Read this if you…
- want a deuterocanonical book where the heroine seduces and beheads an enemy general — Caravaggio painted this scene, twice
- like a Jewish Esther turned up to eleven: more violence, more cunning, more drinking
- care about Apocrypha that didn't survive the Protestant cut but stayed in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
The lineage through Judith
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Judith shaped it. - The beheading echoes down to Chaucer: in the Monk's Tale, the fall of Holofernes is founded directly on the Book of *Judith* - Chaucer names Judith as the woman who slays the sleeping general — the same scene, recast as a tragedy of fortune's wheel - One of the oldest stories here gets pulled into England's first great poem as a cautionary exemplum
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Judith shaped it. - Dante seats this book's heroine among the blessed in Paradise - Judith appears by name in *Paradiso* XXXII, in the celestial White Rose alongside Sarah, Rebecca, and Ruth as St. Bernard names the Old Testament women - Her victim Holofernes goes the other way — fixed among Dante's exempla of fallen pride
Depicted in Art
Judith grips Holofernes by the hair and saws through his neck mid-stroke as he screams; the maidservant Abra watches with a sack ready.
Caravaggio, 1599
Judith and her maid pin Holofernes to the bed and behead him together; blood spurts across the sheets in arcs.
Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620
Judith stands richly dressed in courtly Saxon costume, sword in one hand and Holofernes' head on a table, gazing directly at the viewer.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530
Judith in a feathered hat and slashed-sleeve dress holds Holofernes' bearded head by the hair against a dark ground.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530
Judith — a presumed self-portrait — stands beside her maid presenting Holofernes' severed head on a tray.
Fede Galizia, 1596
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Oxford University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Notable Quotes
Behold the head of Holofernes, the chief captain of the army of Assur, and behold the canopy, wherein he did lie in his drunkenness; and the Lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman.
Screen & Stage
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Jerome (St. Jerome), Church Father & Vulgate translator, c. 342–420: "Receive the widow Judith, example of chastity, and with triumphant praise acclaim her with eternal public celebration."
- Clement of Rome, Bishop of Rome & Apostolic Father, c. 35–99: "The Lord delivered Holophernes into the hand of a woman."
- Martin Luther, Protestant Reformer, 1483–1546: "This is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians."
- Marko Marulić, Croatian Renaissance humanist poet, 1450–1524: Made the holy widow Judith the first epic poem in Croatian — to steel his people against the Turks.
- Council of Trent, Catholic ecumenical council, 1545–1563: Named Judith among the canonical books of Scripture — to be received "as sacred and canonical... entire with all their parts" — under anathema for any who refused.
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