into Old English by the Venerable Bede, which he is said to have completed shortly