Second Temple Period Archives

The Ethics of the Book of Judith: Sex, Lies, and Murder

In the book of Judith, Judith is presented as a model of virtue, yet she lies repeatedly and seduces Holofernes in order to murder him. Did the author of the book of Judith intend the reader to see her as a model of virtue? Like Jael, Tamar, or Esther, Judith is a hero with a dark side.

In her prayer prior to entering the Assyrian camp, Judith tells God she has a plan and asks him to “By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant; crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman” (9:10). She more or less says, “bless my lies.”

She dresses to entice men: “she made herself very beautiful, to entice the eyes of all the men who might see her” (10:4), and the people of Bethulia prayed to God to give her success (10:8). When the Assyrian soldiers see her “she was in their eyes marvelously beautiful” (10:14). In fact, they judge Israel positively because of Judith’s beauty, “Who can despise these people, who have women like this among them?” (10:19).

Yet the people of Bethulia praise Judith and God when she returns with the general’s head in a bag. “When she had finished, the people raised a great shout and made a joyful noise in their town” (14:9). The elders of Bethulia say she has walked “the straight paths of God” (Judith 13:20). The Hebrew Bible has many examples of characters who are morally corrupt, but their actions are not praised or set up as a model to be emulated. For example, David uses his power to sleep with Bathsheba and murders her husband to cover up the affair. Even though the ultimate result of that relationship is Solomon, the greatest king of Israel, nothing in the text implies David’s adultery was a noble act. Yet Judith 15:9-10 the elders of Bethulia call Judith the “pride of our nation.”

Judith 15:9–10 When they met her, they all blessed her with one accord and said to her, “You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the great boast of Israel, you are the great pride of our nation! ¹⁰You have done all this with your own hand; you have done great good to Israel, and God is well pleased with it. May the Almighty Lord bless you forever!”

David deSilva suggested Judith should be read through the lens of honor and shame. Moral obligations toward God, kin, and nation differed from moral obligations to outsides (“Judith the Heroine?,” p. 56). A lie told in order to protect the honor of one’s family or one’s nation was an “honorable means” according to deSilva. He illustrates this with several stories from the Hebrew Bible in which zeal for defending the family or the nation includes lies and violence. He mentions Simeon and Levi’s defense of their sister Dinah (Gen 34) and Jael’s breech of hospitality when she killed Sisera (Judges 4-5). Although Simeon and Levi are not praised in Genesis, the Second Temple period book Testament of Levi describes Levi’s perpetual priesthood as a reward for his zeal for keeping Israel pure. In deSilva’s view, Holofernes is a threat to the honor of Israel, so the use of lies and violence to meet that challenge is acceptable and honorable. God’s honor is at stake, so Judith’s actions as she defends God’s honor are acceptable. Still, for many modern readers Judith’s use of her sexuality to seduce the general seems offensive. This this, as deSilva suggests, a case of “all’s fair in love and war”?

Geoffrey Miller suggest Judith is depicted similar to Israel’s Divine Warrior, God rising up to rescue his people in the day of distress. The writer of Judith did not intend for Judith to be an example for people to follow. (I would add here, this is unlike Daniel, who is presented in the first part of Daniel as model for resisting the empire.) For Miller, Judith’s behavior is difficult to justify (p. 232) and any attempt to do so falls short. Miller therefore argues Judith’s words are similar to divine utterance and her character is designed to evoke divine warrior theme from the Hebrew Bible.

Judith is often described as a heroic woman, “a woman who fights with a woman’s weapons, yet far from being defined by her ‘femininity,’ she uses it to her own ends.” (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 117).

The book of Judith is especially striking for its feminism. In creating a protagonist the author has chosen a woman, who calls to mind the Israelite heroines of the past-Judith “the Jewess.” As the narrative unfolds, Judith is consistently depicted as superior to the men with whom she is associated: Uzziah and the elders; the Assyrian army and their general. George Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 108.

Pamela Milne, for example, is not comfortable using Judith as a feminist icon and tracks a range of views from feminist interpreters moving away from the view of Nickelsburg. She suggests that “feminist readers reject any suggestion that she is a feminist heroine or a feminist’s heroine.” (Milne, “What Shall We Do with Judith?,” 55) For Milne, Judith is still presented “from a male, patriarchal perspective” even if she is a heroic figure.

