She returns inviolate to the city with his head as a trophy, and a sally on the part of the Jews results in the rout of the Assyrians. The book closes with a hymn to the Almighty by Judith to celebrate her victory. The text The book exists in distinct Greek and Latin versions, of which the former contains at least eighty-four verses more than the later.
Jerome Praef. He adds that his codices differed much, and that he expresses in Latin only what he could clearly understand of the Chaldaic. Two Hebrew versions are known at present, a long one practically identical with the Greek text, and a short one which is entirely different; we shall return to the latter when discussing the origin of the book. The Chaldaic, from which St. Jerome made our present Vulgate version, is not recoverable unless it be identified with the longer Hebrew version mentioned above.
If this be the case we can gauge the value of St. Jerome's work by comparing the Vulgate with the Greek text. We at once find that St. Jerome did not exaggerate when he said that he made his translation hurriedly. Some of the historical statements in the Septuagint directly conflict with those of the Vulgate ; for example, the thirteenth year Vulgate of Nabuchodonosor becomes the eighteenth in the Septuagint , which also adds a long address of the king to Holofernes. Jerome has also frequently condensed the original-always on the supposition that the Septuagint and the longer Hebrew version do really represent the original.
To give but one instance: Septuagint : "And he came down into the plain of Damascus at the time of the wheat harvest, and burnt up all their fields, their flocks and their herds he delivered to destruction, their cities he ravaged, and the fruits of their fertile plains he scattered like chaff, and he struck all their young men with the edge of the sword.
Historicity Catholics with very few exceptions accept the book of Judith as a narrative of facts, not as an allegory. Even Jahn considers that the genealogy of Judith is inexplicable on the hypothesis that the story is a mere fiction "Introductio", Vienna , , p. Why carry out the genealogy of a fictitious person through fifteen generations?
The Fathers have ever looked upon the book as historical. Jerome , who excluded Judith from the Canon, nonetheless accepted the person of the valiant woman as historical Ep. Against this traditional view there are, it must be confessed, very serious difficulties, due, as Calmet insists, to the doubtful and disputed condition of the text. The historical and geographical statements in the book, as we now have it, are difficult to understand: thus Nabuchodonosor was apparently never King of Nineveh, for he came to the throne in , whereas Nineveh was destroyed certainly not later than , and after that the Assyrians ceased to exist as a people; the allusion in i, 6, to Erioch, King of the Elicians, is suspicious; we are reminded of the Arioch of Genesis The Septuagint makes him King of the Elumaens, presumably the Elamites, the character of Nabuchodonosor is hardly that portrayed for us on the monuments: in the India House Inscription, for example, his sentiments are remarkable for the modesty of their tone.
On the other hand, we must remember that, as Sayce says, the "Assyrian kings were most brazen-faced liars on their monuments"; the name Vagao, or the Septuagint Bagoas, for the eunuch of Holofernes is suggestive of the Bagoses, who, according to Josephus Antiquities, XI, vii, 1 , polluted the temple and to whom apparently we have a reference in the recently discovered papyri from Assuan; the mixture of Babylonian , Greek, and Persian names in the book should be noted; the genealogy of Judith as given in the Vulgate is a medley: that given in the three principal Greek codices is perhaps better but varies in every one.
Still it is an historical genealogy, though ill-conserved; a geographical puzzle is presented by the Vulgate of ii, ; the Septuagint is much superior, and it should be noted that throughout this version, especially in Codex B , we have the most interesting details furnished us cf. The Septuagint also gives us information about Achior which is wanting in the Vulgate ; it is apparently hinted in vi, 2, 5, that he was an Ephraimite and a mercenary hired by Moad; Bethulia itself is a mystery: according to the Septuagint it was large, had streets and towers vii, 22, 32 , and withstood a long siege at the hands of a vast army.
Its position, too, is stated with minuteness; it stood on the edge of the Plain of Esdrelon and guarded the pass to Jerusalem; yet no trace of the existence of such a place is to be found unless we accept the theory of Conder, "Handbook", 5th ed.
