When the biblical Christ in the garden accepts that the cup will not pass from him, that his fate is sealed, he drinks it down to show his acceptance. The poet has him drinking the wine to the honour of God. Acceptance would be too mild; instead he salutes his chieftain. Christ clears the moneychangers out of the Temple, but in Heliand the moneychangers are usurers and they are all of course Jews. Jews in Heliand are ‘a different kind of people’, and Christ tells them: ‘You Jewish people never show any respect for the house of God.’ The constant sense of Northern virtue, of the slinking,
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