Argument.—In the twelfth year of his reign Nebuchadrezzar, who is described as king of Assyria, having his capital in Nineveh, makes war against Arphaxad, king of Media, and overcomes him in his seventeenth year. He then despatches his chief general Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west who had withheld their assistance. This expedition has already succeeded in its main objects when Holofernes proceeds to attack Judaea. The children of Israel, who are described as having newly returned from captivity, are apprehensive of a desecration of their sanctuary, and resolve on resistance to the uttermost. The inhabitants of Bethulia (Betylūa) and Betomestham in particular (neither place can be identified), directed by Joachim the high priest, guard the mountain passes near Dothaim, and place themselves under God’s protection. Holofernes now inquires of the chiefs who are with him about the Israelites, and is answered by Achior the leader of the Ammonites, who enters upon a long historical narrative showing the Israelites to be invincible except when they have offended God. For this Achior is punished by being handed over to the Israelites, who lead him to the governor of Bethulia. Next day the siege begins, and after forty days the famished inhabitants urge the governor Ozias to surrender, which he consents to do unless relieved in five days. Judith, a beautiful and pious widow of the tribe of Simeon, now appears on the scene with a plan of deliverance. Wearing her rich attire, and accompanied by her maid, who carries a bag of provisions, she goes over to the hostile camp, where she is at once conducted to the general, whose suspicions are disarmed by the tales she invents. After four days Holofernes, smitten with her charms, at the close of a sumptuous entertainment invites her to remain within his tent over night. No sooner is he overcome with sleep than Judith, seizing his sword, strikes off his head and gives it to her maid; both now leave the camp (as they had previously been accustomed to do, ostensibly for prayer) and return to Bethulia, where the trophy is displayed amid great rejoicings and thanksgivings. Achior now publicly professes Judaism, and at the instance of Judith the Israelites make a sudden victorious onslaught on the enemy. Judith now sings a song of praise, and all go up to Jerusalem to worship with sacrifice and rejoicing. The book concludes with a brief notice of the closing years of the heroine.
Versions.—Judith was written originally in Hebrew. This is shown not only by the numerous Hebraisms, but also by mistranslations of the Greek translation, as in ii. 2, iii. 9, and other passages (see Fritzsche and Ball in loc.), despite the statement of Origen (Ep. ad Afric. 13) that the book was not received by the Jews among their apocryphal writings. In his preface to Judith, Jerome says that he based his Latin version on the Chaldee, which the Jews reckoned among their Hagiographa. Ball (Speaker’s Apocrypha, i. 243) holds that the Chaldee text used by Jerome was a free translation or adaptation of the Hebrew. The book exists in two forms: the shorter, which is preserved only in Hebrew (see under Hebrew Midrashim below), is, according to Scholz, Lipsius, Ball and Gaster, the older; the longer form is that contained in the versions.
Greek Version.—This is found in three recensions: (1) in A B, א; (2) in codices 19, 108 (Lucian’s text); (3) in codex 58, the source of the old Latin and Syriac.
Syriac and Latin Versions.—Two Syriac versions were made from the Greek—the first, that of the Peshito; and the second, that of Paul of Tella, the so-called Hexaplaric. The Old Latin was derived from the Greek, as we have remarked above, and Jerome’s from the Old Latin, under the control of a Chaldee version.
Later Hebrew Midrashim.—These are printed in Jellinek’s Bet ha-Midrasch, i. 130-131; ii. 12-22; and by Gaster in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology (1894), pp. 156-163.
Date.—The book in its fuller form was most probably written in the 2nd century B.C. The writer places his romance two centuries earlier, in the time of Ochus, as we may reasonably infer from the attack made by Holofernes and Bagoas on Judaea; for Artaxerxes Ochus made an expedition against Phoenicia and Egypt in 350 B.C., in which his chief generals were Holofernes and Bagoas.
Recent Literature.—Ball, Speaker’s Apocrypha (1888), an excellent piece of work; Scholz, Das Buch Judith (1896); Löhr, Apok. und Pseud. (1900), ii. 147-164; Porter in Hastings’s Dict. Bible, ii. 822-824; Gaster, Ency. Bib., ii. 2642-2646. See Ball, pp. 260-261, and Schürer in loc., for a full bibliography.
(R. H. C.)
JUDSON, ADONIRAM (1788-1850), American missionary, was born at Malden, Massachusetts, on the 9th of August 1788, the son of a Congregational minister. He graduated at Brown University in 1807, was successively a school teacher and an actor, completed a course at the Andover Theological Seminary in September 1810, and was at once licensed to preach as a Congregational clergyman. In the summer of 1810 he with several of his fellows students at Andover had petitioned the general association of ministers to be sent to Asiatic missionary fields. This application resulted in the establishment of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions, which sent Judson to England to secure, if possible, the co-operation of the London Missionary Society. His ship fell into the hands of a French privateer and he was for some time a prisoner in France, but finally proceeded to London, where his proposal was considered without anything being decided. He then returned to America, where he found the board ready to act independently. His appointment to Burma followed, and in 1812, accompanied by his wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson (1789-1826), he went to Calcutta. On the voyage both became advocates of baptism by immersion, and being thus cut off from Congregationalism, they began independent work. In 1814 they began to receive support from the American Baptist missionary union, which had been founded with the primary object of keeping them in the field. After a few months at Madras, they settled at Rangoon. There Judson mastered Burmese, into which he translated part of the Gospels with his wife’s help. In 1824 he removed to Ava, where during the war between the East India Company and Burma he was imprisoned for almost two years. After peace had been brought about (largely, it is said, through his exertions) Mrs Judson died. In 1827 Judson removed his headquarters to Maulmain, where school buildings and a church were erected, and where in 1834 he married Sarah Hall Boardman (1803-1845). In 1833 he completed his translation of the Bible; in succeeding years he compiled a Burmese grammar, a Burmese dictionary, and a Pali dictionary. In 1845 his wife’s failing health decided Judson to return to America, but she died during the voyage, and was buried at St Helena. In the United States Judson married Emily Chubbuck (1817-1854), well-known as a poet and novelist under the name of “Fanny Forrester,” who was one of the earliest advocates in America of the higher education of women. She returned with him in 1846 to Burma, where the rest of his life was devoted largely to the rewriting of his Burmese dictionary. He died at sea on the 12th of April 1850, while on his way to Martinique, in search of health. Judson was perhaps the greatest, as he was practically the first, of the many missionaries sent from the United States into foreign fields; his fervour, his devotion to duty, and his fortitude in the face of danger mark him as the prototype of the American missionary.