Bethel, i. Bethulia , sound rather like symbolic names than those of historical places or persons ; in Judith's speech to Holofernes there is xi, 12, 15 some apparent confusion between Bethulia and Jerusalem ; while the events are referred to the time of Nabuchodonosor , and therefore to the close of the Hebrew monarchy, we seem to have in v, 22, and viii, , an allusion to the time subsequent to the Restoration; there is no king in Palestine iv, 5 , but only a high priest , Joachim or Eliachim; and in iv, 8; xi, 14; xv, 8 Sept.
These are serious difficulties, and a Catholic student must be prepared to meet them. In its early history, the Church sometimes convened special councils that worked to ensure the legitimacy of different books, ultimately deciding which would be included in the Bible and which would not. Perhaps unsurprisingly, members of other religious faiths that also use the Bible sometimes made different decisions about which books should be included.
As a result of this gradual development, older bibles are sometimes missing books that are now always included. Special Collections and Archives has manuscript bibles produced in Europe in the Middle Ages, dating from two and three centuries before the Protestant Reformation. One of these, a manuscript Bible from the 13th century , was completed in approximately It is missing 1 and 2 Maccabees from the Old Testament. Both books are included in the Catholic Bible today, though they are not part of the Anglican or Protestant Bibles.
Special Collections and Archives also has a manuscript New Testament completed sometime in the 14th century. This enshrined Judith within Catholic theology. Scholars do not agree about how to classify this text. The Book of Judith has been denominated a romance, or even the first Jewish novel, a genre that includes Esther, Daniel, Tobit, and Joseph and Aseneth. Recently, Sarah Johnson has defined the genre more narrowly and places Judith within a group of peers characterized by their didactic intent and use of history and fiction.
Each of these texts — The Letter of Aristeas, 2 Maccabees, Esther, Daniel, Judith, and Tobit — contains a significant element of historical fiction, deliberate manipulation of historical material to communicate a particular didactic point.
A common attitude toward historical fact — treating it as raw material to be mined and manipulated for the purpose of creating a credible, persuasive didactic fiction — unites the authors of these texts and sets them distinctively apart from the mainstream of Jewish and Greek historiography alike.
They belong neither to the mainstream of historiography nor to the genre of the ancient novel but to a nebulous group of unclassifiable ancient fictions beginning to proliferate in the postclassical Greek world.
This is the crucial relevance of the secondary plot of the book: the conversion of Achior. Judith and 2 Maccabees are the earliest references to conversion in Jewish literature. As Shaye Cohen demonstrates, the Book of Judith and 2 Maccabees, both fictional accounts written in the Hellenistic period, reflect the refashioning of the practice of conversion.
As Cohen sums up his argument:. Some of the seers of the exilic and postexilic periods sixth to fourth centuries b. But in none of these texts, even in the eschatological visions, is there a sense that non-Israelites somehow become Israelites through acknowledging the god of the Israelites. This is a rare representation in Jewish literature of the practice of asceticism in antiquity.
Jewish motifs — such as the wearing of sackcloth, tithing, ablutions, private prayer, ritual immersion, food laws, lunar festivals, Sabbath observance, the presence of the high priest, and the observance of the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem — are present in this pre-Rabbinic text. This question, of course, is undoubtedly linked to the question of why the book was not included in the Hebrew Bible, a subject that Deborah Gera addresses in her introduction to Jewish textual traditions.
In Integrating Woman into Second Temple History , 23 Tal Ilan provides a thorough review of evidence about the composition of the book and suggests, based on largely circumstantial evidence, that the book may have been written to support the legitimacy of the rule of the Hasmonean queen Shelamzion. Esther, Judith, and Susanna are contributions to the theoretical debate on the nature of women and their competence as political leaders.
Because of formal and ideological similarities between Esther and the books of Judith and Susanna, I have suggested here that all three can be seen as serving that purpose. Ioudith plays a definitive mediating role for the early Christians linking Jewish Scriptures to Christian theology through pairing Judith and Mary. The book demonstrates an early form of Jewish asceticism. It allows modern scholars to understand how Judaism itself evolved from a religion of birthright to a religion of choice and presents an early example of a conversion to Judaism in the ancient world.
It contained an important set of literary innovations that constituted a critical chapter in the creation of the modern book as we know it. It is one of the earliest examples of historical fiction and is a precursor to the modern novel.
It is one of the most eloquent rhetorical constructions in antiquity promoting the leadership capabilities of women, and was perhaps composed as propaganda for a Jewish queen. It also remains one of the most important source texts from antiquity about the social conditions of woman in the Second Temple period. Then the story reappeared in midrash Jewish tales and piyyut prayers.
