Daniel and Judith:
Gender and Jewish Identity in Second Temple Judaism

THE BOOK OF JUDITH AND JEWISH HISTORY


Chronology of the Book of Judith

Jewish History

Maccabean Revolt (164-167 BCE)

In the 12th year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, conquers Arphaxad, king of the Medes (Jud 1), then undertakes a Western campaign (against Egypt and Judea) and an Eastern campaign (against Media and Ectabana), with the aid of his general Holofernes.

Nebuchadnezzar was neither Assyrian nor ruled in Nineveh -- Nebuchadnezzar rose to power as king of Babylon during the pre-exilic period (605 BCE). During the 12th year of his reign (i.e. 593 BCE), Zedekiah was still king of Judah (Jer 32:1) and Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BCE.

Nineveh was indeed the capital of Assyria, but was destroyed (along with the Assyrian Empire) by the Chaldeans in 612 BCE -- seven years before Nebuchadnezzar rose to power. By citing this city, Judith may be alluding to Jonah (note esp. motif of mourning and sackcloth in Jud 4:10; cp. Jonah 3:8, 10).

The name "Arphaxad" is nowhere attested in either secular or religious histories; Ectabana was a Parthian city, conquered in 544 BCE by Cyrus the Persian.

Holofernes is a Persian name.

Many scholars have noted that Judith's "Assyrians" share much with the Seleucidic Syrians that ruled Judea from 200 BCE until the Maccabean Revolt in 162 BCE.

Like Judith's "Nebuchadnezzar," Antiochus IV undertook a Western campaign against Egypt and Judea (1 Macc 1:16) and an Eastern campaign against Persia and Persepolis (1 Macc 3:31; 2 Macc 9:2-3). If so, "Arphaxad" may represent the Parthian Arsaces.

Judith's "Holofernes" may allude to Nicanor, one of Antiochus' generals. After Antiochus Epiphanes' death in 164 BCE, Nicanor took over the battles with the Judeans, but was defeated in 161 BCE by Judah Maccabee, in his last great victory before his death later in the same year.

Just as Nebuchadnezzar has Holofernes cross the Euphrates and destroy great cities and temples in the Book of Judith (2:24; 3:8), so Antiochus and his general Nicanor tried to do the same (1 Macc 3:37; 6:1-2; 7:33-35)

Holofernes seeks to destroy various national religions and to install sole worship of Nebuchadnezzar: "It was granted to him to destroy all the gods of the area so that all nations should worship Nebuchadnezzar alone -- that every dialect and tribe should call upon him as god!" (Jud 3:8).

From a historical standpoint, the worship of kings as gods originated in the Hellenistic period (i.e. after the conquest of Alexander the Great, when Judea fell to first the Egyptian Ptolemies and then the Syrian Seleucids) and has no corollary in earlier Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian practice -- so much so that the references to Nebuchadnezzar and Darius' apparent practice to the contrary in the Book of Daniel (chs. 3; 6) are usually interpreted as veiled references to the later, infamous Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV.

Like Judith's "Nebuchadnezzar" Antiochus IV Epiphanes claimed that he was a god ("Epiphanes" = "God Manifest") and forced Jews to abandon their traditional worship in 167 BCE (see 1 Mac 1; Dan 7).

According to the Book of Judith, the people of Judea "had returned from Exile only a short time before; and all the people of Judea had been reunited, and the sacred utensils, the altar, and the Temple had just recently been rededicated after they had been defiled" (Jud. 4:3).

Likewise, Achior's summary of Jewish history explicitly ends in the post-exilic era: "When they abandoned the path that (God) had laid down for them, they were devastated in many battles and were carried off as captives to a foreign land. The Temple of their God was leveled to the ground... But now that they have returned to their God, they have come back from the places where they had been scattered. They have regained Jerusalem, where their sanctuary is..." (5:18:19)

Despite the references to the Assyrians and Nebuchadnezzar, Judith clearly seems to presuppose a post-exilic setting: The fact that it was really the historical Nebuchadnezzar who destroyed the First Temple in 586 BCE and sent Jews into Exile suggests that this anachronism is deliberate.

There is no evidence that the Jews militarily resisted the Babylonian invasion under Nebuchadnezzar in 592 BCE. Indeed, according to Jeremiah (32:1), king Zedekiah declined the invitation of his neighbors to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar in exactly 593 BCE.

