by
Damien F. Mackey
“The sacred writer of this Book is
generally believed to be
the high priest Eliachim (called also Joachim)”.
Introduction to Judith in Douay version.
The Douay testimony here, that the high priest of the Book of Judith,
Joakim (var. Eliakim), has traditionally been regarded as being (substantially)
the author of the book, is the view that I had accepted as being most plausible
in my university thesis:
A Revised History
of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
There I wrote (Volume Two, pp. 58-59):
The Author of [Book of Judith] BOJ
A
tradition has Eliakim (Joakim), the high priest of the story, as the author of BOJ.1283
We
already saw that the high priest was ‘a man of letters’, writing to the
northern towns, including Bethulia. This would support the view of commentators that this highly pious work
(BOJ), extremely scrupulous about religious observance, appears to have been written
by a priest who was most faithful to the Mosaïc Law, and who evinces a remarkable
knowledge of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms.
It
would also accord with the view that BOJ was an ancient document, frequently
copied. No doubt the story would have been written with an enormous amount of
eyewitness input from the ubiquitous Achior,
whom the high priest would presumably 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, including information in regard to the secret council
prior to the western invasion. Less certain is how the author would have
learned that Holofernes’ consumption of wine, just prior to his death, was “much
more
than he had ever drunk in any one day since he was born” (12:29). It is just
possible that Achior, presumably a young man like Holofernes,
had grown up with the latter in the royal palace,
and thus had been familiar with the prince’s habits. Sennacherib does refer to
a “Bêl-ibni … who had grown up in Nineveh ‘like a young puppy’,” whom he made king
of Babylon upon the demise of Merodach-baladan.1284
Comment: We
learned in the article:
"Holofernes"
in Book of Judith. Part Three: Ashur-nadin-shumi as Book of Tobit’s “Nadin”
that the wise “Achior”/Ahikar (Ahiqar) had
actually “reared” “Holofernes”/Nadin.
Now, continuing with the thesis section:
Judith
herself could have told the high priest about her personal encounter with
Holofernes in the
Assyrian camp, when they met after the victory (15:8), just as she had recounted
the entire story to Achior and the Bethulians (14:8). And Joakim himself could have added most of the rest; all the basic narrative of
the Assyrian incursion into Palestine and its effect upon Jerusalem. Finally, a
later scribe could have added notes and glosses, e.g. about Arioch as
governor of Elam; how long Judith lived; the festival.
I thus
see no real obstacle in the way of the tradition that Eliakim was the author of
BOJ, meaning that the original version of the book must therefore have been
compiled in c. 700 BC.
[C.] Moore
has counterbalanced the view of some that BOJ consists of two very unequal
parts (chapters 1-7 and 8-16) - that is, in regard “to their respective
importance, interest, and literary quality”, not length - by his juxtaposing of
this with mention of Craven’s excellent study, which makes it “clear that the
book of Judith is made of a whole cloth and was intended as a balanced and
proportional narrative”:1285
Craven’s
study shows that the book has in each of its parts a threefold chiastic structure
and a distinctive thematic repetition. More specifically, each part has as its
major chiastic feature its own repeating theme: in chaps. 1-7, the theme is fear or its
denial (cf. 1:11; 2:28 [twice]; 4:2; 5:23; 7:4), and men play all the leading roles;
in chaps. 8-16 it is beauty, mentioned or implied, and a woman has center stage …. Thus, just as fear of the Assyrians had a “domino effect,” knocking down successive nations and peoples in
chaps. 1-7, so Judith’s beauty bowled over one male after another ….
Perhaps
to be alternatively considered (especially if the author were the high priest),
would be a contrast between (a servile) fear and its opposite, the virtue of courage
(prompted by trust in Yahweh), rather than a
contrast of the unrelated fear and beauty (the latter though, admittedly, being an important factor in chapters
8-16). Thus, the fear shown by men (and nations), in the first half of BOJ, is in contrast to
the courage (trust) borne by the beautiful woman, in the second half.
I
shall focus more in the next chapter on such matters of literary interest.
[End of quote]
For more on the high priest Joakim of the Book of Judith, see my
recent:
Hezekiah's Chief Official Eliakim was High
Priest
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