Although early Christians, such as Clement of Rome, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, read and used the Book of Judith, some of the oldest Christian canons, including the Bryennios List (1st/2nd century), that of Melito of Sardis (2nd century) and Origen (3rd century), do not include it.
Jerome, when he produced his Latin translation, counted it among the apocrypha,(although he changed his mind and later quoted it as scripture, and said he merely expressed the views of the Jews), as did Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem and Epiphanius of Salamis.
However, the influential Church Fathers Augustine, Ambrose, and Hilary of Poitiers, considered Judith sacred scripture, and Pope Innocent I declared it part of the canon. In Jerome’s Prologue to Judith he claims that the Book of Judith was “found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures”. It was also accepted by the councils of Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) and eventually dogmatically defined as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church in 1546 in the Council of Trent.
The Orthodox Church also accepts Judith as inspired scripture, as was confirmed in the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672.
The Episcopal Church calls for a reading of Judith 9:1,11-14 at Mass on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, July 22.
Amongst all Christian Churches who recognize this Book as canonical, only the Coptic Church celebrates the title character’s memory in its Calendar of Saints on September 17.
The canonicity of Judith is rejected by Protestants, who accept as the Old Testament only those books that are found in the Jewish canon. Martin Luther viewed the book as an allegory, but listed it as the first of the eight writings in his Apocrypha.
The story revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, with whom she slowly ingratiates herself, promising him information on the Israelites. Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night as he lies in a drunken stupor. She decapitates him, then takes his head back to her fearful countrymen. The Assyrians, having lost their leader, disperse, and Israel is saved. Though she is courted by many, Judith remains unmarried for the rest of her life.
The Book of Judith can be split into two parts or “acts” of approximately equal length. Chapters 1–7 describe the rise of the threat to Israel, led by the evil king Nebuchadnezzar and his sycophantic general Holofernes, and is concluded as Holofernes’ worldwide campaign has converged at the mountain pass where Judith’s village, Bethulia, is located. Chapters 8–16 then introduce Judith and depict her heroic actions to save her people. Part I, although at times tedious in its description of the military developments, develops important themes by alternating battles with reflections and rousing action with rest. In contrast, the second half is devoted mainly to Judith’s strength of character and the beheading scene.
The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha identifies a clear chiastic pattern in both “acts”, in which the order of events is reversed at a central moment in the narrative (i.e., abcc’b’a’).
In the Christian West from the patristic period on, Judith was invoked in a wide variety of texts as a multi-faceted allegorical figure. “Mulier sancta,” she personified the Church and many virtues – Humility, Justice, Fortitude, Chastity (the opposite of Holofernes’ vices Pride, Tyranny, Decadence, Lust) – and she was, like the other heroic women of the Hebrew scriptural tradition, made into a typological prefiguration of the Virgin Mary. Her gender made her a natural example of the biblical paradox of “strength in weakness”; she is thus paired with David and her beheading of Holofernes paralleled with that of Goliath – both deeds saved the Covenant People from a militarily superior enemy.