The Book of Judith should be read as part of a wide range of responses to threats to Israel in Second Temple literature. Daniel was willing to die rather than eat the king’s food or pray to the Persian emperor. In fact, there is no hint of a violent resistance in most of the book of Daniel. God’s faithful resist and are willing to die rather that cross certain boundaries. Judith represents another response to similar challenges. Perhaps God’s people ought to actively resist by any means to protect the honor of God.

Maybe I am over-reading what was intended as an entertaining story, but it seems to me the book of Judith provides support for the violent resistance of the Maccabean Revolt as opposed to the passive resistance found in Fourth Maccabees.

What would Daniel do in a similar situation?

Bibliography: deSilva, David A. “Judith the Heroine?: Lies, Seduction, and Murder in Cultural Perspective.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 36 (2006): 55–61; Efthimiadis-Keith, Helen. “Judith, Feminist Ethics and Feminist Biblical/Old Testament Interpretation.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 138 (2010): 91–111; Miller, Geoffrey David. “A Femme Fatale of Whom ‘No One Spoke Ill’: Judith’s Moral Muddle and Her Personification of Yahweh.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 39 (2014): 223–45; Milne, Pamela J. “What Shall We Do with Judith? A Feminist Reassessment of a Biblical ‘Heroine,’” Semeia 62 (1993): 36-56; Tamber-Rosenau, Caryn. “Biblical Bathing Beauties and the Manipulation of the Male Gaze: What Judith Can Tell Us about Bathsheba and Susanna.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2017): 55–72.

Is Judith Historically Inaccurate?

There are several obvious errors in the book of Judith. Perhaps it does not even matter if Judith is historically inaccurate. The obvious historical blunders may be ironic. “The storyteller, speculated Torrey, might even have given his listeners “a solemn wink” as he delivered his opening sentence” (Moore, “Judith, Book of,” ABD 3:1121). As David deSilva suggested, any attempt to defend the historicity of Judith is doomed to failure (Introducing the Apocrypha, 94).

There are many historical inaccuracies in the book. I list just a few here:

The book begins in the twelfth year of Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Assyria and the great city of Nineveh. Nebuchadnezzar was a Babylonian king (not Assyrian), and Holofernes was a Greek (not Assyrian).
Holofernes marches his massive army from Nineveh to Cilicia in three days, over 300 miles (2:21). Two verses later, the army is fighting in Put and Lud, in North Africa. Remarkably, they are back in Cilicia in the next verse.
The author may have created the place names. Bethulia, for example, did not exist. But the name means “young woman” and maybe a hint of Judith’s victory later in the book. As Otzen says, “The topography of the book of Judith is also bewildering” (81).
The book claims Jerusalem can only be reached by a narrow pass, which anyone reading the book would know was geographically false.
The king of the Medes, Arphxad, is also fictional. The name is (probably) drawn from Genesis 10:22, one of the sons of Seth.
The book constantly refers to people living in Judea as the Israelites, a historical anachronism since Israel ceased to exist in 722 B.C.

How could any intelligent Jewish writer living about 150 B.C. make such a historical error as Nebuchadnezzar was king of Assyria after the Jews returned from exile? The only solution that makes sense is that these anachronisms are intentional. As Lawrence Wills puts it, “The book of Judith telescopes multiple historical epics into one imaginary frame” (Wills, Judith, 9). There is a little Assyrian assault on Jerusalem (2 Kings 18), Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Exile, and Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

I agree with Wills: “The author was intentionally playing with a fanciful storyline that would have been obvious to the audience” (Judith, 9). But what is the point of intentional historical errors? Should the reader look for a real historical figure behind the un-historical references to Nebuchadnezzar or Holofernes?

Wills offers the example of the Christian writer Sulpicius Severus (c. A.D. 403, Sacred History 2.16), who identified Nebuchadnezzar with Artaxerxes III Ochus of Persia (358-338 BC). It is also common for commentaries to reference Nebuchadnezzar as a reference to the Assyria king Ashurbanipal (668–626 B.C.). However, this does not solve the problem of the claim the Jews have only recently returned from exile after 539 B.C.) Since Otzen says there are at least twenty suggested historical solutions, perhaps these historical errors are not substitutions for actual historical facts.

Although Judith is an entirely fictional story, I suggest the author drew on stories of heroic women from the Hebrew Bible and well-known historical threats to the Jewish people to create a story that encourages readers to resist the empire, whatever empire happens to be oppressed at the time. Looking back at Jewish history, threats from Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes are blended together.

If the book is written just after the Maccabean revolt, perhaps the writer wanted to encourage readers to consider violence as a possible solution to threats and oppression. While Daniel encourages passive resistance and a willingness to die rather than compromise, Judith describes a woman who does what is necessary to end the threat by assassinating an Assyrian general. The historical details are fuzzy because the Jewish people are always under threat from a Gentile empire.

