Competent critics say that probably 1 and 2 ought to be taken
together, while Beowulf's reception by Hygelac (see 3 above) is
probably a separate lay. Some scholars have gone much further in
the work of disintegration, even attributing one half of the poem to
interpolators, whilst others suggest two parallel versions. Summing
up, the writer in The Cambridge History of English Literature says:
'I am disposed to think that a large portion of the poem existed
in epic form before the change of faith, and that the appearance of
Christian elements in the poem is due to revision. The Christianity
of Beowulf is of a singularly indefinite and individual type, which
contrasts somewhat strongly with what is found in later Old English
poetry. This revision must have been made at a very early date.'
The poem was built up between A.D. 512, the date of the famous raid
of Hygelac (Chocilaicus) against the Hetware (Chatuarii), and 752,
when the French Merovingian dynasty fell; for, says Arnold, 'The poem
contains not a word which by any human ingenuity could be tortured into
a reference to any event subsequent to the fall of the Merovingians'
(A.D. 752).