However, the Maccabees' later military resistance to the Seleucids is well known (see 1, 2 Mac). Moreover, the assertion that the Temple had recently been "rededicated" (as opposed to "rebuilt") may allude to the rededication of the Second Temple by the Maccabees in 164 BCE.

 

The people of Judea do not surrender to the Assyrians, but instead prepares for war, under the leadership of Joakim the high priest (4:6ff).

The name "Joakim" probably refers to "Joiakim son of Jeshu," who was high priest soon after the Jews' return from Exile in Babylon, under Persian rule (see Neh 12:26; Josephus, Antiquities 20.10.2).

 

Before the Maccabean revolt and the ascendancy of the Hasmonean family to power, no Jewish high priest held both religious and military power.

Holofernes besieges and blockades Bethulia (Jud 7). Surrounded on all sides and losing their water supply, the Jews lose hope and beg their leaders to surrender (7:23-28). Their leader Uzziah asks that they wait 5 more days.

The place-name "Bethulia" is otherwise completely unknown. Since we only have the name in Greek, the exact etymology is even uncertain, although several intriguing possibilities have been suggested by scholars:

1. hyl) tb ("House of God" = an allusion to the Temple and/or Jerusalem; or an allusion to the Bethel of Jacob)

2. hyl( tb ("House of Ascent" = an allusion to Shechem?)

3. hlwtb ("virgin"; see Jud 9:9-10, where Judith associates the seige of Bethulia with the rape of Dinah; also Jerusalem and/or Israel symbolized as a virgin in Lam. 1:15; 2:13; Jer 14:17)

Uzziah - His name ("God is my strength" = hyz() may be intended to highlight the irony of the weakness of this male leader in contrast to the widow Judith.

In the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, David Suter suggests that the Book of Judith "may have been written in Hebrew in the Maccabean era and possibly reflects the defeat of the Seleucidic general Nicanor by Judah the Maccabee (161 BCE). The deliberate confusion of names and events from the Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian eras is probably a device on the part of the author to indicate that the work is intended as fiction. The name 'Judith' means the 'Jewess' and, like a good hero from the period of the Judges, she returns to her home after delivering her people from the enemy (cf. 16:21). Judah the Maccabee and his brothers, on the other hand, seek continuing political power. The story may thus be, in part, a comment by the Hasidim -- the forerunners of the Pharisees and the Essenes and, initially the allies of the Maccabees -- on Maccabean political ambitions."

Judith 8 introduces Judith, "daughter of Merari the son of Ox, son of Joseph, son of Oziel, son of Elkiah, son of Ananias, son of Gideon, son of Raphaim, son of Ahitub, son of Elijah, son of Hilkiah, son of Eliab, son of Nathanael, son of Salamiel, son of Sarasadai, son of Israel."

Judith - The symbolic implications of the meaning of her name ("Jewess") are stressed by the tracing of her genealogy back to "Israel" -- her connection to Israel/Jacob simultaneously signals her talents for deception and role as "trickster."

The name also evokes the other biblical Judith, who is opposite to this Judith in every way: Esau's Hittite wife (Gen 26:34). For instance, Amy Jill Levine suggests that " Judith the daughter of Merari evokes and rehabilitates Judith the daughters of Beeri, the Hittite wife of Esau who 'made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca.'"

Also notable is her dead husband's name: Manasseh, the name of the king who is held responsible for the Babylonian Exile (2 Kgs 21:12-15; 23:26-27; 24:3-4). Note also that it is Judith, not her husband, whose geneaology is here traced.

Moreover, in light of the parallel w/Maccabean history, the name "Judith" may simultaneously be intended to evoke the male form "Judah," specifically suggesting comparison/contrast with Judah Maccabee.

Note also the thematic parallels between the account of the Jews' triumph in Judith and 1 Maccabee's account of Nicanor's defeat by Judah Maccabee (7:43-50):

"The army of Nicanor was crushed, and he himself was the first to fall in the battle. When his army saw that Nicanor had fallen, they threw down their arms and fled. The Jews pursued them a day's journey, from Adasa as far as Gazara, and as they followed kept sounding the battle call on the trumpets. And men came out of all the villages of Judea round about, and they out-flanked the enemy and drove them back to their pursuers, so that they all fell by the sword; not even one of them was left. Then the Jews seized the spoils and the plunder, and they cut off Nicanor's head and the right hand which he so arrogantly stretched out, and brought them and displayed them just outside Jerusalem. The people rejoiced greatly and celebrated that day as a day of great gladness... So the land of Judah had rest for a few days."

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