In the following excerpts, Baron reads the 1587 Historia as a text primarily concerned with the mid-sixteenth-century debate concerning witchcraft and with the struggles between opposing religious factions. He also presents evidence suggesting that Johann Spies may have been more than just the chapbook's printer.

Below, Baron provides both biographical and textual evidence in support of the imfluence of Augustin Lercheimer's Christlich bedencken und erjnnerung von Zauberey (1585) on the original Faust Book, the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, published by Johann Spies in 1587.

In the following essay, Hoelzel offers an interpretation of the Faust story in general and the Historia in particular as deriving much of its archetypal power fromits relationship to the story of Adam and Eve's transgression in Genesis.