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Judith with the head of Holofernes by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, second half of 17th century
Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Cristofano Allori, 1613 (Royal Collection, London)
Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Simon Vouet, (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
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Caravaggio‘s Judith Beheading Holofernes
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Klimt‘s explicit 1901 version of Judith and the Head of Holofernes was shocking to viewers and is said to have targeted themes of female sexuality that had previously been more or less taboo.[1]
The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the Apocrypha. The book contains numerous historical anachronisms, which is why some scholars now accept it as non-historical; it has been considered a parable, a theological novel or perhaps the first historical novel.[2]
The name Judith (Hebrew: יְהוּדִית, Modern: Yehudit, Tiberian: Yəhûḏîṯ, “Praised” or “Jewess”) is the feminine form of Judah.
Historical context
Original language
It is not clear whether the Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew or in Greek. The oldest existing version is the Septuagint and might either be a translation from Hebrew or composed in Greek. Details of vocabulary and phrasing point to a Greek text written in a language modeled on the Greek developed through translating the other books in the Septuagint.[3]
The extant Hebrew language versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, date to the Middle Ages. The Hebrew versions name important figures directly such as the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, thus placing the events in the Hellenistic period when the Maccabees battled the Seleucid monarchs. The Greek version uses deliberately cryptic and anachronistic references such as “Nebuchadnezzar“, a “King of Assyria“, who “reigns in Nineveh“, for the same king. The adoption of that name, though unhistorical, has been sometimes explained either as a copyist’s addition, or an arbitrary name assigned to the ruler of Babylon.[citation needed]