In my Italian class
we have been studying the artistic works of Italian proto-feminists. One of
these artists was Artemisia Gentileschi who is famous for her paintings of the
Judith Story, her most celebrated painting being “Judith Beheading Holofernes”.
I thought it would be interesting to find and read the story that inspired
Artemisia and learn more about this particular section of the Bible. Here I
will be discussing the Book of Judith, from the Christian Old Testament, particularly
chapters 10 and 11.
The author of
this text cannot be confirmed. When doing background research, a high priest by
the name of Eliachim is sometimes said to be behind it, however, this appears
to only be speculation and not fact. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, it
can be confirmed that the author lived and wrote in Palestine and that he was a
Jew. They claim that it is very likely that the text was originally written in
Hebrew, due to certain difficulties that arose when translating particular
words to any language other than Hebrew. Scholars believe the author was a Jew not
only because the text allegedly written in Hebrew, but they also believe that
his knowledge and interests and knowledge of the law (as is presented
throughout the text) allows us to make an intelligent judgement that he
belonged to the Hasidean (chacidhim) party[1]. Scholars have
also made an assumption that due to his knowledge of the neighbourhood, he
comes from or lived in the ancient Israeli settlement called Dothan.
Researchers can
also make an informed guess on the time period that this text and author come
from. They date the Book of Judith to “probably during the Maccabean Age”
(approximately 167 – 160 BC) (Orr, 1915). They base much of this assumption by
comparing it to the Book of Daniel, which was almost certainly written during
the Maccabean period. Both the Book of Judith and the Book of Daniel appear to
be prompted by a severe prosecution and aim to encourage the reader to turn to
the divine during their darkest hour. I’m not a religious scholar or historian
myself, so I will not go into further details, but based on this, scholars seem
to see a clear connection between the text and the persecutions that were
happening during this particular period of time.
Personally, I
find the story of Judith interesting because of how it approaches women and
power. The Bible is traditionally said to position women as secondary creatures
to men, but in this story, in as far as I was able to read, Judith seems to
possess power over her male rival and the guards at the Assyrian camp (Chapter
10 and 11). For example, one passage
reads, “Holofernes and his personal servants were pleased with what Judith had
said, and they admired her wisdom. She must be the wisest and most beautiful
woman in the world, they commented one to another.” I had previously thought
that women of this time were generally seen as irrational beings and so
therefore, it’s interesting to see men acknowledging Judith’s wisdom and
listening to the military advice she is offering the emperor.
[1] Orr,
James. "Entry for 'JUDITH, BOOK OF'". "International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia". 1915. Web. Jan 27 2014
.
No comments:
Post a Comment