Book of Judith

A book in the Old Testament Apocrypha

General Information

A book of the Old Testament in versions of the Bible based on the Greek Septuagint, Judith is included with the Apocrypha in the Authorized and Revised Standard versions; it does not appear at all in the Hebrew Bible. The work of an unknown author, the book is a fictitious account of the deliverance of Israel from a foreign army by Judith, the devout and beautiful heroine who first beguiled and then beheaded the Assyrian commander Holofernes. The book is dated to the Maccabean period in the 2d century BC.

Although the besieged city of Bethulia is described as being in Samaria, Samaritans are curiously unmentioned. Deliberate anachronisms, such as calling the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar "king of the Assyrians," were probably intended to signal readers that Judith is not exact history but a call to celebrate recent victories of the Maccabees and to inspire further resistance to Hellenizing enemies. The ritual scrupulosity of the heroine suggests an early pharisaic origin for the book.

Norman K Gottwald

Bibliography
T Craven, Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith (1983).

Ju'dith

• Judith, Jewess, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and one of Esau's wives (Gen. 26:34), elsewhere called Aholibamah (36: 2-14).

• Heroine of the Apocryphal Book of Judith.