Wikipedia page’s opening paragraph from here is: The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Church of the East Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith (Hebrew: יְהוּדִית, Modern: Yəhūdīt, Tiberian: Yŭhūḏīṯ), meaning “praised” or “Jewess”,[1] is the feminine form of Judah.
Two-Part Article at BAS
Judith: A Remarkable Heroine, Part 1
The first half of a two-part Bible History Daily presentation of Judith by Robin Gallaher Branch republished by BAS on August 21, 2025. This is the first half of Robin Gallaher Branch’s article discussing the character Judith, the remarkable heroine of the book bearing her name. The article was originally published in 2012.
Judith: A Remarkable Heroine, Part 2
Interesting insight is: 2. Judith and her maid. A silent, anonymous maid shadows Judith throughout her adventure and shares equally in it. Serving as an inclusion (Judith 8:10, 16:23), the maid summons the magistrates to Judith’s home and receives emancipation just before Judith dies at age 105. The maid, it seems, also is beautiful, for the awestruck Assyrians marvel, “Who can despise these people when they have women like this among them?” (Judith 10:19) (italics added). The maid cares for the physical needs of her mistress—her food and clothing—and acts as chaperone and attendant, necessary qualifications adding to the mystique and credibility of a great lady claiming she flees in distress from her doomed countrymen to the Assyrians because the Hebrews “are about to be devoured” (Judith 10:12).
The text hints at a deep bond between Judith and her maid and the deep faith they share. Both are members of the covenant community; the maid observes Judith’s lifestyle of prayer and fasting. …
Why Is Judith Not in the Hebrew Canon? The extract below is from Judith, The case of the pious killer by Carey A. Moore at BAS.
Note – Moore’s article paraphrases the story into modern wording and then points out errors and flaws. Those paragraphs are extracted below.
When we examine the book more closely, however, its “errors” and “flaws” soon become apparent, and this may explain why it didn’t make the canon.
From the book’s first words, we are jarred by incongruities in time, in geography, and in the identities of key people. Throughout the book, real places and people are mixed with places and individuals known from no other source. For example, the great Median king Arphaxad and Judith’s hometown of Bethulia are known from no other source, suggesting they were created for the story.
From other books in the Bible—and from extra biblical sources—we know that [bullet formatting is mine]:
- Nebuchadnezzar (605–562 B.C.E.d) was king of the Babylonians, not, as we are incorrectly told in the book of Judith, the Assyrians.
- And his capital was Babylon, not Nineveh.
- Nebuchadnezzar didn’t destroy Nineveh, the book of Judith to the contrary notwithstanding. Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar’s father, was the one who destroyed Nineveh (in 612 B.C.E.) and then made it his capital.
- As for Ecbatana, whose destruction is also attributed to Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Judith, it was not until after Nebuchadnezzar (in 544 B.C.E.) that it was first conquered (but not destroyed) by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenian empire.
- Judith’s Nebuchadnezzar claims to be a god, but no historical Assyrian, Babylonian, or Persian king ever actually made such a claim.e
The most egregious anachronism in the book is its historical setting. From other historical texts both in and outside the Bible, we know that it was the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar himself who destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Temple and exiled the Jews; and that it was during the subsequent rule of the Persians that the Jewish exiles returned and rebuilt their Temple. Yet, according to Judith 4:3 and 5:18–19, the Jews had just recently returned from exile and rebuilt the Temple, and Nebuchadnezzar is threatening Jerusalem after the Jews have returned from exile and rebuilt the Temple. In other words, a pre-exilic event (that is, Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews in 586 B.C.E.) is described in Judith in a post-exilic setting (that is, sometime after 519 B.C.E.). Even stranger, the Ammonite general Achior gives this account of Israelite history to the pre-exilic Nebuchadnezzar who, in the Judith narrative, will not succeed in destroying the Temple!
Geographical errors also abound. According to the book of Judith, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Put and Lud (2:23) prior to his moving west across the Euphrates. But, again according to biblical and extra-biblical texts, these two countries are located in Africa (possibly Libya) and Asia Minor (Lydia?), respectively.
Here’s another goof: Nebuchadnezzar’s army travels from Nineveh to the plain of Bectileth in northern Cilicia (2:21), a distance of 300 miles, in three days! These are but the book’s more glaring historical and geographical errors.
MLA Citation – Moore, Carey A. “Judith,” Bible Review 6.1 (1990): 26, 28, 31–36.
My observation, despite the above errors, is that Judith is still a great story like Esther but tells of a Jewish heroine who, unlike Esther, saves the people without a sexual overtone.
