Book of Judith narrativea case of mistaken identities

Biblical Figures in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, 2008

The Construction of Role Patterns in the Book of Judith BARBARA SCHMITZ "Who can despise these people, who have women like this among them?" (Jdt 10 :19). This is the question the soldiers in the Assyrian army pose when they meet Judith. They are so overwhelmed by her appearance that the whole camp is gripped with excitement (Jdt 10 :18). "And they marveled at her beauty and because of her marveled at the Israelites" (Jdt 10 :19). They are so fascinated by her beauty that they are not only astonished (eAE ûay  mazon), but experience Judith's appearance as an epiphany (paroysi Âa). Obviously deeply impressed by this "parusia", they project the whole people of Israel from her: "Who can despise these people, who have women like this among them?" (Jdt 10 :19). The portrayal of Judith's arrival in the camp of the Assyrians (Jdt 10 :11-23) is an important scene in the narrative of Judith. The typical ways of representation and strategies of narration are concentrated showing the style of the narrative. An important motif is Judith's beauty. Her exceeding beauty is stated by the narrator and confirmed by the characters of the narrative through whose eyes the events are perceived and communicated to the reader. However, the motif of beauty is more than an aesthetic judgment as might originate from Vogue. The way in which Judith is presented, how she is seen and evaluated and which meanings are connected with these representations are keys to understanding the narrative. For this reason the representation of the character Judith in the narrative will be the focus of this essay. Frequently the intertextual relations between the character Judith and her biblical models (Miriam, Jael, Deborah, David, Mose, Judas Maccabaeus etc.) have been demonstrated. 1 However, references between the character Judith and (gender) roles of women in biblical tradition have been neglected thus far. This analysis will therefore be concerned more with general roles (wife, 1 Cf. e. g. VAN HENTEN, Judith; ZENGER, Buch Judit.

The history books tell of various strong female characters - whether real or not - the accounts of whom seem to have picked up traces of the great Jewish heroine, Judith of Simeon. One of these, Queen Judith of Semien (NW Abyssinia), reads somewhat like the biblical Judith, now transported in time (AD) and space (Ethiopia).

2022

The genre one ascribes to a literature significantly affects one’s interpretation of that text. John Frow in his book Genre writes, “Genre… [ is a] highly organized constraint on the production and interpretation of meaning… it is central to human meaning-making and to the social struggle over meaning.” That is, Genre has a crucial guiding effect in our attempt to dig out the meaning of a given text. This importance of proper genre identification becomes more crucial when dealing with ancient texts like the focus of this essay, The Book of Judith. For a casual reader, Judith gives an impression of an actual historiography that seems to recount an actual confrontation between Nebuchadnezzar’s General and Israel. However, a closer look at the text reveals various inconsistencies that strongly suggest otherwise. if not History, what then is the book’s genre? Starting from the early 20th century, there has been a tendency to treat Judith as a fiction in one form or another. Toni Craven, in a paper assessing trends in Judith studies, notes that Judith has been labeled as a historical fiction, romantic tale, and a Jewish novel by different 20th-century scholars. This tendency is also echoed by modern scholars like David A. DeSilva who, after demonstrating the complex literary structure of the book, concludes by saying “The work is better read as a piece of historical fiction”. This essay, after trying to demonstrate why we can’t take Judith as history, will try to show why the book should not be labeled as a historical fiction either and argues for “allegorical Spin-off” as a category that best describes Judith.

2014

Judith namely and Esther, you share the name with one and dignity with the other (...)'. 3 Another Carolingian intellectual, Walafrid Strabo, in his poem De Judith imperatrice, et Carolo Augustorum filio, also used the image of the biblical Judith saying to the empress: 'You were not named Judith in vain'. 4 Let us briefly consider this character from the Old Testament. 5 Judith is believed to have been a widow from the city of Bethulia. The city was besieged by the Assyrians and, when the situation was critical, the brave widow, dressed in the best clothes, went to Holofernes, the commandant of the enemies, and predicted that he would be victorious. The happy general made a feast, then got drunk and fell asleep. Judith then decapitated him and with his head as a spoil came back to Bethulia. There are a few reasons why biblical Judith is used as an example for medieval women. In medieval interpretations probably the most important of her virtues is chastity. In the Greek original of the Book of Judith it can be found that after the death of her husband, Judith did not remarry and did not have any relations with men. 6 Furthermore, she herself underlined that Holofernes did not sin with her and disgrace her. 7 In the Book chastity by itself is not mentioned. That was Jerome in his translation of the Bible, who added the sentence about Judith: '(...) you have loved chastity and after your husband you have not known any other [man]; therefore the Lord's hand has conforted you and you shall be blessed for ever'. 8 Here perhaps the great enemy of his stepmother, Judith). In another place the same author wrote that he had presented to Ermengarde only a commentary on the Book of Esther, ibid., pp 25-26.

