y. A iithor and />rt<e.— The difference of opinion upon this subject is as great as it is upon the cliaracter of the hook. It is not named cither by Philo or Joscphus; nor liave we any indication whatever bv which to form a conjecture respecting its author. But it has been sujjposed by some that it could not have been written by a contemporary, from the circumstance of the family of Achior being mentioned as still in existence, and o'f ■ the festival of Judith being stilt celebrated. If tliis fes- tival ever took place, it must have been of temporary duration, for, as Calmet observes, no record of it can be traced since the exile. Professor Alber, of Pesth, how- ever, maintains that it is still recorded in the Jewish calendars. Jahn, after Grotius, refers the date of the book to the :\Iaccab.-can period, and derives an argument for Its late composition from the fact of the feast of the New Moon being mentioned (viii, C, comp. with ]Mark XV, 42). Dc Wette {Einkituny) conceives that the whole composition bespeaks an author who was a na- tive of Palestine, who could not have lived beyond the
end of the 1st century of the Christian lera (the date assigned to it by Eichhorn), inasmuch as it is then cited by Clement of Rome, but that the probability is that it was much earlier written. Movers, a Roman Catholic professor at Bonn, a man of great penetration in similar investigations respecting the canonical books of the' Old Testament, endeavors to fix the date of its composition in the year B.C. 104. " The author," he observes, "who has transferred the geographical relations of his own time to a former period [see, however, Foster, Geogra- phy of A rabia, 1844, i, 185] , makes the Jewish territory commence at Scythopolis (iii, 10), and makes Bethidia, against which Holofernes directed his attack, the first Jewish city at the entrance into Jiidrea (iv, 7), reckon- ing the territory intervening between this and Sama- ria as tributary to the Jewish high-priest. This state of affairs continued from the time of John Hyrcanus to Pompey's invasion of JudiEa. Hyrcanus had seized upon Samaria, and wrested Scythopolis, with the sur- romiding territory, from Epicrates, the general of Ptol- emy Lathurus (Josephus, Ant. xiii, 10, 3), B.C. 110, ac- cording to Usher. But Samaria and Scythopolis, with other acquisitions of the IMaccabees, were lost forever to the Jewish nation when Pompey, B.C. 48, reduced Ju- dffia to its ancient limits. The sea-coast (iii, 1), inde- pendent of the Jews, continued, since the last years of the reign of Alexander Jannseus, to be a Jewish posses- sion ; but Carmel, which (i, 8) was inhabitAl by the Gentiles, was still independent in the beginning of his reign, and he first seized it after the war with Ptolemy Lathyrus (xiii, 15, 4)." It is to this war that Movers considers the book of Judith to refer, and he supposes it to have been written after the unfortunate battle at Asochis, in Galilee (or, rather, Asophen on the Jordan) (Movers, Ueber die Ursprache der Deuterohan. Bikher, in the Bonner Zeitschrlft, xiii, 36 sq.). De Wette con- ceives that this hypothesis is opposed by the following geographical combinations : 1. Galilee belonged to the Asmonreans, the proof of which, indeed, is b;,' wyjieans certain, while the following indications there(!f1l(Tresent themselves: (n) Asochis seems to have belonged to Al- exander Jannaeus, as it received Ptolemy Lathyrus (Jo- sephus, A nt. xiii, 12, 4, comp. with xv, 4). (6) Hyrcanus had his son Alexander Jannseus brought up in Galilee (xiii, 12, 1). (c) Antigonus returned from Galilee ( War, i, 3, 3). (d) Aristobidus seized upon Iturrea (.4?;/. xiii, 11, 3), which presupposes the possession of Galilee, (e) Even after the limits of Galilee were circumscribed by Pom]iey, it still belonged to the Jewish high-priest ( War, i, 10, 4). 2. Idumaea belonged to the Jewish state, but the sons of Esau came to Holofernes (vii, 8, 18). 3, If the author had the war with Ptolemy Lathyrus in view, the irruption of Holofernes would rather corre- spond with the movements of the Cyprian army, which proceeded from Asochis to Sepphoris, and thence to Asophen (^Einleitiing, § 307).
Wolff and others ascribe the authorship to Achior, B.C. 636-629; Huetius (in Prmp. Evang. p. 217), Cal- met {Dissert. Prnlim. p. 142), etc., to Joshua, the sou of Josedech, the companion of Zerubbabel, B.C. 530-515; St. Jerome, etc., to Judith herself; E wald, Vaihinger, etc., to the time of John Hyrcanus, B.C. 130-128 ; Volkmar, who takes it to be an allegorical description of the vic- tory of the Parthians and Jews over Quietus, the dele- gate of Trajan, maintains (originally in the Theol. .Jahr- buch, 1856, p. 362 ; and 1857, p. 448 sq. ; afterwards in Hundb. d. Einl. in d. Apoh: Tiib. 1800) that it was writ- ten for the twelfth of Adar, A.D. 117-118, to commemo- rate this day (DliiiniU nii). He makes Nebuchad- nezzar stand for Trajan, Nineveh for Antioch, Assyria for Syria, Arphaxad for the Parthians, Ecbatana for Nisibis, Holofernes for Lucius Quietus, and Judith for Judaea. This explanation assumes the spuriousness of the reference in the First Epistle of Clement (§ 6), which is too early for the date assigned. It has been adopted by Baur,'Hitzig (in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. 1860, p. 240 sq.), and Schenkel; but it is opposed by Hilgen-