, a Jewish widow
distinguished alike for beauty, courage, and devotion to her country.
When Holofernes, one of Nebuchadnezzar's generals, was besieging
Bethulia, a city of Judea, she went over to his camp with her maid in
the character of a deserter, promised to guide him to Jerusalem, and by
her flattery and artful representations so insinuated herself into his
favor that he entertained her with high honor. At last, being left alone
with him at night in his tent, she beheaded him with his own falchion as
he lay asleep and intoxicated, and going forth gave his head to her
maid, who put it in her bag, and they two passed the guards in safety
under the pretext of going out for prayer, as had been their nightly
custom. The head of Holofernes was suspended from the wall of the city,
and when the warriors within sallied forth, the besieging army fled in
consternation. Judith receives as a reward all the stuff of Holofernes,
lives at Bethulia as a widow in high honor, and dies at the age of one
hundred and five.

11. The historical and geographical contradictions of this book are too
many and grave to allow the supposition that it contains an authentic
narrative of facts. It was manifestly written after the return of the
Jews from the Babylonish captivity and the rebuilding of the city and
temple (chaps. 4:3; 5:18, 19), when the nation was governed, not by a
king, but by a high priest and Sanhedrim. Chap. 4:6, 8; 15:8. Yet it
makes Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned in Babylon long before, king in
Nineveh in the eighth year of his reign, whereas his father had
destroyed Nineveh. The attempts that have been made to reconcile these
and other inconsistencies with true history are forced and unnatural.
Whatever historical truth may lie at the basis of the story, it is so
interwoven with fiction that the two elements cannot be separated from
each other. It was probably written by a Palestinian Jew in Hebrew or
Aramaic somewhere about the second century before Christ. The design of
the book is to excite the people to faith and courage in their severe
conflicts with foreign persecutors; but its morality is of a very
questionable character. Judith, its heroine, while she adheres with
great punctiliousness to the Mosaic ritual, does not scruple to employ
hypocrisy and falsehood that she may prepare the way for assassination,
being evidently persuaded that in the service of the covenant people the
end sanctifies the means.

IV. ADDITIONS