A spirited retelling of the Gospel story in a Germanic setting, the ninth-century A.D. Old Saxon epic poem The Heliand is at last available in English in Ronald Murphy's graceful new translation. Representing the first full integration and poetic reworking of the Gospel story into Northern European warrior imagery and culture, the poem finds a place for many Old Northern religious concepts and images while remaining faithful to the orthodox Christian teaching of the Gospel of St. Mark. Accessible to students of medieval and comparative literature, Murphy's introduction and notes...

This study is an interpretation and appreciation of the art of he Heliand, the 9th century Saxon epic poem in which the Christian Gospel of the four evangelist is translated in Germanic terms. Murphy examines in detail the ingenious and sensitive poetic analogies through which familiar texts--the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, the Passion and Resurrection--are transformed into Germanic settings and concepts. The first book in English on The Heliand, this study offers a new socio-political explanation of the possible motives of the unknown...

Bryan approaches St. Paul's letter to the Romans with a number of aims in view. First, he wants to show which literary type or genre would have been seen by Paul's contemporaries as being exemplified in the letter. He also attempts to determine what we can surmise of Paul's attitude and approach to the Jewish bible. The study involves discussion of and comparison with other literature from Paul's time, place and milieu --- including other writings attributed to Paul.

The fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm are among the best known and most widely-read stories in western literature. In recent years commentators such as Bruno Bettelheim have, usually from a psychological perspective, pondered the underlying meaning of the stories, why children are so enthralled by them, and what effect they have on the the best-known tales (Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty) and shows that the Grimms saw them as Christian fables. Murphy examines the arguments of previous interpreters of the...

The fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm are among the best known and most widely-read stories in western literature. In recent years commentators such as Bruno Bettelheim have, usually from a psychological perspective, pondered the underlying meaning of the stories, why children are so enthralled by them, and what effect they have on the the best-known tales (Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty) and shows that the Grimms saw them as Christian fables. Murphy examines the arguments of previous interpreters of the...

The story of the Holy Grail has gripped the imaginations of millions since it first appeared in medieval romances, among them Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German Parzival (c. 1210). Strangely, the Grail is identified in Parzival not as a cup or dish, but as a stone. This oddity is usually interpreted merely as further evidence of the difficulty of discerning the true sources of the Grail legend.
G. Ronald Murphy seeks to illuminate this mystery and to enable a far better appreciation of Wolfram's insight into the nature of the Grail and its relationship to the...

The story of the Holy Grail has gripped the imaginations of millions since it first appeared in medieval romances, among them Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German Parzival (c. 1210). Strangely, the Grail is identified in Parzival not as a cup or dish, but as a stone. This oddity is usually interpreted merely as further evidence of the difficulty of discerning the true sources of the Grail legend.
G. Ronald Murphy seeks to illuminate this mystery and to enable a far better appreciation of Wolfram's insight into the nature of the Grail and its relationship to the...

Winner of the 2014 Mythopoeic Myth & Fantasy Studies Award

At the heart of the mythology of the Anglo-Scandinavian-Germanic North is the evergreen Yggdrasil, the tree of life believed to hold up the skies and unite and separate three worlds: Asgard, high in the tree, where the gods dwelled in their great halls; Middlegard, where human beings lived; and the dark underground world of Hel, home to the monstrous goddess of death. With the advent of Christianity in the North around the year 1000, Yggdrasil was recast as the cross on which Christ sacrificed himself. G. Ronald...