3 Mar 2012

Paranormal Studies 313: The Legend of Beowulf

Posted by joncooper

Professor Grimes was standing behind his desk, sorting a rather imposing stack of documents. As he leafed through the pages of a rather lengthy research paper he heard a voice in the back of the room mumble something. Looking up, he saw that Dan was furiously typing a text message into his smartphone.

“Dan!” the professor called out sharply. “Do I have to remind you of my very strict policies against cell phone usage in this class?”

“I’ve still got four minutes left,” the student replied. “The class hasn’t started yet.”

“You are still walking a very fine line, young man! So far I have not had to destroy any cell phones in this class, but I assure you that I will not hesitate to do so. I will simply not abide any interruptions by those infernal devices. You are free to ask questions but you are not free to ruin the learning experience for others by using your phone while class is in session. My rules on that are quite firm and are non-negotiable.”

“Fine,” Dan grumbled. He turned off his phone and slipped it into his pocket. “It just seems so lame. I mean, look. We’re well into the semester and I’m just not seeing much in the way of paranormal freaky stuff. I mean, the last class was about a dead Catholic missionary for crying out loud. What’s paranormal about that? I was expecting us to talk about ghosts and stuff.”

“We have talked about ghosts. In fact, that was one of our very first lectures. Moreover, while you may believe that the story of Quetzalcoatl is not as gripping as whatever games you may have on your phone, I assure you that we definitely entered the realm of the paranormal. According to the dictionary the word ‘paranormal’ refers to things that lie outside normal scientific explanations. Every topic we have studied lies well outside mainstream science. The idea that the pyramids were made of artificial stone is definitely a fringe idea, even though the support for it is quite significant. The same goes for the idea that Quetzalcoatl was a Catholic bishop. We are taking a serious and careful look at stories that fall outside the accepted boundaries of knowledge to determine if there is any truth to them. As it turns out, sometimes there is and sometimes there is not. But the point is that we are investing claims that most have chosen to ignore. That is precisely what this class is all about.”

“I guess,” Dan replied. “I was just hoping for more weird stuff. Like telekinesis and aliens and ESP.”

“And crop circles,” Ashley added.

The professor glanced up at the clock, put down his notes, and walked in front of his desk. “Crop circles are certainly an interesting phenomenon that are worthy of investigation. There is certainly no doubt that crop circles actually exist; the question is whether they are all hoaxes or if some of them have a supernatural explanation. One day we may look into that. Your other examples, however, are not as compelling. I am unaware of any reputable examples of telekinesis or ESP. It has been my observation that people who claim to have ESP or psychic abilities are either mentally disturbed or deeply involved with the occult. That being said, the apostle Paul did run into a young woman who could foretell the future due to a demon that possessed her, so such things are certainly possible. I suspect that if one were to find a real psychic – and I assure you that, if any do exist, they are quite rare – one would find a demon behind it. Since we have already discussed demonic activity in an earlier class I see no compelling reason to revisit the subject. Therefore, we are moving on to talk about another dead white guy: Beowulf.”

Lora spoke up. “Wasn’t that some ancient poem, or something?”

“Pretty much,” Max replied. “It’s some boring legend about a guy who killed some kind of giant troll. I glanced at the poem once. I don’t know how anyone could survive reading it. It looked pretty tedious.”

“That is because your reading comprehension level is appallingly low,” the professor replied acidly. “There was a time when it was common for mere high school students to have a mastery of Greek and Latin, and who found classic literature not only understandable but enjoyable. Sadly, today we have a generation of young people who can do little more than read poorly-written text messages. These are truly dark times.

“Hey, I resent that,” Dan called out.

“Said by the man who expresses himself through ‘lol’ and ‘brb’,” Professor Grimes replied, shaking his head. “If you truly want to see how far education has declined, pick up an unrevised copy of Treasure Island and try to read it. That book was written as an exciting pirate story for children. Today I daresay few college students could wade through it. Literacy is simply not what it used to be.”

The professor glanced at his desk and picked up his notes. “As I was saying earlier, today we are going to be studying the epic poem Beowulf. Despite its fame in the modern world, it’s actually something of a miracle that the poem has managed to survive the ages. All of our copies of it can be traced back to a single manuscript that dates to approximately 1000 AD, and that manuscript was created centuries after the poem was written. Had that one manuscript been burned – as so many ancient manuscripts were – the poem would have been lost to us forever.”

Max spoke up. “I don’t get it. I mean, look, I know the poem is famous and all, but why are we talking about it? It’s not like people say the poem doesn’t exist! I’m pretty sure everyone agrees it’s real. I’m not seeing the paranormal part of this.”

“The problem is with the interpretation of the poem,” the professor replied. “Scholars typically assume that it is some sort of early Christian allegory. I think that is entirely wrong. In my opinion, Beowulf is history, not legend. It is talking about something that actually happened. In other words, Beowulf is a true story.

