Wait, who’s Judith? Judith is a gal you probably do not hear about very much if you are not Catholic. Judith is a deuterocanonical book, part of the Old Testament but not included in the Hebrew Bible. It is not included in the Jewish texts and the Protestants put it in the Apocrypha. It is believed to have many historical inconsistencies, so many scholars take it to not being historical and more as a novel (Haran). Judith was a beautiful widow who is upset that many people do not trust God in protecting them and keeping them safe from the foreign conquerors. Judith is also well known for her leadership and beheading Holofernes, a general to Nebuchadnezzar, who was the leader of the Assyrians. The purpose of this paper is just to give a better understand to the reader about the Book of Judith and how multiple people went about in talking about it and the different methods that they used.
Different scholars talk about the book of Judith in different fashions, but in similar ways as well. Many of the scholars, like I mentioned before, agree that the Book of Judith is not very historically accurate, but they still like to talk about it and learn about it as a source of story, but not really to reference many things from.
One scholar that wrote about Judith was Robin Gallaher Branch. Branch separated in talking about Judith’s characteristics into 5 parts; Judith taking command, her being verbose, Judith Strategizing, having power over men, and lastly, her acts for the common good.
In the first section, Branch mentions how the town of Bethulia was under siege for 34 days and the people were thirsty, bitter and becoming sick. Uzziah and other leaders end up listening to the townspeople demand to give up to the enemy, stating that they would surrender in five days unless the Lord helps them out. Upset with hearing about this, Judith asks the leaders to her home and declares that she has a plan to save the town, Jerusalem, the temple, and all the people. The leaders do as they are told and let her and her maid out of the city without any hesitation.
The second part is summarized on how everyone views Judith as the most beautiful or that she is better than or tops many other women in Biblical texts.
The third, paragraph speaks of Judith’s plan in infiltrating Holoferness and his army. She is stopped by the patrol and is escorted by 100 men straight to Holoferness, which she starts telling him stories on how she can escort him to Jerusalem without any trouble and any member of his army dying. She is basically playing mind tricks on him and seducing him so that she can earn his trust so that she has a chance to strike.
Forth talks about how she has control over men. She knows how to seduce men and how what they want to see, hear, or think about. She knows what to wear for every occasion and how to act. For example, at a banquet for Holofernes she simply states that “today is the greatest day of my whole life” (Judith 12:15-20), and just watches a he drinks until he is basically unconscious.
Lastly comes section five, where she kills Holofernes by beheading him with his own sword. She takes his head back through the Assyrian army and straight to the gates of Bethulia, where she told her story about how the Lord protected her and convinced everyone on how her face tricked Holofernes and brought him to his downfall. Showing his head and showing a jeweled canopy that she took from his tent to the people her story was believable and got people to believe more in God.
Another scholar that talked about Judith was Elizabeth Fletcher. She starts off by talking about what the different names in the story of Judith mean. Judith being “jewess” and Holoferness meaning “stinking in Hell” as two examples. She then goes into talking about the main themes of Judith’s story and goes into slight detail. She also herself includes how the details of the book are not completely accurate and an example being that Nebuchadnezzar was Babylonian and not ruler of the Assyrians. She also mentions what scriptures the book is not included in.
Fletcher separates the story into 4 different episodes. Similar in a way to that of Branch from earlier, she gives a summary of each episode at first, but later is followed with more detail than Branch had given about each. She also doesn’t describe them as her characteristics, but as the story in general and what she did, not how people saw her or viewed her really.
First, is Nebuchadnezzar’s War. She mentions as well that Holofernes is leading the army and that they have put Bethulia under siege. The people have lost hope in God and beg their leaders to surrender, which they say they will if God does not come to their rescue.
The second episode is about Judith and the Elders, the leaders from Branch’s point of view, and how she proposes her plan to them. She however does not go into detail and just says that it is a secret plan and makes herself beautiful as she gets ready to leave the city.
Third is when she meets, Holofernes. Fletcher doesn’t go into much detail as Branch did, and in very littler summary talks about how Holofernes was planning on seducing her, but Judith flips the tables on him and waits till she gets him drunk and asleep until she slashes his head off.
In the 4th and final story is when she and her maid head back to the town of Bethulia where she hangs the head to the outer wall of the town for the enemy troops to see that they lost their leader and make them go into panic. She is then named a national heroine by her people.
Reading down on the site is where you see how Fletcher went into more detail of the story. She makes sure that the reader understands what is going on and tries to remove any confusion about certain events or people that are involved in the story. She makes it so that the story is easy to understand by describing each character more or what they do. Photos are also provided so that readers can get a better idea how the things were and so that they can start seeing the story a little easier in their heads.
