
















(1) Someone steals a cup from an old barrow.
(2)  Fire erupts from the barrow and spreads.
(4) It smells bad.






                        Næs ðæs wyrmes þær





                        Bona swylce læg,

egeslic eorðdraca     ealdre bereafod,

bealwe gebæded.     Beahhordum leng

wyrm wohbogen     wealdan ne moste,

ac him irenna     ecga fornamon,

hearde heaðoscerpe     homera lafe,

þæt se widfloga     wundum stille

hreas on hrusan     hordærne neah.

Nalles æfter lyfte     lacende hwearf

middelnihtum,     maðmæhta wlonc

ansyn ywde,     ac he eorðan gefeoll

for ðæs hildfruman     hondgeweorce. (ll. 2824b-2835)













6 Responses to Yes, Virginia, There Is a Dragon in Beowulf: Review of When They Severed Earth from Sky

  1. Bradley A. Skene says:

    I have about as much time for this kind of “natural hsitory” explanation of miracles and the fantastic in myth as I do for von Danekin. To add just two observations about the sections you discuss above, the precession wasn’t known until the 2nd century BC, so it probably has little to do with Gilgamesh (though I suppose they read the flood as a symbol for the precession, and then use the myth to trove the Sumerians knew of the precession–the usual merry-go-round reasoning), and the Israelites worship the golden cal in the desert because the temple at Samaria had a statue of Yahweh in the form of a golden bull which the latest editors of the Pentateuch seriously objected to and decided to polemicize against. Its really annoying to see the different hypothesis “explaining” the star of Bethlehem each Christmas.

  2. Mitch Greer says:

    [1] Probably the fugitive is meant who discovered the hoard. Ten Brink and Gering assume that the dragon is meant. “Hid” may well mean here “took while in hiding.” [2] That is “one and a few others.” But Beowulf seems to be indicated. [3] Ten Brink points out the strongly heathen character of this part of the epic. Beowulf’s end came, so the old tradition ran, from his unwitting interference with spell-bound treasure. [4] A hard saying, variously interpreted. In any case, it is the some- what clumsy effort of the Christian poet to tone down the heathenism of his material by an edifying observation.

  3. […] ed. ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles. U of Toronto P, 2008. – Siebert, Eve. "Monsters and Dragons and Dinosaurs, Oh My: Creationist Interpretations of Beowulf." Skeptical Inquirer Jan./Feb. […]

  4. Pacal says:

    One of the most annoying habit of some scholars is that of rationalizing the past. That is analyzing past beliefs etc., and concluding they could not possibly have really meant what they said but instead really meant something rational.

    Thus we get late 19th and some 20th century interpreters of the Iliad and the Odyssey saying that all this stuff about the Gods doing X or y could not “really” mean x or y but “must” be poetic metaphor.

    Thus when the god Apollo fires arrows into the Greek camp it “must” be a metaphor for a disease outbreak in the Greek camp because no one could “really” have believed it. To call this approach naïve is being very polite.

    An even better example of this sort of rationalizing approach is Julian Jaynes in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The books contention is that all those ancient stories about gods talking to men etc, could not possibly have been from people whose thought processes were like ours; there brains must have operated differently. In other words one side of the brain must be “talking” to the other side and this was interpreted has the “gods” talking to men. And this explanation is rational because men and women whose brains operated like ours could not possibly have thought the gods were talking to them. Ergo their brains operated in a different fashion. In other words they all we’re from our point of view suffering from a form of schizophrenia with vivid auditory and sometimes visual hallucinations.

    Of course this is all stuff and nonsense arising from a refusal to accept that what is considered “rational” can vary according to time and place.

    AS for the Children of Israel in Egypt there has been found some suggestive evidence of people from Palestine living in Egypt at about the right time. Further there is evidence of nomadic occupation of parts of the Sinai peninsula at about the right time also. As I said the evidence is only suggestive and it does not in any case “prove” the Old Testament stories. Although it does appear to be the case that during at least part of the Bronze age at least one mountain in the Sinai peninsula was in fact a site of pilgrimage thus perhaps partly explaining the whole God at Mt. Sinai part of the story in the Old Testament.

  5. forex says:


  6. Roy S. Timmreck says:

    When They Severed earth from Sky was delightful and brilliant. That some “experts” weren’t referenced has nothing to do with anything. Watch the new Cosmos for a litany of experts squashing theories that turned out to be true. Does that mean every explanation in the book is true? They are propositions, not proofs. The explosion of Thera, battle of the gods was great! The astronomical knowledge woven into the Roman religion, mostly lost when Christianity prevailed, was illuminating. The dragons breathing fire was at very least an interesting possibility.
    I am very thankful to the authors for writing the book.

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