''Christ III'' is an anonymous
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
religious poem which forms the last part of ''
Christ
Jesus ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Christianity, central figure of Christianity, the M ...
'', a poetic triad found at the beginning of the
Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...
. ''Christ III'' is found on fols. 20b–32a and constitutes lines 867–1664 of ''Christ'' in
Krapp and
Dobbie's ''
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records'' edition. The poem is concerned with the
Second Coming
The Second Coming (sometimes called the Second Advent or the Parousia) is the Christianity, Christian and Islam, Islamic belief that Jesus, Jesus Christ will return to Earth after his Ascension of Jesus, ascension to Heaven (Christianity), Heav ...
of Christ (''parousia'') and the
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment is a concept found across the Abrahamic religions and the '' Frashokereti'' of Zoroastrianism.
Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, res ...
.
Sample
This passage, about fire engulfing the world at Judgement Day, gives a modern English translation of Christ III, lines 993–1013 (in the line-numbering of the
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records):
Other Old English eschatological poems
*
Blickling Homily nos. 7 and 10
*''Judgement Day I''
*''Judgement Day II''
Editions and translations
* Foys, Martin et al. (ed.).
Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project'. Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-); poem edited in transcription and digital facsimile editions, with Modern English translation
*Krapp, George Philip, and Dobbie, E. V. K. (eds.) (1936) ''The Exeter Book''.
The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3.) New York: Columbia U. P.
*Bradley, S. A. J. (tr.) (1982) ''Anglo-Saxon Poetry: an anthology of Old English poems in prose translation''. London: Dent
References
External links
Apocalyptic Ideas in Old English LiteratureA Modern English translation(
PDF
Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
), by Charles W. Kennedy. From
In Parentheses.
Old English poems
Last Judgment
{{UK-poem-stub