The apocryphal book of Judith presents us with an idealized female character. She is a beautiful, wise, devout, loyal, generous and courageous widow who saves the Israelites from, at best colonialization, at worst death at the hands of the Assyrian armies led by Holofernes. The Christian Church developed the character of Judith by associating it metaphorically with, amongst others, Mary the mother of Jesus. In the Middle Ages, visually Judith became the personification of Virtue, Chastity and Humility. By mid-sixteenth century a connection between Judith and female leading political figures was also established, since Reformation politics was largely dominated by women – specifically royals such as Catherine of Aragon; Catherine de’ Medici; Jeanne de Bourbon Queen of Navarre; Queen Christina of Sweden; the English Queen Mary Tudor, and Queen Elizabeth I, all of whom were visually connected to Judith at one point or another. Culturally, between the mid-1560s and mid-1580s the name ‘Judith’ was the second most popular name in Europe, topped only by ‘Mary’ (after the Virgin herself). Thus Judith can be said to emerge as the prototype of female empowerment, the femme forte, and women painters have shown a certain taste for depicting the biblical heroine. At the same time, however, the misogynist tradition of the ‘Power of Women’ / Weibermacht which illustrated the perceived dangerous power of women over men) was very popular mid-sixteenth century, particularly in Northern Europe, and Judith herself was a victim of it. This paper examines Italian Renaissance and Baroque interpretations of Judith as representative of the work of contemporary male and female painters, and it explores the role of gender in identity formation as present in and around the Judith narrative and its reception. What happens when women are both the object and the owner of the gaze? Are there special insights into the complexities of the biblical character? Are their representations any different to those of men? Are they perhaps manifestations of an écriture féminine (a propos Cixous and Irigaray). Or do women painters just copy their male contemporaries; their voices shut inside the Language of the Father, the spurious Phallocentric Performing Theatre of a male dominated industry? By investigating whether there are marked differences between the two gender perspectives, this paper reveals some of the signification tensions at play within the process of interpreting Judith visually.

The author of the Book of Judith consciously inserts successive changes within the narrative regarding the image of the heroine. In this paper I intend to make a rather narrative reading of the Book of Judith, and try to show, how do these changes enrich the presentation of Judith, this complicated personality of early Jewish literature.

Litterae Mentis: A Journal of Literary Studies, 2014

The apocryphal Book of Judith, composed in the second century AD, has enjoyed notable popularity since late antiquity and has been treated over the centuries in a variety of literary forms. The dramatic scene narrated in the book, with the decapitation of general Holofernes by Judith’s hand, constitutes a récit fort in the terms of Roland Barthes, and is reviewed by each generation of writers in the light of its own concerns (Ziolkiowski, 2009). Notable poets such as Dante Alighieri and Lope de Vega portrayed the myth in their work, reflecting the medieval views of Judith as an example of chastity and heroism. It was in the nineteenth century when Freud and Sacher-Masoch, among others, exposed their own view of Judith as a femme fatale in the midst of the ‘battle between the sexes’. This focus on the psychology of the individual woman liberated the figure for a variety of interpretations (Schettler, 2004), which poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Gertrud Kolmar reflected in their work through personal paraphrases and fictionalizations. However, more contemporary visions of the myth by Andrew Hudgins, Patti Smith and Vicky Feaver suggest that the battle between the sexes is finally over. The new representations of the literary figure, via new creations and post-figurations, reflect the poets’ own personal views on topics such as male/female equality, homosexuality and trauma. In this article I will focus especially on the myth of Judith in poetry, in an attempt to show the shift from historical fictionalizations focusing on the psychology of Judith as a femme fatale, to new creations during the late twentieth-century which take a variety of themes far from that image.

"I suspect that the sages would judge that their communities simply could not bear too many women like Judith. The special genius of this story is that it survived and grew in popularity despite its treatment at the hands of the establishment". Toni Craven.

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

This article investigates the story of Judith, using the Greimassian approach to narratives. In this story, the survival of Judaism and/or people depends on a woman's knowledge and fear of God resulting from her absolute commitment to the law. On the contrary, however, though the elders appear prominently in the story, their ability to efficiently defend the Jewish people and their religion is represented as being lacklustre. Judith is a story of 16 chapters. The Greek text of Theodotion from the Septuaginta edited by Ziegler (1999) will be used in this article. Judith is also a fictional story that describes how a God-fearing Jewish heroine paves the way for her people's victory over an invading Assyrian army (Moore 1992:61-71). Esler (2002:107-143) describes Judith as the woman who achieved victory for her people by deceiving and then decapitating the leader of the enemy host, whom she seductively reduced to drunken unconsciousness (White 1992:5-16). Various scholars have debated the issue of Judith's date of authorship, but the position of this article is summed up in Esler's (2002) assertion, which says: There are a number of features of the text which indicate a provenance in the Maccabean/Hasmonean period, around 167-63 BCE. (pp.