The Book of Judith was preserved by Christian tradition, however. Though apparently lost to the Jews, the Book of Judith exercised a formative influence on the creation of models of Christian piety and asceticism.
Several literary milestones from the first five centuries of Christianity illuminate the ways that Judith was appropriated as a model for Christian spirituality. The first reference to the Book of Judith in the Roman period was by Clement, the third bishop of Rome.
The fourth-century Roman Christian poet Prudentius, in his influential Latin poem Psychomachia , typologically paired Judith with Mary and used Judith allegorically as a figure of chastity cf. Mastrangelo, Chap.
His influence was formative in the development of the place of Judith in Marian theology. The Roman Catholic tradition considers the book to be of divine inspiration deemed deuterocanonical. Categorized as apocryphal originally meaning secret , it was considered by Protestants a story worthy of moral instruction, but not divinely inspired. The theological divide between Catholics and Protestants had a profound impact on the iconographical treatment of Judith.
Schmitz rhetorically and philologically analyzes the Septuagint and convincingly locates the writing within Greek and Roman literary traditions and provides a new cipher to help us understand the representation of Holofernes. Deborah Levine Gera analyzes the changes rendered in character, setting, and plot in the tenth-century Hebrew midrash tales through which Judith was reintroduced to Hebrew tradition after a thousand-year, unexplained hiatus.
When Judith returns in these tales, Judith is a younger, more vulnerable figure. Susan Weingarten suggests that Megillat Yehudit was written as Jewish counter-history, presenting Judith as a sexual being; setting honeyed manna against the Christian Eucharist; and creating a heroine-queen who has a redemptive function, like David and Esther.
Ruth von Bernuth and Michael Terry challenge the assumption that Jewish and Christian interaction was limited during the reformation. This argument has implications for the way we understand both Ashkenazic attitudes to the Renaissance and the Reformation and the relationship of Old Yiddish literature to Christian German sources. He argues that by locating the Christian doctrine of free will in a typological series of female figures Judith, Mary, and Pudicitia , Prudentius has made female agency the ideal for both males and females and the imitation of female weakness and chastity a source of moral strength for all.
The latter are taken as the foundation of the representation of Judith in subsequent French literature. He demonstrates the use each author makes of the biblical model. She reveals the early modern metamorphosis of the ambiguous biblical heroine. This epic was later translated into English and used to endorse both Catholic and Protestant regimes. The late medieval development of illustrated short versions of the Judith story contributed significantly to developing the iconography of Judith as seductress and, finally, femme fatale.
Judith iconography was nurtured in illuminated manuscript traditions such as the Winchester Bible and the illuminated manuscript of the Speculum Virginum , or Mirror of Virgins.
Donatello, Caravaggio, and both Artemisia and Orazio Gentileschi created works based on the subject of Judith. The sculpture Judith and Holofernes became a metaphor for Medici rule in Florence. The five papers on the visual arts elaborate these themes. Crum analyzes the social and ideological content given to these two Old Testament figures in Renaissance Florence. Crum uses the different deployments of representations of Judith versus David to explore the way that the negotiation between public and private realms reflected tensions between Florentine private interests and public responsibilities.
Ciletti shows how these works are congruent with a large corpus of polemical writings on Judith written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and argues that they helped convert Judith into a weapon of Catholic orthodoxy. This section contains six essays that examine dramatic musical works and theatrical stage productions of Judith. The earliest work addressed in the essays was composed in , the date of the earliest opera on the subject of Judith.
Following a tradition that stretched back to the sacra rappresentazione, which flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, virtually every performance of a Judith play included at least some music. Marsh provides a survey and textual analysis of some sixty years of libretti written on the theme between and and set to music as late as From being an individual and a strong supporter of individualistic action and female agency, Judith gradually changed and became the representative of the general will and action in operatic tradition.
This transformation occurred in the context of important new biblical translation projects, both Catholic and Protestant, which revalued the sanctity and historicity of the text. The Jewish narrative is connected to the Jewish Question and used to negotiate images of Jews and Jewishness. As the earliest extant text, the study of the Book of Judith in the Septuagint is one of the foundations of Judith Studies.
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