h. The difficulty of taking the book to record either pre-exilian or post-exilian historj- made Luther view it as '• (( religious fiction or poem, written by a holy and ingenious man, who depicts therein the victor}^ of the Jewish people over all their enemies, ^vhich God at all times most wonderfully vouchsafes. . . . Judith is the Jewish people, represented as a chaste and holy widow, ^vhich IS always the character of God's people. Holo- fernes is the heathen, the godless or unchristian lord of all ages, while the city of Bethulia denotes a virgin, in- dicating that the believing Jews of those days were the pure virgins" {Vorreile <uifs Buch Judith). Some of the names can scarcely have been chosen without regard to their derivation (e. g. Achior= Brother of Light ; Bg- thulia^rfSira, the virgin of Jehovcdi), and the his- torical difficidties of the person of Nebuchadnezzar dis- appear when he is regarded as the scriptural type of worldly power. Grotius, elaborating upon this idea, regards it as a parabolic description of Antiochus Epiph- anes's assault on Judrea — '"Judith is the Jewish people (ni-nni); Bethulia is the Temple (^ibx IT'S), the sword which went out of it, the prayers of the saints; Nebuchadnezzar signifies the devil; Assyria is pride, the devil's kingdom ; Holofernes is the devil's instrument ; (^■n3 TS?ri, lictor serpentis, minister diaholi) ; the wid- ow is the helplessness of the Jetcish people under the tyr- anny of Antiochus Epiphanes; Joachim or Eliakim sig- nifies God will arise (Cip mni or Clp"^ ^X) to defend Judsea and cut off the instrument of the devil who would have her corrupted." IMany of the modern writers who regard it as containing pure fiction call it either drama (Buddeus), epopee (Artropteus, IMoreus, Von Niebuhr, etc.), apologue (Babor), didactic poem (Jahn). moral fiction (Bauer), or romfince (Berthold). Among the Roman Catholics this notion of an allegorj- is favored by Jahn, who maintains that the difficulties are other- wise insuperable. De Wette, however, considers that the fact of Holofernes being a historical name (together with other reasons) militates against the notion of an allegory, as maintained by Grotius. The name Holo- fernes is found in Appian (In Syriac. c. 47) and in Po- lybius (x, 11). The latter historian states' that Holo- fernes, having conquered Cappadocia. lost it by endeav- oring to change the customs of the country', and to introduce the drunken rites of Bacchus ; and Casaubon
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{ad A then.) conjectures that this was the Holoferncs of Judith. From its termination the name is supposed to be of Persian extraction (compare Orophemes, Polybius, xxxiii, 12), as Tisaphernes, Artaphernes, etc.
c. As the book itself, however, gives no intimation whatever that it is a fiction or an allegory, but, on the contrar}-, purports to be real historj-, as is evident from its minute geographical (i, 7 ; ii, 21 sq. ; iii, 9 sq. ; iv, 4, G sq.), historical (i, 5 sq.), and chronological (i, 13, 16 ; viii, 4; xvi, 23) descriptions, Gutmann, Herzfeld, Keil, and others take it to contain a substance of truth em- bellislied with fiction. This view is supported by the following facts: 1. Notwithstanding the arbitrary and luicritical manner in which the deutero-canonical his- torians dispose of their materials, they have always a certain amount of truth, around which they cluster the traditional embeUishments. 2. A summary of the con- tents of Judith is given in the ancient Jewish prayers for the first and second Sabbaths of the Feast ofDedica- rioTi— beginning with SCm ^3 nS3X ^Z "TIX and isiy> S."i'i'T2 "("X— among the events which occurred in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes, and it cannot be sufiposed that the Jews would make it the basis of thanksgiving when the deliverance was never ^vrought, and the whole of it was nothing but a fiction. 3. There are ancient Midrashim which record the facts indepen- dently of tlie book of Judith. There is one, in particu- lar, which gives a better recension of this book than either the Septuagint or the Vulgate, bears as much re- semblance to the Septuagint and Vulgate as these two versions bear to each other, and removes many of the dif- ficulties against its historical truthfulness, inasmuch as it begins with ch. v, 5, and thus shows that the Septua- gint, from which the other versions were made, has put together two different records.
Those, however, who understand the book to be an allegorical representation of the Jewish people, widowed as to earthly resources, yet, by favor with God and man, prevailing over the powers of the world, do not thus re- lieve the fable from grave moral objections. An intel- ligent Jew, well read in the Hebrew Scriptures, could not have thought of setting up Judith as a proper embodiment of female heroism and virtue. Her plan of procedure is marred throughout by hypocrisj' and deceit; she even prays to God that he would prosper her deceit (ix, 12), and praises the cruelty of Simeon in slaying the Shechemites, as if his deed bore on it the sanction of heaven, though Jacob, the father of Simeon, liad consigned it in the name of God to eternal reproba- tion. Tiie spirit of vengeance, resolute iu its aim, im- scrupulous in the means taken to accomplish it, is the pervading animus of the story— a spirit certainly op- l)osed to the general teaching of Old as well as New Testament Scripture, and incapable of being embodied in a heroic story except by one wlio liad much more regard for the political than the moral and religious el- ements in Judaism.