by
Damien F. Mackey
Just as Sinon,
when brought before the Trojan king Priam, promises that he ‘will confess the
whole truth’ – though having no intention of doing that – so does Judith lie to
Holofernes: ‘I will say nothing false to my lord this night’ (Judith 11:5).
A correspondent from France is trying to convince me that:
Yes, Agamemnon existed and so did Ulysses.
….
Yes, Trojan War occurred, and so did Ulysses' homecoming.
However, I, in my
article:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
was at pains to show that the history of Tobias (=
Job), fixed in the C8th BC neo-Assyrian era, was the basis for some major parts
of Homer’s fictitious The Odyssey.
And, elsewhere, I have asked the question regarding
the Book of Judith and Homer (The Iliad,
this time) - and now introducing Sinon:
If the very main theme of The Iliad may have been lifted by the Greeks from the Book of Judith, then might not even the Homeric idea of the Trojan Horse ruse to capture Troy have been inspired by Judith’s own ruse to take the Assyrian camp?
Before going on to add this note:
[According to R. Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin Books,
combined ed., 1992), p. 697 (1, 2): “Classical commentators on Homer were
dissatisfied with the story of the wooden horse. They suggested, variously,
that the Greeks used a horse-like engine for breaking down the walls
(Pausanias: i. 23. 10) … that Antenor admitted the Greeks into Troy by a
postern which had a horse painted on it…. Troy is quite likely to have been
stormed by means of a wheeled wooden tower, faced with wet horse hides as a
protection against incendiary darts…”. …. (Pausanius 2nd century AD: Wrote
`Description of Greece’. )].
And then
proceeding to make this radical re-assessement of Virgil’s character, Sinon:
What may greatly serve to strengthen this suggestion is the uncannily
‘Judith-like’ trickery of a certain Sinon, a wily Greek, as narrated in the
detailed description of the Trojan Horse in Book Two of Virgil’s Aeneid. Sinon, whilst claiming to have
become estranged from his own people, because of their treachery and sins, was
in fact bent upon deceiving the Trojans about the purpose of the wooden horse,
in order “to open Troy to the Greeks”.
I shall set out here the main parallels that I find on this score
between the Aeneid and the Book of Judith.
Firstly, the name Sinon may recall Judith’s ancestor Simeon, son of
Israel (Judith 8:1; 9:2).
Whilst Sinon, when apprehended by the enemy, is “dishevelled” and
“defenceless”, Judith, also defenseless, is greatly admired for her appearance
by the members of the Assyrian patrol who apprehend her (Judith 10:14). As
Sinon is asked sympathetically by the Trojans ‘what he had come to tell …’ and
‘why he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner’, so does the Assyrian
commander-in-chief, Holofernes, ‘kindly’ ask Judith: ‘… tell me why you have
fled from [the Israelites] and have come over to us?’
Just as Sinon, when brought before the Trojan king Priam, promises that
he ‘will confess the whole truth’ – though having no intention of doing that –
so does Judith lie to Holofernes: ‘I will say nothing false to my lord this
night’ (Judith 11:5).
Sinon then gives his own treacherous acccount of events, including the
supposed sacrileges of the Greeks due to their tearing of the Palladium, image
of the goddess Athene, from her own sacred Temple in Troy; slaying the guards
on the heights of the citadel and then daring to touch the sacred bands on the
head of the virgin goddess with blood on their hands. For these ‘sacrileges’
the Greeks were doomed.
Likewise Judith assures Holofernes of victory because of the supposed
sacrilegious conduct that the Israelites have planned (e.g. to eat forbidden
and consecrated food), even in Jerusalem (11:11-15).
