Book of Judith

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Book of Judith

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint

Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
and in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
Old Testament

Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
of the Bible

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
, but excluded by Jews

Judaism

Judaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts....
and Protestants

Protestantism

Protestantism is a movement within Christianity that originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the three principal traditions of Christianity, together with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy....
. It has been said that the book contains numerous historical anachronisms, which is why many scholars now accept it as unreliable history; it has been considered a parable

Parable

A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or Verse , that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human characters....
or perhaps the first historical novel.

The name Judith (is the feminine form of Judah

Judah

Judah is the name of several Biblical and historical figures. The original Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, as recorded in Genesis 29:35....
.
In the Bible
The Book of Judith has a tragic setting that appealed to Jewish patriots and it warned of the urgency of adhering to Mosaic Law, generally speaking, but what accounted for its enduring appeal was the drama of its narrative.

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Encyclopedia

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint

Septuagint

Christian

Old Testament

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
, but excluded by Jews

Judaism

Judaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts....
and Protestants

Protestantism

Parable

Judah

Judah is the name of several Biblical and historical figures. The original Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, as recorded in Genesis 29:35....
.

In the Bible

The Book of Judith has a tragic setting that appealed to Jewish patriots and it warned of the urgency of adhering to Mosaic Law, generally speaking, but what accounted for its enduring appeal was the drama of its narrative. The story revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes

Holofernes

Holofernes was an Assyrians invading general of Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the deuterocanonical books Book of Judith. It was said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign....
, to whom she slowly ingratiates herself, promising him information on the Israelites. Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night as he lies in a drunken stupor. She decapitates him, then takes his head back to her fearful countrymen. The Assyrians, having lost their leader, disperse, and Israel is saved. Though she is courted by many, she remains unmarried for the rest of her life.

As a not historical tale, its scenes are enlivened and given immediacy by their setting in a definitely characterized (though anachronistic) setting and time, and connected, as all historical novels are, with important personages of history — here "Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadrezzar II

Nebuchadnezzar II, also called King Nebuchadnezzar The Second , was a ruler of Babylon in the Chaldean Dynasty, who reigned c. 605 BC-562 BC....
" as a "King of Assyria" who reigns in Nineveh

Nineveh

Nineveh , an "exceeding great city", as it is called in the Book of Jonah, lay on the eastern bank of the Tigris in ancient Assyria, across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, Iraq....
— features it shares with the Book of Esther
Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim....
, the Book of Daniel
Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew language and Aramaic language, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC....
and its continuations, and the Book of Tobit
Book of Tobit

The Book of Tobit or Tobi is a book of scripture that is part of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy biblical canon, pronounced canonical by the Council of Carthage of 397 and confirmed for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent ....
. Nowhere are the "historical" details introduced in more profusion than in Judith.

With the very first words of the tale, "In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned over the Assyrians in Nineveh," it is argued by the compilers of the Jewish Encyclopedia
Jewish Encyclopedia

The Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901....
that the narrator sets his story in "Once upon a time

Once upon a time

"Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that has been used in some form since at least 1380 in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600....
".

The city called "Bethulia

Bethulia

Bethulia The view that Bethulia is merely a symbolic name for Jerusalem or a fictitious town, has met with little favor, even among those who deny the historical character of the book....
," (properly "Betylua") and the narrow and strategic pass into Judea that it occupies (Judith IV:7ff VIII:21-24) are believed by many to be fictional settings, but some suggest that a city called Meselieh is Bethulia.

The editors of the Jewish Encyclopedia identified Holofernes' encampment with Shechem

Shechem

Shechem was Canaanite city mentioned in the Amarna letters, and later became an Israelite city in the tribe of Manasseh. It was the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel....
. The Assyrians, instead of attempting to force the pass, lay siege to the city and cut off its water supply. Although Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah in reality, he is foiled in the narrative of the Book of Judith.

The Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew. Though its oldest versions have been translated into Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
and have not been preserved in the original language, its Hebrew origin is revealed in details of vocabulary and phrasing. The extant Hebrew language

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version which contradicts the longer version in many specific details of the story, are medieval.

