Contextualizing the Gospel among the Saxons: An Example from the Ninth Century of the Cultural Adaptation of the Gospel as Found in The Heliand

Abstract

In the middle of the ninth century, Christian missionaries among the Germans propagated the gospel by singing the story of the life of Christ in the meadhalls of Saxon warrior-nobles. This article, based upon a new translation and interpretation of that song-text (The Heliand) by G. Ronald Murphy, SJ, examines the manner in which those missionaries sought to adapt the life and witness of Jesus Christ to the life and times of the Saxon people. This author identifies three primary concerns of contextualizaiton in every age, and shows how these were addressed more than one thousand years ago.