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
Jews and
Protestants. It has been said that the book
contains numerous historical
anachronisms, which is why many scholars
now accept it as ahistorical; it has been considered a
parable or perhaps the first historical novel.
The name Judith ( ) is the feminine form of
Judah.
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 on 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, 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.
The
Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew.
Though its oldest versions have been translated into
Greek and have not been preserved in the
original language, its Hebrew origin is revealed in details of
vocabulary and phrasing. The extant
Hebrew language versions, whether identical
to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, are medieval. The
Hebrew versions names important figures directly such as the
Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, thus placing the events in the
Hellenistic period when the
Maccabees
battled the
Seleucid monarchs.
The Greek version uses
deliberately cryptic and anachronistic references such
"Nebuchadrezzar", a "King of Assyria" who "reigns in Nineveh
" for the
same king.
Even though the Book of Judith is not considered a part of the
official Jewish religious canon, many within
Orthodox Judaism regard it as true
reference to the background events relating to military struggle
leading up to the Jewish holiday of
Hanukkah. (See also
1
Maccabees and
2 Maccabees).
The city called "
Bethulia," (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.
Later artistic renditions
In literature
The
Anglo-Saxon abbot
Ælfric wrote a
homily about Judith. A
poem Judith in
Old English also treats the beheading
of
Holofernes, as do lines 122 to 124 of
Geoffrey Chaucer's
The Merchant (from
The Canterbury Tales).
In Renaissance literature, painting and sculpture, the story of
Judith became an
exemplum of the
courage of local people against tyrannical rule from afar. The
(Human) Dalmatian Humanist
Marko
Marulić (1450-1524) reworked the Judith story in his
Renaissance literary work,
Judita.
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, as well as
Sandro Botticelli,
Andrea Mantegna,
Giorgione,
Lucas Cranach the Elder,
Titian,
Horace Vernet,
Gustav Klimt,
Artemisia Gentileschi,
Jan Sanders van Hemessen,
Trophime Bigot,
Francisco Goya,
Francesco Cairo and
Hermann-Paul.
Also, Michelangelo depicts the scene in
multiple aspects in one of the Pendentives, or four spandrels on
the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel
.
In music and theater
The famous 40-voice motet,
Spem in
alium by English composer
Thomas
Tallis, is a setting of a text from the Book of Judith.
The story also inspired a
play by
Abraham Goldfaden,
oratorios by
Antonio
Vivaldi, and
W. A. Mozart,
and an
operetta by
Jacob Pavlovitch Adler.
Alessandro Scarlatti wrote an
oratorio in 1693,
La Giuditta, as did the Portuguese
composer
Francisco
António de Almeida in 1726;
Juditha triumphans was written in
1716 by
Antonio Vivaldi;
Mozart composed in 1771
La Betulia Liberata (KV 118), to a
libretto by
Pietro Metastasio.
Judith is by Russian
composer
Alexander Serov.
In 1841,
Friedrich Hebbel published
his
closet drama 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 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.
Image:Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio.jpg|
Caravaggio's Judith Beheading
HolofernesImage:Michelangelo Buonarroti 038.jpg|
Michelangelo's Judith carries away the head of
HolofernesImage:GENTILESCHI Judith.jpg|Judith Slaying Holofernes by
Artemisia
GentileschiImage:Klimpt01.JPG|
Judith I by
Gustav Klimt
References
- See, for example, the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia,
which though committed to the historicity of the book, admits and
lists "very serious difficulties": [1]
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