Conquered and Exiled: Comparative Traumatizations of the Betrayed Jesus in the Heliand and Homerocentones

This paper posits that constructive theologies of interpersonal trauma are often cyphered through religious texts and reflections. This is illustrated via a comparison of the betrayal of Christ in two unique and highly contextualized gospels. The first, the Old Saxon Heliand, depicts Jesus as a conquered chieftain, submissive to his fated agony, potentially intending to domesticate the rebellious ethos of the recently conquered Saxons. The second example emerges from a criminally understudied text, the Homerocentones of the Empress Eudocia. She presents a defiant Christ, who levels a poetic condemnation of Judas and other evildoers and thus reflects facets of Eudocia’s own character and possibly aids in her own internal adjudication of her unjust banishment from the imperial court. Such trauma informed reading produces fresh understandings of how collective and individual traumatization can be navigated within the resources of a scriptural tradition and its varied contextualizations.