THE SAXON GOSPELS
The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon written in the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon and the poem is a Gospel paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the verse style of a Germanic epic.
This is the first printed edition of 1830. 1/
The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon written in the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon and the poem is a Gospel paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the verse style of a Germanic epic.
This is the first printed edition of 1830. 1/
A kind of mashup of the Gospels with the Saxon warrior culture that gave us Beowulf, in the Heliand the Disciples are a band of warriors protecting their Lord, Jesus Christ - as Matthew says "a more generous mead-giver than he'd ever had before as a liege lord in this world." 2/
This is the Heliand version of John 18:10 - here, Peter, the mighty warrior Disciple, fights Malchus. It's arguably the single most remarkable passage from the entire Heliand epic, quite astonishing in its power. 3/
The Heliand is known from two manuscripts, both incomplete, & from 2 fragments. In 2006 a new, third fragment was discovered in a bookbinding, among the holdings of Leipzig's St Thomas' church kept in Leipzig University Library. Here's the fragment before and after removal. 4/
There is some recent scholarship on the Leipzig fragment, speculating that given this is so close to Wittenberg - just around the corner - the possibility exists that Luther had access to this ms in the 16th century, and if so, it may have informed some of his translations. 5/
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