The Vercelli manuscript is assigned to the first half of the eleventh
century.

[Sidenote: _Sources_.]

Fortunately we can speak with more assurance about the sources of the
poem. It follows closely, though not slavishly, the _Acts of Andrew
and Matthew_, contained in the _Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles_.[1]
Like the great English poets of the fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries, the poet of the _Andreas_ has borrowed his story from a
foreign source, and like them he has added and altered until he has
made it thoroughly his own and thoroughly English. We can learn from
it the tastes and ideals of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers quite as well
as from a poem wholly original in its composition. Most clearly do we
discover their love of the sea. The action of the story brings in a
voyage, which the Greek narrative dismisses with a few words, merely
as a piece of necessary machinery. The Old English poem, on the
contrary, expands the incident into many lines. A storm is introduced
and described with great vigor; we see the circling gull and the
darting horn-fish; we hear the creaking of the ropes and the roaring
of the waves.[2] Every mention of the sea is dwelt upon with lingering
affection, and described with vivid metaphor. It is now the "bosom of
the flood," now the "whale-road" or the "fish's bath." Again it is the
"welter of the waves," or its more angry mood is personified as the
"Terror of the waters." In the first 500 lines alone there are no less
than 43 different words and phrases denoting the sea.

[Footnote 1: _Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_, ed. Tischendorf. Leipzig,
1851, pp. 132-166. (For a translation of part of the _Acts of Andrew
and Matthew_, see Cook's _First Book in Old English_, Appendix III.)]