Sinon concludes – in relation to the Trojan options regarding what to do
with the enigmatic wooden horse – with an Achior-like statement: ‘For if your
hands violate this offering to Minerva, then total destruction shall fall upon
the empire of Priam and the Trojans…. But if your hands raise it up into your
city, Asia shall come unbidden in a mighty war to the walls of Pelops, and that
is the fate in store for our descendants’. Whilst Sinon’s words were full of
cunning, Achior had been sincere when he had warned Holofernes – in words to
which Judith will later allude deceitfully (11:9-10): ‘So now, my master and my
lord, if there is any oversight in this people [the Israelites] and they sin
against their God and we find out their offense, then we can go up against them
and defeat them. But if they are not a guilty nation, then let my lord pass
them by; for their Lord and God will defend them, and we shall become the
laughing-stock of the whole world’ (Judith 5:20-21). [Similarly, Achilles fears
to become ‘a laughing-stock and a burden of the earth’ (Plato’s Apologia, Scene
I, D. 5)]. These, Achior’s words, were the very ones that had so enraged
Holofernes and his soldiers (vv.22-24). And they would give the Greeks the
theme for their greatest epic, The Iliad.
My
correspondent from France’s respect for the alleged veracity of the pagan Greek
myths is shared, it seems, by Johan Weststeijn in his article “Zenobia of
Palmyra and the Book of Judith: Common Motifs in Greek, Jewish, and Arabic
Historiography”:
Author
Weststeijn is of the opinion - and it is a typical one - that the Book of
Judith (as well as the Arabic Zenobia) was based on an earlier work, or “Vorlage”,
with Achior of the Book of Judith being an ‘adaptation’ of Sinon at Troy. Thus:
Abstract:
This article points to the many
parallels between the book of Judith and the Arabic account of the life and
death of Zenobia of Palmyra. By comparing these two stories with the episode
about Zopyros in Herodotus’ Histories and the episode about Sinon in accounts
of the fall of Troy, it argues that these similarities can only be explained if
we assume that the book of Judith and the Arabic Zenobia Legend are adaptations
of the same Vorlage, an earlier story that contained a Holofernes motif
(heroine kills enemy) and a Sinon motif (enemy deceives heroine). When this
Vorlage was adapted to create the book of Judith, the part of the deceiving
Sinon was adapted to create the role of the sincere Achior, whereby he lost his
function in the story and became a blind motif.
Sinon
tells the Trojans that the Greeks have built the wooden horse as an offering to
the goddess Athena, and that they built it this big to prevent the Trojans from
bringing it inside their walls, for if the Trojans would succeed in doing
so, Athena would make Troy invincible.
The
trouble is that the goddess Athena (Athene) can be, in The Iliad and The Odyssey, a
paganised version of a lofty biblical character.
Take
The Odyssey first, in which Athene
replaces the angel Raphael of the Book of Tobit.
I
have previously written on this:
- The Heavenly Visitor
The prayers of Tobit and Sarah, on the one hand, and of Odysseus and
Penelope, on the other, were heard. Almighty God appointed the angel Raphael to
assist the former two. And Zeus (supreme god of the Greeks) appointed the
goddess Athene to assist the latter two.
With Odysseus still languishing as Calypso’s captive, and the suitors at
play back at his home, “the almighty Father” sent Athene to Ithaca. “… she
bound under her feet her lovely sandals of untarnished gold, which carried her
with the speed of the wind …. Thus she flashed down from the heights of
Olympus. On reaching Ithaca she took her stand on the threshhold of the court
in front of Odysseus’ house; and to look like a visitor she assumed the
appearance of a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, a bronze spear in hand (I,
27-28).
The reader will quickly be able to pick up the similarities between this
text and this relevant part of the Book of Tobit: “The prayer of [Tobit and
Sarah] was heard in the presence of the glory of the great God. And Raphael was
sent (3:16, 17)”. “Then Tobias … found a beautiful young man, standing girded,
as it were ready to walk. And not knowing that he was an angel of God, he
saluted him …. ‘I am Azarias, the son of the great Ananias’” (5:5, 6, 18).
(b) The Questioning
Tobit had interrogated the angel about the latter’s identity, asking:
‘My brother, to what tribe and family do you belong? Tell me …’ (5:9-12). Later
Raguel would do the same: ‘Where are you from brethren? …. Do you know our
brother Tobit? …. Is he in good health?’ (7:3, 4). [Cf. Isaiah 39:3; Judith
5:3, 4; Jonah 1:8].
