Judith
Judith from Praying with the Women of the Bible by Bridget Mary Meehan T he Book of Judith tells the story of how God delivered the Jewish people through a strong woman. Scholars think it was written in Hebrew at the end of the second or at the beginning of the first century b.c. Some writers question Judith’s existence. Others, like Miriam Therese Winter, believe the Judith story could be based on historical fact. The question is, asks Winter, Was there a Judith? It seems more appropriate to ask why wouldn’t there be? Her story is well within the realm of possibility…. Then why would a world, hungry for heroines, be so quick to dismiss her? Maybe because we fear she already exists in spirit in far too many women, and maybe because the violence of her act triggers a primal terror in males, that to succumb to a woman is to be vulnerable to death.1 The story of Judith is not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Protestant canon, but is part of the Catholic and Greek...