As we have seen in class there are many contrasts between stories of the gospel as conveyed to the Anglo-Saxons from the original Latin and their own Old English translations. For the purpose of this paper I’d like to take a closer look at the story of Judith from the Douay translation of the Latin Christian Bible and the Anglo-Saxon version translated by Aelfric, provided to us by The Norton Anthology of English Literature. While the main concept behind the story remains intact there are several notable differences that I believe are evidence of the Anglo-Saxon’s attempt to maintain their heritage amid their Christian conversion. What remains of the Anglo-Saxon translation begins on the fourth day that Judith has spent in the company of Holofernes and so it is from that point that I will begin to make my comparison. Right away…show more content… This “story-teller” narrative is carried throughout the piece yet the original Latin version is written in the third person. Also we immediately see cultural references as Judith is described as having “elfin beauty” and braided hair (Greenblatt pg. 110 line 15). This is an obvious effort to make the story more relatable in the context of their culture and one of many clues in the translation that point to the blending of the new Christian doctrine with the old Germanic language. Another possible example is the use of Old English epithets when hell is described as a “Serpent-hall” (Greenblatt pg. 112 line 119). Later in the translation we can find significant references to