I had a similar issue and the following worked for me, assuming your multiple xml elements have the same mapping (XML Field) to (Java Field) , i.e. You have a book object that can accommodate xml elements MysteryBook, ReferenceBook:

Create the class with the mappings but no bind-xml element.
For example:
<class name="mypackage.Book"
<field name="ISBN" type="java.lang.String">
<bind-xml name="ISBNNUMBER" />
</field>
...

Then, have a single object that holds all of your Book objects under a collection (setMysteryBookList(Collection<Book> my books):
<class name="mypackage.BookShelf"
<field name="MysteryBookList" type="mypackage.Book" collection="collection">
<bind-xml name="MysteryBook" />
</field>
<field name="ReferenceBookList" type="mypackage.Book" collection="collection">
<bind-xml name="ReferenceBook" />
</field>
</class>

Your Book class would look like:
public class Book {
private String ISBN = null;

public void setISBN (String isbn) { this.ISBN = isbn; }

public String getISBN () { return this.ISBN; }

...
}

Your BookShelf class would look like:
public class BookShelf {
private Collection<Book> mysteryBooks = null;
private Collection<Book> referenceBooks = null;

public void setMysteryBooks (Collection<Book> books) { this.mysteryBooks = books; }

public void setReferenceBooks (Collection<Book> books { this.referenceBooks = books; }

}

Hope this helps. Good luck!!

• Margarita

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it would work on our case because we don't know the different types an element could have until runtime. So it's not something that we could hard code into our solution.