JUDITH, BOOK OF
1085
JUDITH, BOOK OF
ten, ii, 588 sq.). Against this view, however, is to be urged, that, 1. All these monarchs inherited the prov- inces which are described in this book as having been conquered for them by Holofernes, thus precluding the identity of any one of them with Nebuchadnezzar. 2. Nineveh, which is here mentioned as the capital of Neb- uchadnezzar's, or the Assyrian empire, was destroyed before the Babylonian captivity, and no Assyrian or Me- dian kingdom existed during the post-exilian period. 3. The Persians, Syrians, Phcsnicians, Cilicians, and Egyp- tians are described as subject to the Assyrians, which could not have been the case after the captivity of Ju- dah, when the Assyrian empire was wholly extinguish- ed, and the Persians, instead of being subject to the As- syrians, had made themselves lords over them, and all the other nations of the East, from the Hellespont to the River Indus. 4. There is no point of time except the ]\Iaccabtean period when the events here recorded could possibly have occurred, since the Jews were sub- ject to the Persians for 207 years, then were under the dominion of Alexander the Great, and finally under the Ptolemies and the kings of Syria till they obtained their independence through Judas JNIaccabreus, B.C. ICi. The only time to which they could possibly be referred is that of Antiochus Epiphanes, but this supposition is in- consistent with the fact that the Jews had but recently returned from captivity, and restored the worship of God in tlA; Temple. The geographical inconsistencies are equally embarrassing.
To escape these difficulties, and more especially to obtain a point of time suitable for these events, Usher, Lloyd, Calmet, Montfaucon, Prideaux, \Vluston, Wolff, etc., maintain that they occurred before the exile, either in the reign of Zedekiah, IManasseh, Amon, Josiah, or Jehoiakim. The general opinion, however, is, that the story is to be placed under ftlanassch, and, as Calmet, Montfaucon, Prideaux, Whiston, and others will have it, after this monarch's return from Babylon. According to them, the events recorded in the book of Judith, and the collateral circumstances, occurred in the following order of time :
Birthof Judith S2S5 719
Mauasseh begins to reign 330G C9S
He is taken prisoner to Babylon and eent back
to Judaea 3328 676
"War between Nebuchadnezzar and Arphaxad.. 3347 657
Victory of Nebuchadnezzar over Arphiixad 3347 C57
Expeditiou of Holofernes and siege of Bethulia 3348 650
Death of Mauasseh .- 3361 643
Amou, his sou, begins to reign 3361 643
Amon is murdered for his wickedness 33G3 641
Josiah, his son, succeeds him, being eight years
old '....* 3363 641
Death of Judith, aged 105 years .'i.SDO 614
Battle of Megiddo and death of King Josiah... 3;?94 610
The last siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar 3414 590 Destruction of Jerusalem and captivity of the
Jews 3416 5SS
The Nebuchadnezzar of this book is, according to this theory, Saosduchinus, who succeeded his father Esar- haddon in the kingdom of Assyria and Babylon in the 31st year of Manasseh's reign, and Ariihaxad is Deioces, king of Media. But this ^re-e.ri7?V(« view agani incurs the following objections: 1. It makes Judith to be sixty- three years old at the time when she is described as " a fair damsel" (>/ TrcudioKi] t) KaX/j) captivating Holofer- nes (xii, 13) and ravishing the hearts of many who de- sired to marry her (xvi, 22). Calmet, however, is not disconcerted by supposing that Judith might in this case be sixtj'-three or sixty years old, " being then what we call a fine woman, and having an engaging air and person," " likely," adds Du Pin, '• to charm an old gen- eral." 2. It is absolutely inconsistent with chap, xvi, 23, where we are expressly told that " there was none that made the children of Israel afraid in the days of Judith, nor a long time after her death." For even if we take the words " a long time after her death" to mean no more than twenty years, this would bring Ju- dith's death to twenty years before the disastrous bat- tle of Megiddo, wherein Josiah was mortally wounded.
whereas this hypothesis places her death only four years before that calamitous event. This inconsistency is still more glaring according to the calciUations of Prideaux, who maintains that Judith could not have been more than forty-live years of age when she captivated Holo- fernes, as tliis carries down her death to the 4th year of Zedekiah, when the state of the Jews had been ex- ceedingly disturbed for several years by the Bab3-loni- ans, and actually brings the period involved in the "long time after her death" beyond the total subversion of the Jewish state. 3. Judith affirms that there was no Jew to be found in any city who worshipped idolatry (viii, 17. 18), which is incompatible with the reign of Manas- seh, Amon, and the first eight years of Josiah (comp. 2 Chron. xxxiii, 14-17). 4. Holofernes, the chief officer of the Assyrian army, who had only recently invaded Judnsa and taken IManasseh prisoner, must surely have known something about the Jews, yet he is described as being utterly ignorant of the very name of this Je^vish monarch, as not knowing the people and the city of Je- rusalem, and being obliged to ask for some information about them from the Araoritish chief (v, 1-3). 5. The Jewish state is represented as being under the govern- ment of a high-priest and a kind of Sanhedrim (vi, 6- 14 , XV, 8), which is only compatible with fhe post-exilian period, when the Jews had no king. 6. The book itself distinctly tells us in chap.iv, 3, and v, 18, that the events transpired itfter the captivity, as is rightly interpreted by the compilers of the marginal references of the A. V., who, on this passage, refer to 2 Kings xrcv, 9-11, and Ezra i, 1-3.