In Praise of Judith a Heroine of Israel

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

Judith 16:23-25

 

Her fame continued to spread, and she lived in the house her husband had left her. Before she died, Judith divided her property among her husband's and her own close relatives and set her slave woman free. When she died in Bethulia at the age of 105, she was buried beside her husband, and the people of Israel mourned her death for seven days.  As long as Judith lived, and for many years after her death, no one dared to threaten the people of Israel.

 

Since Judith had already become immensely famous in the eyes of the people of Israel in her youth, it is intriguing to read in Judith 16:23 that “her fame continued to spread”.

Even before her heroic action in the camp of the Assyrians, we are told of this goodly woman that (Judith 8:7-8):

 

[Judith] lived among all her possessions without anyone finding a word to say against her, so devoutly did she fear God.

 

Moreover she had, according to the elder, Uzziah, shown wisdom even from her childhood (vv. 28-29):

 

Uzziah replied, 'Everything you have just said comes from an honest heart and no one will contradict a word of it. Not that today is the first time your wisdom has been displayed; from your earliest years all the people have known how shrewd you are and of how sound a heart’.

 

Aside from the recognition of her renowned beauty, by

 

(i)                 the author (Judith 8:7; 10:4);

(ii)               the elders of Bethulia (10:7);

(iii)             the Assyrian unit and soldiery (10:14, 19);

(iv)             Holofernes and his staff (10:23; 11:21, 23; 12:13, 16, 20), we learn that

(v)               even the coarse Assyrians were impressed by her wisdom and eloquence (11:21, 23).

 

And Uzziah, after Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, proclaimed magnificently in her honour (Judith 13:18-20):

 

… ‘May you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most High, beyond all women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth, who guided you to cut off the head of the leader of our enemies!

 

The trust which you have shown will not pass from human hearts, as they commemorate the power of God for evermore.

 

God grant you may be always held in honour and rewarded with blessings, since you did not consider your own life when our nation was brought to its knees, but warded off our ruin, walking in the right path before our God’. And the people all said, 'Amen! Amen!'

 

And the stunned Achior, upon seeing the severed head of Holofernes, burst out with this exclamation of praise (Judith 14:7):

 

‘May you be blessed in all the tents of Judah and in every nation; those who hear your name will be seized with dread!’

 

Later, Joakim the high priest and the entire Council of Elders of Israel, who were in Jerusalem, came to see Judith and to congratulate her (Judith 15:9-10).

 

On coming to her house, they blessed her with one accord, saying: ‘You are the glory of Jerusalem! You are the great pride of Israel! You are the highest honour of our race!

 

By doing all this with your own hand you have deserved well of Israel, and God has approved what you have done. May you be blessed by the Lord Almighty in all the days to come!’ And the people all said, 'Amen!'

 

‘Blessed by God Most High, beyond all women on earth’.

‘The glory of Jerusalem,

the great pride of Israel,

the highest honour of [her] race!’

 

What more could possibly be said!

 

From whence came this incredible flow of wisdom?

 

We may tend to recall the Judith of literature as being both beautiful and courageous - and she could certainly be most forthright as well, when occasion demanded it, somewhat like Joan of Arc (who was supposedly referred to, in her time, as ‘a second Judith’).

 

Yet, there is far more to it: mysticism.

 

T. Craven (Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith)’, following J. Dancy’s view (Shorter Books of the Apocrypha), that the theology presented in Judith’s words to the Bethulian town officials rivals the theology of the Book of Job, will go on to make this interesting comment (pp. 88-89, n. 45.):

 

Judith plays out her whole story with the kind of faith described in the Prologue of Job (esp. 1:21 and 2:9). Her faith is like that of Job after his experience of God in the whirlwind (cf. 42:1-6), yet in the story she has no special theophanic experience. We can only imagine what happened on her housetop where she was habitually a woman of regular prayer.

[End of quote]

 

Although the women’s movement is recent, it has already provided some new insights and radically different perspectives on Judith. According to P. Montley (as referred to by C. Moore, The Anchor Bible. Judith, pp. 65):  

 

… Judith is the archetypal androgyne. She is more than the Warrior Woman and the femme fatale, a combination of the soldier and the seductress …

Just as the brilliance of a cut diamond is the result of many different facets, so the striking appeal of the book of Judith results from its many facets. …

 

M. Stocker will, in her comprehensive treatment of the Judith character and her actions (Judith Sexual Warrior, pp. 13-15), compare the heroine to, amongst others, the Old Testament’s Jael – a common comparison given that the woman, Jael, had driven a tent peg through the temple of Sisera, an enemy of Israel (Judges 4:17-22) – Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday, who had, during the French Revolution, slain the likewise unsuspecting Marat. “If viewed negatively – from an irreligious perspective, for instance”, Stocker will go onto write, “Judith’s isolation, chastity, widowhood, childlessness, and murderousness would epitomize all that is morbid, nihilistic and abortive”.

Hardly the type of character to have been accorded ‘increasing fame’ amongst her people!

 

Craven again, with reference to J. Ruskin (‘Mornings in Florence’, p. 335), writes (p. 95): “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus are counted in art as the female “types” who prefigure the Virgin Mary’s triumph over Satan”.

Tigranes II ‘the Great’ and ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ of Judith

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

The invasions of the supposed C1st BC Armenian ruler, Tigranes ‘the Great’, have been suggested as providing the basis for the Jewish story of the heroine Judith.  

