Beowulf and a Biblical Character

Hero’s are scattered throughout society. Around every corner there could be a potential heroic moment inside anyone. The question now is, “what is heroic?” or maybe, “what makes someone a hero?” But does it really matter? Some might say a hero has supernatural powers, while another handful of people might say a hero is defined by the actions they do and that it is out of love. Questions like these are hard to give an answer to, due to the fact that everyone has opinions about it and there is not really a strait forward way to actually define a hero. In the story Beowulf, the main character (Beowulf) is almost seen as being an immortal and undefeatable man that people can turn to in a time of crisis. As the story goes, Beowulf almost feeds off that and turns almost cocky. Hard situations such as facing Grendal are difficult while he is in the heat of battle but acts like it was an easy task (page 49; lines 340-341). One well known author of the Bible was a man who first went by the name Saul. Saul was a Pharisee who persecuted Christians. Saul was born in Tarsus (modern day Turkey) and grew up as a Jewish Roman citizen who received a Greek and Jewish education. At the age of 13 he went off to Jerusalem to become a Rabbi. He came to know and accept Christ on the road to Damascus where his name was eventually changed from Saul to Paul. Saul means desire; Kind of Israel where as Paul means little. Some believe that God changed his name to Paul due to the names meaning, so that Paul would be humbled to do good things for Christ’s namesake. He spent several years in Arabia receiving direct revelation from God to write the books that eventually went into the Bible. He spent 10 years as a missionary, traveling from Europe to Asia 3 times. He spent a lot of this time in prison, where he wrote quite a few epistles (writing 13 Old Testament books) and was eventually beheaded by Nero in the spring of 67 AD. One major difference between these two people is