In The Deuterocanon
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, with 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.
It is not clear whether the Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew or in Greek. The oldest extant version is the Septuagint and might either be a translation from Hebrew or composed in Greek. Details of vocabulary and phrasing point to a Greek text written in a language modeled on the Greek developed through translating the other books in the Septuagint. The extant Hebrew language versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, are medieval. The Hebrew versions name 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 as "Nebuchadnezzar", a "King of Assyria," who "reigns in Nineveh," for the same king. The adoption of that name, though unhistorical, has been sometimes explained either as a copyist's addition, or a voluntary literary name assigned to the ruler of Babylon (more or less as Caesar, in the Gospel, was used for Tiberius in his quality of Roman Emperor).
The historicity and canonicity of the Book of Judith in early Christianity was never disputed before Jerome began to translate the Bible into Latin. The first quote of the Book can be found by the end of the 1st century AD in the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians: the story is briefly told by the fourth Pope, but the narration omits the name of the city of Bethulia and of the king of Nineveh. The book is quoted by Pope Clement I (1 Clement ch. 55) side-by-side with the canonical Book of Esther, and both are clearly assigned the same degree of historicity and canonicity. Judith was generally listed among the Anagignoskomena, i.e. those books (now called Deuterocanonical) which the Church believed to be authoritative despite not belonging in the Jewish Canon. Ambrose of Milan also quotes the book as canonical. The historical identity of Nebuchadnezzar was unknown to the Church Fathers, but some of them attempted an improbable identification with Artaxerxes III Ochus, not on the basis of the character of the two rulers, but because of the presence of a "Holofernes" and a "Bagoas" in Ochus' army. Jerome advanced some doubt regarding the historicity and inspiration of those books which were absent in the Palestinian Canon due to the principle Veritas Hebraica; yet Pope Gelasius I obliged Jerome to obey the canons of the so-called third Council of Carthage, held in Africa under St. Augustine of Hippo in 397, which declared the canonicity of the Deuterocanon. The book was thus added by Jerome in his Vulgate, despite being translated from a different text (in Chaldean) than the LXX version used in the early centuries for the Old Latin translations. The Canons of the Council of Carthage were later confirmed by the Quinisext Council, which makes the book a part of the Orthodox Bible; while in the West, the book's canonicity was later ratified at the Council of Trent.
Even though the Book of Judith is not considered a part of the official Jewish religious canon, many Jewish scholars 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.
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