Even though the Book of Judith is not part of the official Jewish religious canon, many within Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism is a Jewish denominations of Judaism that adheres to a relatively strict constructionist and application of the laws and ethics first canonized in the Talmudic texts and as subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and Acharonim....
place it in the Hellenistic period when Judea battled the Seleucid monarchs. It is regarded as a story related to the events surrounding the military struggle of that time and is believed to be a true reference to the background events leading up to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah

Hanukkah

File:PikiWiki Israel 146 Hanukka ?????.JpgHanukkah , also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE....
. (See also 1 Maccabees

1 Maccabees

1 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical books book written by a Jewish author after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom, probably about 100 BC....
and 2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical books book of the Bible which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....
).

In later artistic renditions

In literature

The Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons is the term usually used to describe the invading tribes in the south and east of Great Britain starting from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, lasting until the Norman conquest of England of 1066....
abbot Aelfric wrote a homily about Judith

Judith (homily)

Judith is a homily written by abbot Aelfric of Eynsham around the year 1000. It is extant in two manuscripts, a fairly complete version being found in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 303, and fragments in British Library MS Cotton Otho B.x....
. A poem Judith

Judith (poem)

Judith is an Old English poetic Biblical paraphrase retelling the story of the beheading of Holofernes, an Assyrian military leader, by the eponymous heroine, as recorded in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith....
in Old English

Old English language

Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century....
also treats the beheading of Holofernes

Holofernes

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
's The Merchant (from The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century . The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from London Borough of Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathed...
).

In Renaissance literature, painting and sculpture, the story of Judith became an exemplum
Exemplum

An exemplum is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point....
of the courage of local people against tyrannical rule from afar. The Dalmatian Humanist Marko Marulic

Marko Marulic

Marko Marulic was a Croatian language poet and Christian Humanism, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance....
(1450-1524) reworked the Judith story in his Renaissance literary work, Judita
Judita

Judita is one of the most important Croatian language literary works, written by the "father of Croatian literature" Marko Marulic in 1501....
. His inspiration came from the contemporary heroic struggle of the Croats against the Ottomans in Europe.

In painting and sculpture

The account of Judith's beheading Holofernes has been treated by several painters and sculptors, most notably Donatello and Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, was an Italian people artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610, considered the first great representative of the Baroque school of painting....
, as well as Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello was an Italy Painting of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance ....
, Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna was a Venetian Renaissance artist, a student of Ancient Rome archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with Perspective , e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality....
, Giorgione

Giorgione

Giorgione is the familiar name of Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, an Italy painter, a seminal artist of the High Renaissance in Venice....
, Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder was a Germany Painting and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was born Lucas Sunder at Kronach in upper Franconia, and learned the art of drawing from his father....
, Titian

Titian

File:Tizian 090.jpg Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, born 1473/1490 , died 27 August 1576, better known as Titian , was the leading painter of the 16th-century Venice school of the Italian Renaissance....
, Horace Vernet

Horace Vernet

?mile Jean-Horace Vernet was a French Painting of battles, portraits, and Orientalist Arab subjects.Vernet was born to Carle Vernet, another famous painter, who was himself a son of Claude Joseph Vernet....
, Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolism and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau movement. His major works include paintings, murals, Sketch , and other art objects, many of which are on display in the Vienna Secession gallery....
, Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italy Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Michelangelo Merisi ....
, Jan Sanders van Hemessen

Jan Sanders van Hemessen

Jan Sanders van Hemessen was a Flanders Northern Renaissance painter. He was born in Hemiksem, then called Hemessen or Heymissen. Following studies in Italy, in 1524 he settled in Antwerp....
, Trophime Bigot and Hermann-Paul

Hermann-Paul

Ren? Georges Hermann-Paul was a French artist. He was born in Paris and died in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.Recent efforts to catalog the work of Hermann-Paul reveal an artist of considerable scope....
. Also, Michelangelo depicts the scene in multiple aspects in one of the Pendentives, or four spandrels on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Music

The famous 40-voice motet, Spem in alium
Spem in alium

Spem in alium is a forty-part motet by Thomas Tallis, composed circa 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. Though composed in imitative style and occasionally homophonic, its individual vocal lines act quite freely within its fairly simple harmonic framework; allowing for an astonishing number of individual musical ideas to be sung d...
by English composer Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis was an English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in Tudor period. He occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of its earliest composers....
, is a setting of a text from the Book of Judith.

