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Judith is a literary character, the protagonist of the Book of Judith.

< Research : See Studies on the Book of Judith -- Judith (research) >

< Fiction : See Studies on Judith, Reception History; and for a list of works of fiction, see Judith (art) -- Judith (cinema) -- Judith (literature) -- Judith (music) >

• This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

The character of Judith is a creation of the Book of Judith, likely composed in the first half of the 1st century BCE.

According to the Book of Judith, Judith was a wealthy and beautiful widow, who lived in Israel in a not-well-defined "post-esilic" period. When the freedom, independence, and religious liberty of the Jewish people were threatened by the invasion of the army of "King Nebuchadnezzar of Assyria," she envisioned a plot to defeat the powerful enemies. She went with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, and gained his trust, promising him information on the Israelites and charming him with her beauty. During the night, alone in his tent, she decapitated him, and took his head back to her countrymen. The Assyrians, having lost their leader, dispersed, and Israel was saved. Though she was courted by many, Judith remained unmarried for the rest of her life.

Judith is not mentioned elsewhere in Second Temple literature. The Book of Judith was seen as part of the Greek Bible, but has not been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The earliest undisputed reference to Judith is in 96 CE in 1 Clement 55:4-5, where Judith and Esther are mentioned as heroines of faith. As part of the Greek Bible, Judith entered the Christian canon(s) but was not included in the Rabbinic canon.

The character of Judith was popular in ancient Christian literature while she was never referred to in the Rabbinic tradition and also remained unknown in Islamic traditions.

Judith is a literary character. Scholarly research have focused either on the study of the character in her original literary context (see Book of Judith), or on the study of the Judith tradition over the centuries (see in particular Judith, Sexual Warrior (1998 Stocker), book, and The Sword of Judith (2010 Brine / Ciletti / Lähnemann), edited volume).

The suggestion that Judith could be a fictional counterpart of the Hasmonean Queen Salome Alexandra, facing the invasion of the Armenian King Tigranes the Great would give some historical relevance to the character.

Related categories

• Book of Judith -- Salome Alexandra -- Tigranes the Great

External links

• Wikipedia.en

Judith enjoyed an extraordinary success in Christian literature and iconography since the Middle Ages. Her exemplum of courage against tyrannical rule from afar could be easily applied to different circumstances. She symbolized the proud of independent Florence in the sculpture by Donatello (1460), and the struggle of the Croats against the Ottomans in the poem by Marko Marulić (1521). In the period of the Counter-Reformation, the "deutero-canonical" Judith became a symbol of the inviolability and invincibility of the Roman Catholic Church.

What made the subject so appealing to artists and audience, however, was not as much its political and theological meaning but rather the opportunity it offered to portray a heroine in which beauty and strength were united. Judith was usually depicted in the act of beheading Holofernes, or triumphant with the sword and the head of Holofernes, often in company with her maidservant, by artists such as Titian, Caravaggio, Valentin de Boulogne, and many others.

In the 18th cent. Judith was the protagonist of numerous oratorios. Pietro Metastasio's libretto, La Betulia liberata (1734), was set to music by more than 40 composers, including the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1771.

In the 19th century, as other biblical heroines Judith underwent a transformation into an Oriental beauty. The result was that her character became more and more similar to, and competing with, that of Salome.

By the early 20th century, Salome replaced Judith as the most popular Biblical heroine, by taking up most of her features and adding that touch of youthful perversion that the pious widow Judith could not have.

• @2015-17 Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan