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Throughout history, the Christian community has used various ploys in order to gain members. In the Ninth Century AD, monks, in England, recorded the folklore of their “heathen” neighbors in their own language. In the 11th through 18th centuries, in various areas, Catholics used raw torture and death to force conversion. And even today television stations such as PAX “family programming” is little more than tele-evangelists and trumped up “miracles.” Two prime examples of the texts written and some what enriched by the monks of England are, of course Beowulf and Judith. While it remains unclear as to exactly who wrote the original manuscripts, it is believed that it was a monk or priest, and it has been widely accepted that these stories were handed down, generation to generation, by oral tradition. The epic poem Beowulf directly precedes Judith in the same manuscript, leading us to believe they were recorded by the same persons, with the same motives. In Beowulf we read of a hero that destroys the enemy of his brethren, Grendel (and Grendel’s mother), believed by some to be the descendant of the biblical Cain, thus ending his lineage; a lineage that has been that of pure evil from the time of Cain’s brother Abel’s murder.
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