Story of Judith – not a Chanukah nor
real event
As an aside to
this series of blogs re: Chanukah and its ‘true’ and ‘full’ story, one must
address the Story of Judith.
The Jewish
tradition linking the Story of Judith
to Chanukah is a confusion and misattribution.
Judith, the
woman who killed an enemy general when he fell asleep in his tent and thereby
caused his leaderless army to lose when attacked by smaller Jewish force, is
recorded in the Book of Judith.
It survives as
a separate ‘book’ in the Apocrypha additions of the Greek Septuagint and thereafter
passed into western Christianity in Jerome’s Latin bible, the Vulgate (405 CE), and its subsequent translations into English and other languages.
She and her
heroic actions are never mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach,
contemporary Chanukah histories, or early
rabbinic sources.
Her assassination
of the enemy general is not found in the books of the Maccabees 1 and 2. These are the
semi-official and contemporary accounts of the events leading up to the
Maccabee revolt -- starting at least a decade beforehand – and tracing
martyrdoms and struggles and battles through the Maccabee revolt and Temple
rededication. 1 Maccabees goes even further than 2 Maccabees and covers
the ensuing 30 years down to Simon ‘s murder in 135 BCE.
Judith and her
heroic tale is also not included by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities, (late 1st century CE) and is absent from the Mishnah and Talmuds[ii].
Only in the
later middle Ages (post 1000 CE) does she appear in Jewish writings and in
various settings and diverse accounts: some linked to King Antiochus and Chanukah[iii].
The original Greek
Septuagint version in fact referred
to Assyria and Nebuchadnezzar -- some ½ a
millennium before the Maccabee revolt.
Nebuchadnezzar is named nine (9) times throughout the tale.
His nation is repeatedly and incorrectly identified as Assyria though he was ruler of Babylon. And his capital was Babylon and not Nineveh.
He is most famous in Jewish history as the one who invaded the Kingdom of Judea, destroyed the 1st Temple in 586 BCE and exiled most of Judea's citizens to his capital; the famous Babylonian Exile.[iv]
The Book of Judith ends with her death at age 105, after many decades of peace and Judean freedom achieved by her murder of the army general, Holofernes.
These last details alone: her extraordinary age at death and the claim her actions led to decades of peace and freedom in Judea, fit neither the reality of the original Greek setting of Nebuchadnezzar's reign nor that of the real era of Chanukah and the protracted struggle -- up to 25 years - of the Maccabees. (See previous blog "Chanukah - the full story".)
Any Jewish group who claims the story is historical and linked to Chanukah: even that the original account was caste into the Nebuchadnezzar past to avoid antagonizing the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and is actually part of the Chanukah struggle [v], is simply unfamiliar with the actual Septuagint and Vulgate texts, and delusional.
It is a pious piece of fiction.
Consequently, Judith’s
association with Chanukah is a late medieval Jewish tradition, and based on poor translations or wishful thinking that inserted King Antiochus as the substitute evil ruler.
[i]
See Wikipedia, “Book of
Judith” and especuially the article by Deborah Leine Gera https://books.openedition.org/obp/986?lang=en
[iii]
https://books.openedition.org/obp/986?lang=en See Appendix listing of all Jewish texts re: Judith.
[iv] See Wikipedia "Nebuchadnezzar II"
[v] See Wikipedia entry for Holenfernes.
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