“First of all, there are tremendous problems with the commonly-accepted allegorical interpretation. Unlike other Anglo-Saxon Christian poems, Beowulf does not mention any New Testament event, person, or teaching. There are references to the Old Testament but they are confined to things that, at the time, were generally accepted as historical realities. This may be difficult for modern people to believe, but for many centuries it was generally accepted by everyone that Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and all the other events in the Old Testament actually happened. People used to have genealogies on their walls that showed how they, or their kings, had descended from Adam. Those only went out fashion in recent times when evolution poisoned people’s minds. Back in the Middle Ages, referring to Cain and Abel was like referring to World War II – it was commonly-accepted history. There was nothing particularly religious about it.

“What this means is that this supposedly Christian poem doesn’t actually have any notably Christian elements – unlike other Christian poems from that period, which are filled with theological statements, references to the New Testament, and Bible quotations. Beowulf simply does not fit that pattern. In fact, the poem is actually quite pagan. It extols the virtues of vengeance, the glories of accumulating plunder, and boasts of the reliance on human strength – none of which even remotely conforms to the teachings of Jesus. The poem also alludes to pagan oaths, pagan sacrifices, and pagan forms of burial. It takes a tremendous amount of imagination to take a pagan poem that is full of pagan philosophy and turn it into a Christian epic. That is simply reading into the text something it does not say.”

Lora spoke up. “Um, I haven’t actually read the poem. Is this going to be on the test?”

The professor sighed. “The poem was part of your reading assignments in your syllabus, young lady. Did you not see what today’s class was going to be about? How did you expect to intelligently discuss Beowulf if you’ve never read it?”

Professor Grimes looked around and saw the blank looks on everyone’s face. “Has anyone in this room read the poem? Anyone? Did anyone actually bother to complete their reading assignments?” When no one spoke up he sighed. “Very well, then. I will have to adjust the content of this lecture to account for the fact that none of you know what I am talking about. That being said, I do strongly suggest reading it. The state of education in schools today is simply appalling. But I suppose that is to be expected in these dark times.

“As I was saying, Beowulf is not a Christian poem, even though some people desperately wish that it were. This wish to Christianize it actually tends to hide the fact that the people in the poem are real historical figures. Beowulf was a real person, who was born in 495 AD. He was the son of a man named Ecgtheow. In 502 AD he was brought to the court of Hrethel, his grandfather, who was the king of Geatingas – a tribe that inhabited what is now southern Sweden. In 515 AD he traveled to Denmark to visit Hrothgar, the king of the Danes. That is also when he slew the Grendel, which was not a troll but was a type of animal that is now extinct. Beowulf became king in 533 AD and died in 583 AD at the age of 88. History has a great deal more to say about him, but the point I wish to emphasize is that Beowulf was a real person.

“Moreover, despite what many people claim, the poem is historically accurate. Since none of you have ever read the poem itself I will spare you the details – although they’re quite fascinating – but the characters in the poem are real, their relationships with each other are accurate, and the details regarding who they are and what they did with their lives are true and match recorded history. Whoever wrote this poem went to great lengths to keep everything accurate.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Max exclaimed. “Wasn’t the whole point of the poem the slaying of that monster? Gretal, or something like that. Are you saying that trolls really existed?”

“It was Grendel, not Gretal, and it was not a troll,” the professor replied. “Grendel was not its name; it was the type of creature. Throughout history people have hunted elephants or bears or tigers; Beowulf hunted Grendels. Translating the creature as a ‘troll’ is a gross disservice to humanity. That word does not even appear in the poem! A Grendel was its own type of creature.”

“But there aren’t Grendels anymore,” Lora said.

“You are exactly right. I suspect that men such as Beowulf hunted them to extinction, for reasons you would understand if you had read the poem. Grendels were nasty, dangerous creatures. This particular one terrorized the populace for twelve years.”

Max spoke up. “How do you know they existed? I mean, just because the Greeks said that Hercules fought Cyclops doesn’t mean there was a real Cyclops.”

The professor sighed. “Hercules was a Roman god, not a Greek one. Although he was apparently adapted from the Greek god Heracles. But there are actually a number of reasons to think that Grendels used to roam the countryside. In 931 AD King Athelstan of Wessex issued a charter in which a nearby lake in Wiltshire, England was called a “grendles mere”. Interestingly, the Grendel in Beowulf lived in a mere. There were numerous places in the Middle Ages that were named after Grendels; if you read through old charters you will find references to “Grindles bec” and “Grendeles pyt” and “Grendelwood” and so forth. People of that era believed that Grendels were real creatures, who went on real killing sprees, and posed a real danger.

