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.

In the following essay, Allen provides an overview of Faustbuch scholarship and argues that, by reading the Faust stories as a sort of rreversed hagiography, the Historia can be understood as both a collection of anecdotes and as a unified text.

In the following essay, Allen argues that the montage technique used by Thomas Mann in his 1947 novel Doktor Faustus was adapted from the fragmented structure of the anonymous 1587 Historia. She also discusses the appropriateness of the montage structure to the Faust story.

In the following essay, Baron maintains that sixteenth-century Faust texts are more useful as tools for examining legend formation than as sources of biographical information regarding the historical Faust.