In The Odyssey, too, the
pattern is again most frequent, almost monotonous but with a Greek seafaring
slant – e.g. the mention of a “vessel”. Telemachus, for instance, quizzes
Athene: ‘However, do tell me who you are and where you come from. What is your
native town? Who are your people? And since you certainly cannot have come on
foot, what kind of vessel brought you here? (I, 29). [Cf. also pp. 72; 118;
164; 175; 208; 220].
Athene then replied to Telemachus, using a phrase that I suggest may
have come straight out of the Book of Tobit, towards the end of which story the
angel Raphael says : ‘I will not conceal anything from you’ (12:11). Thus
Athene: “‘I will tell you everything’, answered the bright-eyed goddess Athene.
‘My father was the wise prince, Anchialus. My own name is Mentes, and I am a
chieftain of the sea-faring Taphians’.” Now Anchialus, the name that Athene (in
masculine guise) gave for her presumed father, has at least a vague resemblance
to the name, Ananias, which the angel Raphael (also in masculine guise)
attributed to his presumed father from the tribe of Naphtali. Athene also
describes herself as a Taphian, in which name we might perhaps also glimpse
Naphtalian.
….
Now,
turning to The Iliad, the goddess Athene
this time more appropriately replaces a female - the heroine Judith herself.
In
my article:
World Renowned Judith of Bethulia
I
wrote on this as follows:
Some ancient stories that can be only vaguely
historical seem to recall the Judith incident. Two of these that I picked up in
my thesis appear in the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ (dated 99 BC), relating to the
Greco-Persian period, and in Homer’s classic, The Iliad.
The Lindian Chronicle
Thus I wrote in my thesis (… Volume Two, pp.
67-68):
Uzziah, confirming Judith’s high reputation, immediately
recognized the truth of what she had just said (vv. 28-29), whilst adding the
blatantly Aaronic excuse that ‘the people made us do it’ (v. 30, cf. Exodus
32:21-24): ‘But the people were so thirsty that they compelled us to do for
them what we have promised, and made us take an oath that we cannot break’.
Judith, now forced to work within the time-frame of those ‘five days’ that had
been established against her will, then makes this bold pronouncement – again
completely in the prophetic, or even ‘apocalyptic’, style of Joan of Arc (vv.
32-33):
Then Judith said to them, ‘Listen to me. I am about to do something that will
go down through all generations to our descendants. Stand at the town gate
tonight so that I may go out with my maid; and within the days after which you
have promised to surrender the town to our enemies, the Lord will deliver
Israel by my hand’.
A Note. This 5-day time frame, in connection with a siege – the very apex
of the [Book of Judith] drama – may also have been appropriated into
Greco-Persian folklore.
In the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ it is narrated that when Darius, King of Persia,
tried to conquer the Island of Hellas, the people gathered in the stronghold of
Lindus to withstand the attack. The citizens of the besieged city asked their
leaders to surrender because of the hardships and sufferings brought by the
water shortage (cf. Judith 7:20-28).
The Goddess Athena [read Judith] advised one of the leaders [read Uzziah]
to continue to resist the attack; meanwhile she interceded with her father
Jupiter [read God of Israel] on their behalf (cf. Judith 8:9-9:14). Thereupon,
the citizens asked for a truce of 5 days (exactly as in Judith), after which,
if no help arrived, they would surrender (cf. Judith 7:30-31). On the second
day a heavy shower fell on the city so the people could have sufficient water
(cf. 8:31, where Uzziah asks Judith to pray for rain). Datis [read Holofernes],
the admiral of the Persian fleet [read commander-in-chief of the Assyrian
army], having witnessed the particular intervention of the Goddess to protect
the city, lifted the siege [rather, the siege was forcibly raised]. ….
Apparently I am not the only one who has noticed
the similarity between these two stories, for I now find this (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html):
“The Israeli scholar Y. M. Grintz has pointed out the parallels between the
theme of the book [Judith] and an episode which took place during the siege of
Lindus, on the island of Rhodes, but here again the comparison is extremely
weak”.
Yes, the latter is probably just a “weak” appropriation
of the original Hebrew account. ….