Oratorio, theatre and opera

The story also inspired a play by Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Ukraine-born Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays....
, oratorios

Oratórios

Orat?rios is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion of Zona da Mata and to the microregion of Ponte Nova....
by Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed il Prete Rosso , was a Baroque music composer and Venice priest, as well as a famous virtuoso violinist, born and raised in the Republic of Venice....
, and W. A. Mozart

Betulia Liberata

La Betulia liberata , K?chel-Verzeichnis 118 , is an oratorio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was composed in March-July 1771 when Mozart was only 15 years old, from a text by Pietro Metastasio based on the story of Judith and Holofernes from the apocryphal Book of Judith....
, and an operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre....
by Jacob Pavlovitch Adler

Jacob Pavlovitch Adler

Jacob Pavlovitch Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Russians theatre actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
.

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque music composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera....
wrote an oratorio in 1693, La Giuditta; Juditha triumphans
Juditha triumphans

Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie translated as Judith triumphant over the barbarians of Holofernes, Vivaldi catalogue number RV 644, is an oratorio by Antonio Vivaldi, the only survivor of the four that he is known to have composed....
was written in 1716 by Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed il Prete Rosso , was a Baroque music composer and Venice priest, as well as a famous virtuoso violinist, born and raised in the Republic of Venice....
; Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
composed in 1771 La Betulia Liberata
Betulia Liberata

La Betulia liberata , K?chel-Verzeichnis 118 , is an oratorio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was composed in March-July 1771 when Mozart was only 15 years old, from a text by Pietro Metastasio based on the story of Judith and Holofernes from the apocryphal Book of Judith....
(KV 118), to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. Judith
Judith (Serov)

Judith , is an opera in five acts, composed by Alexander Serov during 1861-1863. Derived from renditions of the story of Book of Judith from the Old Testament Apocrypha, the Russian language libretto, though credited to the composer, has a complicated history ....
is by Russian composer Alexander Serov

Alexander Serov

Alexander Nikolayevich Serov – was a Russian composer and Music journalism. He and his wife Valentina Serova were the parents of painter Valentin Serov....
.

In 1841 Friedrich Hebbel published his closet drama

Closet drama

A closet drama is a Play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group....
Judith, but in the English language, blanket censorship of all biblical subjects on the stage set the theme off-limits until the twentieth century, when the British playwright Howard Barker

Howard Barker

Howard Barker is a United Kingdom playwright....
examined the Judith story and its aftermath, first in the scene "The Unforeseen Consequences of a Patriotic Act," as part of his collection of vignettes, The Possibilities. Barker later expanded the scene into a short play Judith.

In 2007 Philippe Fénelon (French, born in 1952) composed Judith, an opera

Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
with one act and five pictures (monodrama), based on a booklet adaptated from the Friedrich Hebbel's drama, in German (creation on 28/11/07 at the Pleyel Room, Paris, ordered by the Opera National de Paris).

Film

Judith et Holopherne — 1909 French short by Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade

Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent France film director from the silent film. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films. He is primarily known for the serials Fant?mas , Les Vampires and Judex ....
on the beheading of Assyria
Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
n general Holofernes
Holofernes

Holofernes was an Assyrians invading general of Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the deuterocanonical books Book of Judith. It was said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign....
by Biblical heroine Judith (Renée Carl
Renée Carl

Ren?e Carl , was a France actress of the silent film. She appeared in 186 films between 1907 in film and 1937 in film.She was born in Fontenay-le-Comte, Vend?e, France and died in Paris, France....
), based on the Book of Judith
Book of Judith

[Image:Cristofano Allori 002.jpg|thumb|220px|Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Cristofano Allori, 1613 The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded by Judaism and Protestantism....
Judita — 1980 Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia2.pngYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century....
n (Croatian
Croatian language

Croatian language is a South Slavic languages which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in neighbouring countries where Croats are Indigenous peoples, in Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croats diaspora....
) TV movie by Marin Caric on the beheading of Assyria
Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
n general Holofernes
Holofernes

Holofernes was an Assyrians invading general of Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the deuterocanonical books Book of Judith. It was said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign....
by Biblical heroine Judith (Dubravka Miletic), based on the Book of Judith
Book of Judith

[Image:Cristofano Allori 002.jpg|thumb|220px|Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Cristofano Allori, 1613 The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded by Judaism and Protestantism....
and the 1521 Croatian nationalist epic poem
Judita

Judita is one of the most important Croatian language literary works, written by the "father of Croatian literature" Marko Marulic in 1501....
by Marko Marulic
Marko Marulic

Marko Marulic was a Croatian language poet and Christian Humanism, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance....

External links

Full text (also available in )
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Judith