Do the books of Daniel and Judith represent two different approaches for Jews living in exile?

Bibliography: Benedikt Otzen, Tobit and Judith (Sheffield Academic, 2002); Lawrence M. Wills, Judith (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2019).

What is the Book of Judith?

Judith is a novella written shortly after the Maccabean revolt, probably 150-100 B.C. Carey Moore suggested Judith is reminiscent of the general spirit of the days of Judas Maccabeus” (“Judith, Book of,” ABD 3:1123). The book appears in the Apocrypha and tells the story of a threat to the Israelite village Bethulia. Judith is a beautiful widow who acts bravely and saves both her village and all of Israel from the Assyrian threat. The story is reminiscent of other Jewish women in the Hebrew Bible, including Rahab, Jael, Ruth, and Esther.

Judith 4:12 may allude to Antiochus’s desecration of the Temple in 167 B.C., “the sanctuary to be profaned and desecrated to the malicious joy of the Gentiles.” The defeat of Nicanor in 1 Maccabees 7:43-50 is remarkably similar to Judith’s assassination of Holofernes. Nebuchadnezzar demands to be worshiped as a god, recalling Daniel 3. Some place names which can be identified in the book suggest a date after 107 BC, after Alexander Janneus destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. Judith is only known in Greek although Jerome was familiarity with Aramaic version of the book. It does not appear in the Qumran library and is not mentioned in rabbinic literature.

Even if Judith was rarely considered canonical, the book important for both Christians and Jews. The book was included in the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta, and appears in many early and important Greek Bible (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus). Although it was never considered part of the Jewish canon, it is considered canonical in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox traditions.

Moore suggests a major problem for Jewish acceptance of the book is the conversion of Achior, an Ammonite. Deuteronomy 23:2 specifically states, “no Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation.” Achior is a gentile convert to Judaism who submitted to circumcision but is not baptized. Later Halakah required both for a Gentile to become a Jew (Moore, “Judith, Book of,” ABD 3:1124).

In his recent commentary on Judith, Lawrence Wills suggests Judith may have been known by the authors of Greek Esther and Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities (Wills, Judith, 2), but there are no citations or clear allusions to Judith. He suggests the reason Judith was never canonized may be as simple as the language, since it was not written in Hebrew it was considered secondary from the beginning.

Some early readers may have found the character Judith to be too brazen (Toni Craven, Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith, 117). Yet her actions are not too different than Ruth or Esther. She was not too brazen to keep the book out of the western Christian canon.

Both Clement of Alexandria and the council of Nicaea considered Judith canonical, as did most of the western church fathers. Luther questioned the canonicity of the book but treated it allegorically as a “passion play.” For modern Protestants, the historical anachronisms are enough to reject the book. The historical and geographical errors are a problem for anyone who holds to biblical inerrancy. However, modern studies of Judith treat these obvious errors as a sign to the reader that the story is fictional. For conservatives like Geisler and Nix, Judith is “subbiblical and, at times, even immoral,” citing God’s assistance and approval of Judith’s lies (9:10-13; A General Introduction to the Bible, Rev. ed.; [Moody, 1986], 271). It may be the case Geisler and Nix forgot about the prostitute Rahab’s lies (Joshua 2:4-7).

Even though the story of Judith is fiction, it reflects what some Jews thought about the struggle between Hellenism and Judaism. In Daniel, the four young men resisted the imposition of the empire and were willing to die rather than compromise. In Judith, resistance to the empire takes a more violent turn as Judith assassinates the Assyrian general Holofernes, forcing the invading foreigners back to their own territory.

Does story of Judith support to the Hasmoneans? Perhaps, but it may be the case the readers of Judith looked back to Judas Maccabees as the ideal defender of Israel rather than the later Hasmonaean kings.

Revelation and Empire

Despite the fact the book of Revelation is usually mined for what it has to say about future events, it is not a “roadmap for the future.” It is, rather, an exhortation written to very real churches to encourage them to live a different kind of life in the shadow of the Second Coming. This life means enduring persecution for their belief in Jesus and their non-belief in an imperial system that was becoming increasingly hostile to that faith.

There are many examples of this in Revelation, but I will offer one from the letter to Pergamum (Rev 2:12-17). In Rev 2:13 the church is commended for not renouncing their faith even though one faithful witness was put to death. The city is described as the place where Satan has his throne (v. 13) and “where Satan lives” (v. 14).

