World Renowned
Judith of Bethulia
by
Damien F. Mackey
Judith
16:23-25
Her fame continued to spread, and she lived in the
house her husband had left her. Before she died, Judith divided her property
among her husband's and her own close relatives and set her slave woman free.
When she died in Bethulia at the age of 105, she was buried beside her husband,
and the people of Israel mourned her death for seven days. As long as Judith lived, and for many
years after her death, no one dared to threaten the people of Israel.
Introduction
Since
Judith had already become immensely famous in the eyes of the people of Israel
in her youth, it is intriguing to read in Judith 16:23 that “her fame continued to spread”. Even
before her heroic action in the camp of the Assyrians, we are told of this
goodly woman that (Judith 8:7-8): “[Judith] lived
among all her possessions without anyone finding a word to say
against her, so devoutly did she fear God”.
Moreover she had, according to the elder, Uzziah,
shown wisdom even from her childhood (vv. 28-29): “Uzziah replied, ‘Everything you have just said comes from an honest heart
and no one will contradict a word of it. Not that today
is the first time your wisdom has been displayed; from your earliest years all the
people have known how shrewd you are and of how sound a heart’.”
Aside from the recognition of her renowned beauty, by (i) the author
(Judith 8:7; 10:4); by (ii) the elders
of Bethulia (10:7); by the Assyrian unit and soldiery (10:14, 19); by
Holofernes and his staff (10:23; 11:21, 23; 12:13, 16, 20), we learn that even
the coarse Assyrians were impressed by her wisdom
and eloquence (11:21, 23).
And
Uzziah, after Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, proclaimed magnificently in her
honour (Judith 13:18-20):
… ‘May
you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most
High, beyond all women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God,
Creator of heaven and
earth, who guided you to cut off the head of the leader of our enemies!
The trust
which you have shown will not pass
from human hearts, as they commemorate the power of God for
evermore.
God grant
you may be always held in honour and
rewarded with blessings, since you did not consider your own life when our
nation was brought to its knees, but warded off our ruin, walking in the right path
before our God’.
And the people
all said, 'Amen! Amen!'
And
the stunned Achior, upon seeing the severed head of Holofernes, burst out with
this exclamation of praise (Judith 14:7): ‘May you be blessed in all the tents
of Judah and in every nation; those who hear your name will be seized with dread!’
Later,
Joakim the high priest and the
entire Council of Elders of Israel, who were in Jerusalem, came to see Judith and to
congratulate her (Judith 15:9-10):
On coming
to her house, they blessed her with one accord, saying: ‘You are the glory of
Jerusalem! You are the great pride of
Israel! You are the highest honour of our
race! By doing all this with your own hand you have deserved
well of Israel, and God has
approved what you have done. May you be blessed by the Lord Almighty
in all the days to come!’
And the people
all said, 'Amen!'
What more could
possibly be said!
From
whence came this incredible flow of wisdom?
We
may tend to recall the Judith of literature as being both beautiful and courageous -
and certainly she could be most forthright
as well, when occasion demanded it, somewhat like Joan of Arc (who was
supposedly referred to, in her time, as ‘a second Judith’).
Yet,
there is far more to it: mysticism.
T. Craven (Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith), following J. Dancy’s view (Shorter Books of the Apocrypha), that the theology presented in Judith’s words to the Bethulian town
officials rivals the theology of the Book of Job, will go on to make this
interesting comment (pp. 88-89,
n. 45.):
Judith plays out her whole
story with the kind of faith described in the Prologue of Job (esp. 1:21 and
2:9). Her faith is like that of Job after his experience of God in the
whirlwind (cf. 42:1-6), yet in the story she has no special theophanic
experience. We can only imagine what happened on her housetop where she was
habitually a woman of regular prayer.
[End of quote]
Although the
women’s movement is quite recent, it has already provided some new insights and
some radically different perspectives on Judith. According to P. Montley (as
referred to by C. Moore, The Anchor Bible. “Judith”,
pp. 65):
… Judith is the archetypal
androgyne. She is more than the Warrior Woman and the femme fatale, a
combination of the soldier and the seductress …
….
Just as the brilliance of a
cut diamond is the result of many different facets, so the striking appeal of the
book of Judith results from its many facets. …
[End of quote]
M. Stocker will,
in her comprehensive treatment of the Judith character and her actions (Judith Sexual
Warrior, pp.
13-15), compare the heroine to, amongst others, the Old Testament’s Jael – a
common comparison given that the woman, Jael, had driven a tent peg through the
temple of Sisera, an enemy of Israel (Judges 4:17-22) – Joan of Arc, and
Charlotte Corday, who had, during the French Revolution, slain the likewise
unsuspecting Marat. “If viewed negatively – from an irreligious perspective,
for instance”, Stocker will go on to write, “Judith’s isolation, chastity,
widowhood, childlessness, and murderousness would epitomize all that is morbid,
nihilistic and abortive”.
Hardly the type of
character to have been accorded ‘increasing fame’ amongst her people! Craven again, with reference to J. Ruskin (‘Mornings in
Florence’, p. 335), writes (p. 95): “Judith, the
slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of
Cyrus are counted in art as the female “types” who prefigure the Virgin Mary’s
triumph over Satan”.
- Judith a Heroine of Israel
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The way that I see it, these early commentators had
the will, if not the history/archaeology, to demonstrate the trustworthiness of
the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the archaeology had become
available, commentators no longer had the will.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What did the young Judith do to achieve her early
fame?
Well, if the typical contemporary biblical
commentators are to be believed, Judith did nothing in actual historical
reality, for the famous story is merely a piece of pious fiction.
Here, for instance, is such a view from the Catholic
News Agency [CNA] (http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/bible/introduction-to-the-old-testament/judith/):
Judith
….
