Birth of Judith . . . . 3285 7z9 Manasseh begins to reign . . 3306 698 Ile is taken prisoner to 13abylon and sent back to Juckea . 3328 676 War between Nebuchadnezzar and Arplaaxad . . . . 3347 657 Victory of Nebuchadnezzar over A rphaxad . . . . 3347 657 Expedition of Holofernes and siege of Bethulia . . . . 3348 656 Death of Manasseh . . • 3361 643 Amon his son begins to reign . 3361 643 Amon is murdered for his wicked ness . . . . . 3363 641 Josiah his son succeeds him, being eight years old . . 3363 641 Death of Judith, aged 105 years. 3390 614 Battle of Megiddo and death of King Josiah . . . . 3394 6 zo The last siege of Jerusalem by Ne buchadnezzar . • • 3414 59°Destruction of Jerusalem and cap tivity of the Jews . . 3416 558 The Nebuchadnezzar of this book is, according to this theory, Saosduchinus, who succeeded his father Esarhaddon in the kingdom of Assyria and Babylon in the 31st year of Manasseh's reign, and Arphaxad is Deioces king of Media. But this pre-exileview again incurs the following objections : 1. It makes Judith to be sixty-three years old at the time when she is described as `a,fizir a'antser rat Sio-ro7 Kaki?) captivating Holofernes (xii. 13) and ravishing the hearts of many ‘vho desired to marry her (xvi. 22). 2. It is absolutely inconsistent with chap. xvi. 23, where we are expressly told that there was none that made tbe 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 Judith's death to twenty years belbre the disastrous battle of Megiddo, wherein Josiah was mortally wounded, whereas this hypo thesis places her death only four years before this calamitous event. This inconsistency is still more glaring according to the calculations of Prideaux, who maintains that Judith could not have been more than forty-five years of age when she capti .,ated Holofernes, as this carries down her death to the 4th year of Zedekiah, when the state of the Jews bad been exceedingly disturbed for several years by the Babylonians, and actually brings the period in volved in the 'long- lbw 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, IS), which is incompatible with the reign of Manasseh, 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 Judtea and taken Manasseh prisoner, must surely have known something about the Jews, yet he is described as being utterly ignorant of the very name of this Jewish monarch, as not knowing the people and the city of Jerusalem, and being obliged to ask for somc information about them from the Ainorite chief (v. 1-3) ; 5. The Jewish state is represented as being under the government of a high-priest and a kind of Sanhedrim (vi. 6-14 ; xv. 8), which is only compatible with the post-exile period, when the Jews had no king ; and, 6. The book itself distinctly tells us in chap. iv. 3, and v. IS, that the events transpired after the captivity, as is rightly interpreted by the compilers of the mar ginal references of the A. V., who, on this passage, refer to 2 Kings xxv. 9-it, and Ezra i. 1-3.
O. The difficulty of taking the book to record, either pre-exile or post-exile history:, made Luther view it as a religious fiction or pem, written by a holy and. ingenious man, who depicts therein the victory of the Jewish people over all their enemies, which God at all times most wonderfully vouch safes. . . . Judith is the Jewish people, represented as a chaste and holy widow, which is always tbe character of God's people. Holofernes is the heathen, the godless or unchristian lord of all ages, whilst the city of 13ethulia denotes a virgin, indicating that the believing Jews of those days were the pure virgins' ( Vorrea'e azzfr Buck yzzdith).
Grotius, elaborating npon this idea, regards it as a parabolic description of Antiochus Epiphanes' as sault onJudtea—Judith istheyezvishpeopkV1V); Bethulia is the temple (r6N n+Z), tbe sword which went out of it, the prayers of the saints ; Nebuchad nezzar signifies the a'evil ; Assyria is pride, the devil's kingdom ; Holofernes is the a'evirs instru ment (vn) /idol serpentis, minister a'iezboli); the widow is the helplessness of the Yewish fieufie under the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes ; Joachim or Eliakim signifies God will arise (alp mn+ or nIp't ;...1) to defend Judma and cut off the instru ment of the devil who would have her corrupted.' Many of the modern writers who regard it as con taining pure fiction call it either drama (Buddeus), epopce (Artropus, Moreus, von Niebuhr, etc.), zrpologue (Babor), didactic poem (Jahn), moral fic tion (Bauer), or romance (Berthold).
c. As the book itself, however, gives no intima tion whatever that it is a fiction or azz allegozy, but. on die contrary, purports to be real history, as is evident from its minute geog,raphical (i. 7 ; 21, ff. ; 9, ff. ; iv. 4, 6, ff.), historical (i. 5, ff.), and chronological (i. 13, 16 ; viii. 4 ; xvi. 23) de scriptions, Gutmann, Herzfeld, Keil, and others, take it to contain a substance of truth embellished with fiction. And this view is supported by the fact that, 1. 1\Totwithstanding the arbitrary and un critical manner in which the Deutero-canonical his torians dispose of their materials, they have always a certain amount of truth, around which they clus ter the traditional embellishments ; 2. A summary of the contents of Judith is given in the ancient Jewish prayers for the first and second Sabbaths of the Feast of Dedication—beginning with 1: -171N =111 '1 rInn: and rtnn j'N—amongst the events which occurred in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and it cannot be supposed that the Jews would make it the basis of thanksgiving when the deliverance was never wrought, and the whole of it was nothing but a fiction ; and, 3. There are an cient Midrashim which record the facts indepen dently of the book of Judith. There is one in particular which gives a better recension of this book than either the Sept. or the Vulg., bears as much resemblance to the Sept. and Vulg. as these two versions bear to each other, and re moves many of the difficulties against its historical truthfulness, inasmuch as it begins with chap. v. 5, and thus shews that the Sept., from which the other versions were made, has put together two different records.
5. Author and Date.—The difference of opinion upon this subject is as great as it is upon the charac ter of the book. Whilst Wolff and others ascribe the authorship to Achior, B.C. 636-629 ; Iluetius (in Pray% Evang. p. 217), Calmet (Dissert. Prcelinz. p. 142), etc., to Joshua, the son of Josedech, the companion of Zerubbabel, B. C. 536-515 ; St. Jerome, etc., to Judith herself ; Ewald, Vaihinger, etc., to the time of John Hyrcanus, B.C. 130-128 ; Volkmar, who takes it to be an allegorical de scription of the victory of Judxas over Quietus, the delegate of Trajan, maintains that it was written for the twelfth of Adar A.D. I/7-118 to commemo rate this day (M))+,11t) IV). The fact, however, that there are several records or recensions of the events contained in the book of Judith proceeding from different autl3ors, and deviating materially from each other, precludes the possibility of ascer taining whose productions they are. All that can be said with certainty is, that they all emanate from a Palestinian source. As the circumstances re corded are most plainly declared by the more trustworthy Hebrew copics, and in the Jewish pray ers, to have occurred in the Maccaban struggles for independency (circa 170-160 B.c.), the first and shortest record of them which was used for liturgi..