P, sorry I didn’t reply sooner but I’ve been swamped. I have to say that your point on how you could use Grendel’s arm to refer to the crucifix is brilliant, I love it. Please never help me decorate though.
As for the lack of reference to the story of Jesus Christ and the crucifixion, the way I understand it, is that the early Anglo-Saxons had a great affinity for the Old Testament, it 's the source of one third of the extant poetry and a lot of the prose, according to the Malcolm Godden chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Godden gives the reason that the Old Testament offered a straight answer to how the world and man began,so for them it was really a history book. The Anglo-Saxons also could see parallels between themselves and the Hebrew tribes (at first as invaders trying to set themselves up in a new land and later, dealing
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Godden also points to the Creation story in Genesis as parallel to the building of Heorot and Grendel lurking around as the source of evil. There’s also the story of the Flood on the sword Beowulf uses to kill Grendel’s Mother. I wouldn’t go as far as some critics who see Beowulf or Hrothgar as Christ-like figures, I just don’t see it and if they did refer to Jesus Christ in the poem, if he was anything like the version in The Dream of the Rood then Beowulf would be less