Hey, happy Good Friday! I have something I’d like to read for you that I think you might find interesting. Let me know if anything here sounds familiar...
Definitely not a version of the Gospel most folks would be familiar with today, is it? This is the Heliand, sometimes referred to as “The Saxon Gospel.” There are two versions I’d recommend: The prose translation by G. Ronald Murphy I’d pick up for the commntary. For a poetic translation that has some hiccups but is still excellent, check out Mariana Scott’s version through the UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages program.
So what in the world is this, and why does it exist? Here’s a part of Murphy’s introduction that helps shed some light on this...
Other than this version being tons of fun to read and experience, there’s something I’d like to delicately suggest here. In many churches in 2026 America, “hearing the Gospel” would entail attending Sunday services, and perhaps also breaking out the fold-out chairs in the church basement on weekdays to do Bible study. There, you might sit in a circle and read the Bible through the specific lenses of cultural scholarship, theology and personal reflection.
Nothing at all wrong with that, but is that kind of thing religious, or cultural?
The Wikipedia article for the Heliand suggests that it was probably written at the request of the emperor “around AD 830 to combat Saxon ambivalence toward Christianity.” Well, what’s to stop someone today from writing their take on the Gospel in poetic form and sharing that at an open mic night? Why can’t someone act out scenes on TikTok using top-down stop-motion? I’m not even on the thing and still I’d give it a like.
Anyway, that’s my idle thought for the day. Hope you’re having a good Holy Week.
