The Gospel according to Heliand,59 which means ‘Saviour’, is all four Gospels moved away from the Mediterranean to a Northern, colder world, where years are measured in winters, where there are deep forests and concealing woods rather than open deserts, where the disciples of Jesus are like the band of men a chieftain might assemble in the expectation of their personal loyalty. ‘That is what a thane chooses,’ Thomas tells the other disciples in a crisis: ‘to stand fast together with his lord to die with him at the moment of doom.’60 Old man Zacharias, astonished at the angel’s notion that he
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