Eliakim (Joakim), the high priest of the story, is also traditionally considered to be the author of the Book of Judith [36]. (We already saw that he was 'a man of letters', writing to the northern towns). This would support the view of commentators that this highly pious work, extremely scrupulous about religious observance, appears to have been written by a priest who was most faithful to Mosaïc Law and who evinces a remarkable knowledge of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms. No doubt the story was written with an enormous amount of eyewitness input from the ubiquitous Achior, whom the high priest would have met after Assyria's defeat. Achior would then have been able to fill in Joakim on all relevant details pertaining to the Assyrian campaign and strategy.
Judith herself could have told the priest about her personal encounter with Holofernes in the Assyrian camp.
And the high priest himself could have added most of the rest; all the basic narrative of the Assyrian incursion into Judæa and its effect upon Jerusalem. Finally, a later scribe could have added notes and glosses, e.g. about Arioch and how long Judith lived. I therefore accept the traditional view that Eliakim was the author of the Book of Judith, and that the original version must have been compiled around 700 BC. Unfortunately we do not now have this original version, which modern critics insist must have been written in the Hebrew language, and that Charles thinks was probably called [37]:, tydvhy hlgm['Book, Roll of Judith']
The Encyclopedia Judaica, too, insists that the original would have been in Hebrew [38]:As is clearly evident from its many Hebraisms, the book was originally written in Hebrew (cf., for example, the expressions: "the space of 30 days" (Judith 15:11 Sept.); "all flesh" (Genesis 6:13), as a designation for human beings; "let not thine eye spare" (Isaiah 13:18); "the face of the earth" (Amos 5:8); and "smote with the edge of the sword" (Psalm 89:43), etc.). In the precise Greek translation there is also discernible the special Erez Israel () spelling (the substitution of the " verb by ").And Charles is equally as insistent about this [39]:The [Greek] translation is so literal that it can be put back into Hebrew with ease, and in some cases becomes fully intelligible only when so re-translated.Moreover, the usual lack of particles shows that the writer was under the influence of a foreign idiom, while the constant recurrence of phrases common in late Greek but frequent in Hebrew shows incontestably the language of the original. Such are e.g. , , the frequent use of , , , , , and many more ....He attributes the confusion of place-names in extant versions of Judith to mistranslation and to errors by copyists [39b]:"The same conclusion is indicated by the confusion in the geographical names, due to the uncertainty in the mind of the translator as well as to mistakes by copyists ...".
According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the variants in the present text indicate a most ancient original [40]:"With regard to the state of the text it should be noted that the extraordinary variants presented in the various versions are themselves a proof that the versions were derived from a copy dating from a period long antecedent to the time of its translators".
