Monday, September 8, 2025

Gera on Judith's Reception among Jews

More office clean-out, and this time I have come across an article by Deborah Levine Gera called "Traces of the Story of Judith in Early Jewish Literature" (2024, in this edited volume). 

In my own recent analysis of the topic signaled in Gera's title, I basically came up with nothing. 

The earliest copy of the book we have (PSI 127 = Ra 968) is a third-century CE Greek fragment owned by Christians, unless the earliest copy is instead that (possibly Jewish) ostracon mentioned earlier (Ra 999). According to Origen, Jews in the third century CE did not own copies of the book, but according to Jerome, Jews in the fourth century did have Aramaic copies of the book. There are medieval Hebrew retellings of the book of Judith. (p. 93 of my book on the reception of the Apocrypha)

That's all I've got to say on the Jewish reception of Judith from its origins to the year 1000 CE (which is the time period I set for myself for the chapter on the Jewish reception of the deuterocanonical books). By the way, the reference to Origen is to his Epistle to Africanus, and the reference to Jerome is to his Preface to Judith

Gera's article considers echoes of Judith in the deuterocanonical Additions to Esther (specifically, Additions C and D) and in Ps-Philo, Book of Biblical Antiquities (chs. 30–33). A couple of quotations to see how she gets there. 

Pseudo-Philo's version of the encounter between Sisera and Jael, which he transforms into a seduction scene, clearly owes much to the Book of Judith. (p. 39)

Pseudo-Philo ... also, somewhat unexpectedly, lends Jael some of Judith's piety and prayerfulness. (p. 40)

Gera also analyzes the characterization of Sisera in Ps-Philo in comparison to Holofernes in Judith, and Ps-Philo's depiction of Deborah in relation to Judith. 

As for Esther's Additions C (prayers of Esther and Mordecai) and D (Esther's approach to the king), the possibility of influence between these Additions and the Book of Judith and, if so, the direction of that influence is more debatable. Gera argues for influence from Judith to the Additions. 

Moreover, she points out that if Ps-Philo originally wrote in Hebrew (as per the scholarly consensus) and if Addition C of Esther was written in Hebrew or Aramaic (as scholars generally conclude) and if Judith really did influence both of these works, then the likelihood that Judith itself was written in Hebrew (a point recently debated) perhaps increases.  

 

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