There are several suggestions for what is meant by “Satan’s Throne” (in fact, David Aune lists eight major possibilities). The Temple of Zeus Soter overlooked the city, and this throne was well known in the ancient world. On the other hand, this may refer to the Imperial cult represented by two temples to Emperors Augustus and (later) to Trajan.

In support of this view, it is observed that the term “throne” is used as an “official seat or chair of state” in the New Testament, Pergamum was the center of Satan’s activities in the province of Asia much the way Rome becomes the center for Satan’s activities in the west. The Temple of Augustus in Pergamum was built in 29 B.C., and was the first of the imperial cults in Asia Minor. In TJob 3:5b pagan temples are called “the temple of Satan.”

Even though the imperial cult is strong in their city, the church of Pergamum remains true to the Lord’s name, even to the point of death. Nothing is known from scripture about the martyr Antipas, which is a shortened form of Antipater. The title given him is “faithful witness,” title given to Jesus in Revelation 1. Eventually Pergamum will become known for several important martyrs. The fact that the city was the center of the imperial cult would make the Christian refusal to accept the cult a serious crime.

There is a principle running through several of the letters in Rev 2-3 that the witnessing church will be a persecuted church (Beale, Revelation, 427). Since the church has had a reputation for being a strong witness in the community, the church has had to face persecution, perhaps in the form of financial hardship and other social complications; but more importantly, members of their community have been killed for their faith.

Let me draw this back to the application of Revelation to the present church. How should the modern church “resist” the culture of this world? In western, “first world” countries this would look different than in some parts of Africa or Asia where the church is illegal and being persecuted for their faith. It is possible that the lack of persecution in the west is an indication that we have embraced culture and are no longer “faithful witnesses” like Antipas?

How would this “resist the culture” theology play out in modern American Christianity? It seems to me evangelicals have seized on some social issues and ignored others. Recently, resisting and protesting changes in same-sex marriage laws are the only place it appears Christians resist culture–but what about rampant consumerism or American exceptionalism? How do we adopt Revelation’s theology of resistance on a wider range of issues?

Should We Read Revelation Literally?

How is it even possible to approach the book of Revelation a literal hermeneutic? The presence of such bizarre symbolic language seems to preclude the possibility of reading the book literally. The presence of highly figurative language does not preclude the possibility of literal meaning. “The prophecies predict literal events, though the descriptions do not portray the events literally” (Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 369).

To take an example from modern language, a news reporter might attempt to describe a speech by the President as well done, something which exceeded all expectations, etc. To do this, he says “The president ‘hit one out of the park.’” Most Americans will understand perfectly well what the phrase means, hitting a home run is “ultimate success,” a literal event, although it is described in a metaphor, symbolic language.

Really? That’s It?

To use a simple example in Revelation, chapter 12 describes a red dragon which persecutes the child of a woman. The dragon is clearly Satan, an image which is fairly obvious from the context (and interpreted for us by John in 12:9). Is Satan really a big red dragon? Probably not, but the image suggests things about Satan which are in fact true.

The function of a metaphor highlights certain aspects about a “great red dragon” which are true about Satan, but not everything about the dragon is true of Satan. The difficult problem for the reader is sorting out what John intended to highlight and hide when he chose that metaphor.

When Revelation refers to something with straightforward language, we ought to take the words at face value. For example, Revelation 2-3 refer to seven churches, the ought to be read as real churches rather than epochs of church history.

Literal interpretation of Revelation does not deny figures of speech in the book. When the Bible says “like a…” it is clear that a figure of speech is being employed and that we should try to understand what the author meant by that figure. In each of the following examples, there is a metaphor / word picture which is interpreted for us by the text. Revelation 1:20 refers to seven stars and seven lampstands. The plain interpretation of these verses is that the stars are the angels of the seven churches and the lampstands are the churches themselves.

There are a few examples which are more difficult to know how far to press the “literal” meaning. For example, is the temple in chapter 11 a literal temple in Jerusalem, or a “spiritual temple,” such as the Church? When chapter 16 describes a great battle in Armageddon, should we understand the location as the literal valley of Megiddo?

The problem for readers of Revelation will always be entering into the metaphorical world of John. The more we understand that world, the better we can answer questions about how his metaphors originally functioned.

What are other potential examples of “clear” or “unclear” imagery in Revelation? Are there elements of the book we simply cannot understand at this point in history? If so, how does “all Scripture is profitable” apply to Revelation’s more difficult elements?