“Nor is Beowulf the only account we have of people fighting Grendels. If you had read the poem you would know that the Danes spent twelve years trying to kill Grendel with conventional weapons, and they utterly failed. Their arsenal simply could not penetrate the creature’s hide. The way Beowulf killed it was by going up to the creature and tearing off one of its arms. The mortally-wounded creature then returned to its lair and bled to death.

“The reason this is important is because there is a depiction of a creature that looks very much like a Grendel on a Babylonian cylinder seal. The seal depicts a man fighting this creature by tearing off one of its weak forearms. That cylinder happens to be in the British Museum.”

“Is there, like, a picture of it somewhere?” Lora asked.

“There is in your textbook,” the professor replied. “If you had done your assigned reading you would have seen it. I do not give you reading assignments simply to torment you and ruin your social life. There is a reason I had you purchase that textbook, and it was not so you could kill spiders with it.”

Max spoke up. “So if all this is true then why isn’t it included in the introduction of every edition of Beowulf? Isn’t this the sort of thing that scholars would naturally find out? I mean, you can’t possibly be the first person to bring this stuff up. Are you saying there’s some kind of conspiracy going on? What would be the point of that?”

“You’re quite right – I am not the first person to discover this. Despite what you will see printed in copies of Beowulf, the information I have presented to you is quite well-known in the field. Klaeber, for example, has extensively documented the historical reliability of the details in Beowulf. What is fascinating is that even though scholars will admit that the information in the poem is accurate, they still insist that it is just a myth.

“This is all because of the monster Grendel. Grendels no longer roam the countryside, so modern scholars assume that they never roamed the countryside. Since they are therefore mythical creatures, Beowulf‘s account of fighting one must also be mythical. This is despite the fact that every part of the poem that we can verify has been verified and found accurate. One would think on the basis of that alone that, since everything else checks out, the Grendel must be real as well, but that idea is rejected out-of-hand – despite the fact that the existence of Grendels is affirmed in other period documents.

“By way of an analogy, suppose that the buffalo had been hunted to extinction in the 19th century, and a future archaeologist had said ‘Well, buffaloes don’t exist today, so they must never have existed; all these stories of hunting them must, therefore, be myths.’ The evidence for their existence is dismissed as myth, and then the resulting lack of evidence is sighted as proof that they were not real.”

“Can we go home now?” Dan asked.

The professor ignored him. “When studying history it is vital to remember that historians do not have an open mind. People approach the field with countless preconceived ideas – that ancient man was primitive; that dragons never existed; that Beowulf was a myth; and so on. They then use those erroneous ideas to interpret everything they see, and they use their interpretations as proof that they are right. Grendels never existed; therefore Beowulf is a myth. Since Grendels were mythical, any other references to them must be mythical as well. Their presuppositions blind them to reality.”

“It still seems rather weak to me,” Max replied.

“Look at it this way. If you have a historical document and you can check the accuracy of all of it except for one part, it is not unreasonable to assume that the one part you can’t check is probably accurate as well. After all, in history we rarely have all of the facts. Sometimes we can only check a portion of a historical account, and sometimes we cannot verify any of it at all. A document that has proven to be reliable where we can check it is probably also reliable in its other areas. It’s really not any more complicated than that.”

“But you could still be wrong,” Max replied.

The professor paused before replying. “One thing you will eventually discover is that science is a constant search for the truth, and scientific theories – and historical theories, for that matter – are simply the best approximations of the truth that we can formulate at the time. The laws of motion that Newton laid down were quite good, but they were not perfect, and Einstein improved upon them. Newton got us closer to the truth than we had ever been before, and Einstein got us still closer. One day someone may improve upon Einstein and get us closer still. That is how science works – by constantly coming up with the best approximation it can.

“History is quite similar. We do not have all the information that we would like to have; a great deal has been lost or deliberately destroyed. Therefore, we must make do with what we do have. It may be that a hundred years from now some new information will come to light that will get us closer to the truth than we are now. We may learn more about the events recorded in Beowulf that will expand our understanding – much the same way Einstein expanded upon Newton. However, since we do not have access to information from the future, all we can do is make the most of the information that we have right now. The day may come when we will have a perfect knowledge of history and will no longer need mere approximations; I do not know. But for now we are limited to the clues that we possess. What is important is that we do use them, so that others may build upon our work, just as Einstein built upon Newton. To sit back and do nothing simply because we are not all-knowing is insanity.”

Professor Grimes glanced up at the clock. “It looks like that is all we have time for today. You are dismissed.”

“What, no reading assignment?” Lora asked, as the class filed out the door.

The professor looked up at her as he gathered up his notes. “Would you actually do the reading if I gave it to you?”

“Probably not,” Lora replied.

“Then what is the point of giving the assignment? You are free to go.”

Professor Grimes then walked out the door and down the hallway.

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