The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new.
It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender itself to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.
Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller8 I begin with a discussion of the story of Judith and Holofernes as told in the earliest extant version of the Book of Judith (Ioudith) in the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient and celebrated Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The discussion will anticipate the two introductory sections: “Writing Judith:
Jewish Textual Traditions” and “Writing Judith: Christian Textual Traditions.”
8 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968; reprint, Schocken, 1969), p. 90. The author thanks Henrike Lähnemann for referencing Benjamin’s poe-tic original German: “Die Information hat ihren Lohn mit dem Augenblick dahin, in dem sie neu war. Sie lebt nur in diesem Augenblick. Sie muß sich gänzlich an ihn ausliefern und ohne Zeit zu verlieren sich ihm erklären. Anders die Erzählung:
sie verausgabt sich nicht. Sie bewahrt ihre Kraft gesammelt im Innern und ist nach langer Zeit der Entfaltung fähig.” Walter Benjamin, “Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II, no. 2 (Frankfurt/Main, 1977), pp. 438–65 (p. 445).
Ioudith has just been published in an important new English transla-tion from the Septuagint by Cameron Boyd-Taylor.9 Using a passage of his translation as a starting point, we will follow Judith’s state of mind leading up to and during the beheading of Holofernes and then discuss the compelling qualities of Judith as a biblical heroine. I will point out recent scholarship addressing the importance of the Book of Judith in the history of Jewish religion, women in the ancient world and the history of the book. The introduction will conclude by framing the subject of the essays that follow.
The Septuagint (LXX) is so named because, according to legend, prepa-ration of the Pentateuch was undertaken at the bequest of King Ptolemy II (285–46 b.c.e.) and required seventy (two) translators.10 Later other Hebrew scriptures were added. Modern scholars place the writing of the Book of Judith in the Hellenistic era, ca. 135–78 b.c.e., in Alexandria or Palestine and by an unknown author.11 There is no extant Hebrew text predating the Septuagint, and scholars still debate whether the Book of Judith was writ-ten in Hebrew and translated into Greek or composed originally in Greek.
The most celebrated and notorious part of the Judith story involves the beheading of Holofernes. What does beheading symbolize? For Otto Rank,
“the discovery of prehistoric graves with decapitated heads (sculls) laid by the side of the body indicated a prehistoric head cult based on the magi-cal significance of the head as the seat of personal power.”12 In Greek and Roman times, beheading was considered a privileged mode of execution, reserved for Roman citizens; crucifixion was inflicted on those who were to be publicly shamed. Paul was beheaded; Jesus crucified. In the twelfth century, in his treatise on justifiable tyrannicide, Bishop John of Salisbury allegorically interpreted the beheading of Holofernes as the sundering of an unjust king (as head) from the body politic. For Sigmund Freud, behead-9 Ioudith, trans. by Cameron Boyd-Taylor in Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G.
Wright (eds.), A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 441–55.
10 See Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint:
From Classical Antiquity to Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
11 For the date, authorship, and place of composition of the Book of Judith see Carey A. Moore, The Anchor Bible Judith: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), pp. 67–71.
12 See Otto Rank, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989). Rank continues, “In any case, com-parison with the head-cult, as it still exists today, suggests the conclusion that the magical significance of the head as the seat of personal power may be regarded as the beginning of a belief in the soul” (ibid., p. 181).
ing symbolized castration. This was the most popular reading of Judith iconography in the twentieth century.
The author of the Book of Judith makes it amply clear that the beheading of Holofernes was an act of war and uses the celebratory scene of the presen-tation of the head to establish Judith as a military heroine. Judith brings the head back from the Assyrian camp to the battlements of Bethulia to inspire the Jews to rout the Assyrian aggressors. The head of Holofernes is exhibited as a war trophy. Judith is honored with the captured booty of Holofernes’
armor. The same ancient military convention of exhibiting a tyrant’s head to establish that the enemy has been vanquished appears in 2 Maccabees, which describes the head of Nicanor exhibited on a tower (LXX 2 Mc 15:35).
The significance of the beheading is also layered in the biblical text with the idea of retribution for sexual violation. From the outset, the text intro-duces the threat of rape. Judith is aware that she may be raped when alone with Holofernes and prays with a loud voice:
Now Ioudith fell face down, and she placed ashes upon her head and stripped off the sackcloth that she wore, and just then in Jerousalem the incense for that evening was being carried into the house of the God, and with a loud voice Ioudith cried out to the Lord and said:
O Lord, God of my father Symeon, to whom you gave a sword in hand for vengeance on aliens, the ones who ravaged the virgin’s vulva for defilement and stripped naked the thigh for shame and polluted the vulva for disgrace, for you said “It shall not be thus” and they did; therefore you handed over their rulers for slaughter, and their bed which, deceived, felt ashamed at their deceit, for blood, and you struck down with slaves with lords and lords upon their thrones, and you handed over their wives for pillage and their daughters for captivity and all their spoils for division among the sons loved by you, who also were zealous in zeal for you and detested the defilement of their blood and called upon you as helper. O God, my God, also listen to me, the widow.13
The special twist of the Judith narrative is the transformation of the pri-vate, potentially intimate bedchamber scene between the Assyrian general and Judith into a beheading:
And approaching the bedpost that was near Olophernes’ head, she took down his scimitar from it, and drawing near to the bed she took hold of the hair of his head and said “Strengthen me, Lord, God of Israel, in this day.”
And she struck his head twice with her strength and took his head from him. And she rolled his body from the mattress and took the mosquito 13 LXX Jdt 9:1–2. Biblical books are referenced with the short titles following the Chicago style (cf. index under “Bible”).
netting from the posts. And she set forth shortly afterward and handed the head of Olophernes over to her favorite slave, and she threw it in her bag of provision.14
I offer these extensive quotations from Ioudith because they introduce so many of the themes addressed in what follows. Note Judith’s social status as a widow; the references to the sword (scimitar), which became forever iconographically linked to the figure of Judith; the allusion to the worship services at the temple in Jerusalem, locating the narrative in the Second Temple period; note her solitary prayer conducted in sackcloth and, the more unusual detail, prayer conducted after stripping off sackcloth; note also the detail of the mosquito netting that she takes from the posts after she beheads Olophernes. (For an explanation of the significance of the mos-quito net, see Barbara Schmitz’s essay, Chap. 4.)