Beowulf - Paganism or Christianity

Introduction

Most people believe that the Beowulf was originally Pagan and rewritten by a Christian who sought to apply Christian characters to the original text. Scholars disagree on whether the main thematic point was Pagan or Christian. The narrator, however, places events in a Biblical context because of the push at the time to convert all people to Christianity. Beowulf, by intertwining Christian beliefs and old Pagan elements of lore becomes a standard of literature that is hard to surpass. This paper discusses various aspects of the story from the view point of Paganism and Christianity.

Beowulf - Paganism and Christianity

Beowulf encompasses several reasons for critics to decipher it as either a Christian allegory or a Pagan fable, but in actuality, the epic becomes a combination of the two. Due to the intertwining ideas of wyrd and the will of God, the distinct ideals of the afterlife, and conflicting views of the entity, Beowulf epitomizes the attempts by Christian monks to turn the parable into a Christian novel; however, these efforts proved to give the reflection of both Christianity and Paganism. In the end, the story shows efforts to proselytize Pagan worshipers by the church, but those endeavors remained inconsequential until the Christianization of the world (Chin, 44-45).

The concept of the afterlife in Beowulf becomes one of the major similarities between the underlying Pagan idealism and the Christian allegory attempted by the monks. In both religions, the concept of the afterlife involves similar themes of darkness and light. Even the use of such concepts as hellish or having to do with hell, points to the fact that Beowulf is written for an audience that is at least familiar with, if not part of, the Christian doctrine. So, by this note - if Grendel is this creature “deprived of joy...driven ...