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Encyclopaedia Iranica introduces the C1st BC King Tigranes II (Tigran) ‘the Great’ as follows (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tigran-ii):

 

TIGRAN II, THE GREAT, king of Armenia (r. 95-55 BCE). Tigran (Tigranes) II was the most distinguished member of the so-called Artašēsid/Artaxiad dynasty, which has now been identified as a branch of the earlier Eruandid dynasty of Iranian origin attested as ruling in Armenia from at least the 5th century B.C.E …. During Tigran’s reign Armenia briefly reached its widest extension in the vacuum of power resulting from the final decline of the Seleucids, the still incomplete consolidation of the Parthian empire, and the absence as yet of Rome’s full commitment to an expansionist policy in the East. Despite considerable information, Tigran’s achievements have been difficult to reconstruct and evaluate, because of the almost exclusively classical sources, whose treatment of him, as the son-in-law and supporter of Rome’s greatest enemy Mithradates VI Eupator (r. 120-63 BCE) of Pontus, is invariably hostile, and the much later and anachronistic account in the Armenian History of Movsēs Xorenac’i.

The beginning of Tigran II’s reign in 95BCE was not auspicious. He apparently succeeded his father Tigran I, of whom nothing is known beyond a few possible copper coins, rather than his uncle, as has sometimes been argued. ….

[End of quote]

Unfortunately, there seems to be a fair amount of obscurity here, “Tigran’s achievements have been difficult to reconstruct and evaluate”, “the much later and anachronistic account …”, “his father Tigran I, of whom nothing is known beyond a few possible copper coins …”.

Yet, the military activities of Tigranes have been proposed as the model for the story of Judith, which can also be thought - again wrongly, I suggest - to have been Maccabean influenced

 

Book of Judith Not a Maccabean Product

 

https://www.academia.edu/22407237/Book_of_Judith_Not_a_Maccabean_Product

 

And so we read of the theories of Samuel Rocca and Gabriele Boccaccini on this http://www.4enoch.org/wiki4/index.php?title=Category:Salome_Alexandra--history_(subject:

 

In 2005 Samuel Rocca first suggested that the story of Judith could contains echoes of the crisis generated by the invasion of the Armenian King Tigranes the Great.

The argument was taken up in 2009 by Gabriele Boccaccini who drew attention on the Armenian and Roman sources that seem to confirm the chronological and geographical details provided in the Book of Judith about the military campaign of the new "Nebuchadnezzar," Tigranes the Great.

[End of quote]

 

We read further of the striking similarities between the Judith account and Queen Salome against Tigranes in Rocca’s article, “The Book of Judith, Queen Salome Alexandra, and Tigranes of Armenia”:

https://www.academia.edu/4732361/The_Book_of_Judith_Queen_Salome_Alexandra_and_Tigranes_of_Armenia

 

Tigranes did not stop at Seleucid Syria. The Armenian King was ready to move against Judaea. For the Eastern potentate to face a small kingdom, moreover under the leadership of a woman, would have been nothing more than a promenade! He thus came against Judaea. According to Josephus, the queen and the nation were terrified! It was then that Queen Salome Alexandra opted for a diplomatic solution. She sent ambassadors to Tigranes. It seems that the ambassadors, with the help of many expensive gifts, persuaded Tigranes not to move against Judaea, for the time being at least. Queen Salome Alexandra had then the time to organize an army to face the Armenian despot. But she was not going at war alone. She cleverly bought enough time to allow her Roman ally, Lucullus to move against Tigranes, striking at the Armenian heartland. Thus as soon as Seleucid Ptolemais fell to the Armenian horde, Tigranes received the bad news that Lucullus, pursuing Mithridates was lying waste Armenia. Tigranes had to go home. And after him now there was a professional army of around 40.000, a Hasmonean Army, ready to fight …! In fact in 69 BCE Lucullus invaded Armenia, defeated Tigranes and conquered Tigranocerta his capital. The Hasmonean Queen and her subjects could now breath freely. This important episode makes up the main part of the Book of Judith.

[End of quote]

 

Returning again to

http://www.4enoch.org/wiki4/index.php?title=Category:Tigranes_the_Great--history_(subject) we read this:

 

Tigranes the Great is quite a neglected figure in Biblical and Judaic Studies. Only Armenian scholarship has preserved vivid memory of his military campaigns, in which Judea also was subdued. As an example of the way in which the relationship between Tigranes and Queen Alexandra is retold in modern Armenian culture, we may read the passage in Armen’s biography (1940):

 

“As the king’s forces poured into southern Phoenicia, Jews were alarmed at the proximity of such vast hosts to Judea. Queen Alexandra of Jerusalem, and the Jewish leaders already visioned Armenian cuirassiers riding into the sacred city, and once more the recollection of Babylonian captivity intensified their present panic. The undimmed prestige of Tigranes as a conqueror, who moved peoples, among them Jews from Syria, to populate his native territories, made him appear as a new Nebuchadnezzar, while the prospect of singing the songs of Zion on the banks of Euphrates and Tigris to satisfy the disdainful curiosity of their enslavers terrified them. For “how shall we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land!” Trembling Jewish ambassadors met Tigranes in Phoenicia, they “interceded with him, and entreated him he would determine nothing that was severe about their queen and nation.”

 

Tigranes alleviated their fears and assured then of his peaceful intentions toward Judea” (p.150).

[End of quotes]

 

It reads suspiciously like a pinch from the Hebrew Book of Judith.