My third sources came from a website with art by Caravaggio. It shows Judith beheading Holofernes and gives a brief summary of the story. In it, it talks about how the whole Book is devoted to Judith because how she is a woman and how she holds all the power of her people to defeat the enemy who is superior and outnumbers them but being more intelligent and showing courage. She seeks out Holofernes, seduces him, and makes him drunk in order remove his head. The sight of their commander’s head makes the enemy’s army flee Bethulia and brings peace.
The site then goes into describing Caravaggio’s painting and how this was the first time that such a high dramatic subject was chosen and for a good reason. His expression of Judith is set to be a moral contest on how Virtue should overcome Evil. It shows how the elegant and beautiful Judith is able to take down the giant Holoferness, and Caravaggio is able to do so my showing details of the most dreading moment of a man’s life, death. He does so with the dying eyes, but the still live-screaming mouth and the body trying to fight back. This source doesn’t give a lot of detail of the story of Judith, but it does however, give you another mindset and way to view it all, and another taste of how people viewed her in her triumphant moment.
My following source comes from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website. The way that they talked about the Book of Judith is by providing a copy of the whole text on their website. They started off by including an intro and talking about how the story can be broken down into 5 main parts, and as you read on provided the readers with every single chapter of the book broken down into easy to read bullet points paragraphs. Along the entire article they included the reference points to the book and explanations to words so that the reader does not get lost or just in case they have trouble understanding something.
The last of my main sources that I wanted to mention in this research paper is Wikipedia. Yes, it may not be the most reliable source and it may not have one basic scholar writing the information, but it does provide the most information out of all the sources I found. It also holds most of the information that those other sources provided plus more, and it breaks it down into multiple easy and reader friendly sections/ paragraphs accompanied with links, references, and pictures so that the reader can look at and click on if they wanted to see where the information came from and if they want to go into more reading of their own.
I personally liked how Fletcher approached and wrote about the Book of Judith. I liked how she gave a basic easy to read summary of the book at first and then followed up by giving a longer, more detailed explanation of what each part of the book was about. I believe that if a random person with no knowledge of the Book of Judith were to look at each of the main sources that I picked out and used, Fletcher’s would probably do the best job at teaching them and give them the most understanding of the book while at the same time making it nice and quick. The painting to me just didn’t go into enough detail or really tell the story, however, it was nice to have a visual idea of at least one of the biggest, if not the biggest, moment of the whole story.
Robin Branch’s method to me and writing about Judith by her characteristics was unique and different, but it made it hard for her, in my opinion, to really tell the story. It did provide a way for the me as the reader to think about how Judith was and how amazing she was to all the people of her time, thanks to how she explained her, but it was plain and simple just too short and could have used more to be a better reference.
The religious site that I found was very handy and in a way cool by the fact that they provided the whole story of the book in its original chapter format. However, it wasn’t an exact copy because they broke it down into bullet point style and separated each paragraph or sentence up into little bit easier to read and follow format. However, even then, religious text can still be difficult for people to read or understand which might make it hard for them to follow what is going on, and even though it may be broken up for them to be easier, this source may not be there best choice to learn of the story.
Those people may try to look at Wikipedia. It is a nice source to have because it gives plenty of information, but it may not be the most reliable to have because many people are able to go in and edit the information to whatever they want. Nowadays, it is being a lot more monitored and edited by people to make sure that the information is correct, but many still don’t consider it a viable go-to for a research paper like this.
The book of Judith in my opinion is not very well known by many people. Maybe more to people that are religious but even I didn’t know too much about it, just the main points of Judith being a beautiful woman that saved her people by beheaded a general, whose name I didn’t even know at first. I believe that this story is not really talked about much in the Faith community because of the fact that it is not very historically accurate. Yes, many of the sources that I found had similar facts about the Book of Judith, but each one added more on to it or had something extra that the others didn’t have or were just missing. It is considered by many to have made up, or exaggerated parts to it which kill it from being realistic. I still liked learning about it and hearing how a woman was able to deceive and defeat a great general and free her people. It may be talked about some by religious communities, but I do not believe that they will go into too much detail.
In conclusion, I think that it was interesting to learn more about the Book of Judith and seeing it told in more ways than just one. Personally, I did not know much about her from the start. Writing this research paper was an eye opener to me and was, in my opinion, a good life lesson. Learning about Judith and the ways she contributed to society, then and now has impacted my life. The thing I took away from this research paper was that women can do anything they choose to do if they set their minds to it. Judith was given an opportunity to show what she could do and she led the people and defeated Nebaccdnezzar and Holforness during the war. She won the battle and proved to the people that women can lead and win if they choose to. I think Judith’s story is something that more people should hear about, even if it isn’t too accurate with history. Judith is a good story for women of all ages and to help them be confident. This story in particular truly defines feminism in my opinion. I wish it was included in all bibles instead of only the Catholic ones. Judith is a female heroine everyone should know about.