Judith is
often characterized as an early historical novel. Yet ironically, its content
is unhistorical. The book begins by telling us that Nebuchadnezzer was the king
of Assyria ruling in Ninevah. But Ninevah was destroyed seven years before
Nebuchadnezzer became king. And he was king of Babylon, not Assyria. It would
be similar to an author beginning a book, "In 1776, when Abraham Lincoln
was the president of Canada..." The author of Judith clues us in that he
is not telling a typical story. While the story is replete with proper names of
places and people, many of them are not placed "correctly" and many
of them are unknown from other sources.
The book
of Judith is not trying to narrate an historical event nor is it presenting a
regular historical novel with fictional characters in a "real"
setting. Rather, Judith is iconic of all of Israel's struggles against
surrounding nations. By the time of its writing, Israel had been dominated by
the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks. The name "Judith"
means "Jewess." The character of Judith is therefore representative
of the whole nation of Israel. In an almost constant battle against the
surrounding nations, the Israelites depended on the Lord for their survival and
sustenance. Judith represents the best hopes and intentions of the
Israelites-the vanquishing of the oppressors and the freedom of the land of
Israel.
The
general Holofernes, whom Judith assassinates, represents the worst of the
oppressors. He is bringing 182,000 troops against a small city in a corner of
Israel to force them to worship the head of foreign oppression: Nebuchadnezzer.
The city is terribly outmatched, but Holofernes opts for a siege rather than a
battle. When the people are at the point of despair because they have run out
of water, Judith volunteers to try an unusual tactic. She leaves the city with
her maid and gets close to Holofernes because of her beauty. She uses a series
of tricks and half-truths to find Holofernes drunk and vulnerable. Then she
beheads him with his own sword!
It is
crucial to see the irony of the story and of Judith's words. For example, the
Ammonite Achior who Holofernes rejected was supposed to share the cruel fate of
the Israelites at the hand of the Assyrians, but he is saved with the
Israelites instead (6:5-9). Judith uses the phrase "my lord" (Adonai
in Heb.) several times, but it is unclear whether she is referring to
Holofernes or to God. The great nation is defeated by a humble woman. The story
is similar to the famous David and Goliath episode. The reader should look for
ironic moments where a character's intentions or statements are fulfilled, but
in the way that he or she would least expect.
The book
of Judith is divided into basically two sections, ch. 1-7 and 8-16. The first
seven chapters lay out the "historical" background and describe the
political situation which led to Holofernes attack on Israel. It is important
to understand that the events are not historical, but they are full of details
that one finds in a good novel. Achior plays a key role by narrating Israel's
history and firmly believing in God's protection of his people (5). He
eventually converts to Judaism after the Assyrians are defeated (14:10). The
second half of the book (8-16) focuses on Judith herself and her heroic acts.
Once the Assyrians discover Holofernes decapitated body, they flee in confusion
and the Israelites rout them. Ch. 16 contains a hymn about Judith's deeds. Like
Tobit, Judith is a deuterocanonical book.
Judith is
a book of the Bible that is meant to be enjoyed. By enjoying the story and the
Lord's victory over the great nations through Judith, we can appreciate the
paradoxical way God chooses to work on earth, using the weak to conquer the
strong, the poor to outdo the rich.
[End of quote]
But
this attribution of non-historicity to the Book of Judith was not the standard
Catholic approach down through the centuries, until, say, the 1930’s. During
that long period of time, Catholic scholars generally tended to regard the book
as recording a real historical drama, whether or not their valiant efforts to
demonstrate this were convincing. The way that I see it, these early
commentators had the will, if not the history/archaeology, to demonstrate the
trustworthiness of the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the
archaeology had become available, commentators no longer had the will.
A
combination of will and more scientific history/archaeology would be a really
nice change.
For,
today it is very rare to find any who are prepared to argue for the full
historicity of the Book of Judith.
I, in my university thesis, A Revised History of
the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background (http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/5973), wrote
regarding this situation (Preface, p. x):
I know of virtually no current
historians who even consider the Book of Judith to be anything other than a
‘pious fiction’, or perhaps ‘historical fiction’, with the emphasis generally
on the ‘fiction’ aspect of this. Thus I feel a strong empathy for the solitary Judith
in the midst of those differently-minded Assyrians (Judith 10:11-13:10).
In that thesis I had argued (with respect to the
book’s historical and geographical problems) for what I consider in retrospect
to be the obvious scenario: that the
Judith event pertains to the famous destruction of Sennacherib’s army of
185,000 Assyrians. The heroine Judith initiated this victory for Israel by
her slaying of the Assyrian commander-in-chief, which action then led to the
rout and slaughter of the army in its panic-stricken flight.
For my up-dated version of this, see:
“Nadin went into everlasting
darkness”
This is the incident that had made Judith so famous throughout Israel in
her youth – a fame that apparently only increased as she grew older.
But Judith, even more than being the most beautiful
and courageous woman that she was, had already, at a young age, exhibited - as
we have read - amazing wisdom and even sanctity. Her wisdom (some might say
cunning) was apparent from the way that she was able to beguile the Assyrians
with her shrewd and bitingly ironic words.
Judith was so formidable and significant a woman
and one would expect to find further traces of her in the course of her very
long life.
I believe that Judith has been picked up in many
literatures and mythologies of many nations.
- Judith a Universal Heroine
- Glimpses of Judith in BC Antiquity
Some ancient
stories that can be only vaguely historical seem to recall the Judith incident.
Two of these that I picked up in my thesis appear in the ‘Lindian Chronicle’
(dated 99 BC), relating to the Greco-Persian period, and in Homer’s classic, The Iliad.
The Lindian Chronicle
Thus I wrote in my thesis (op. cit., Volume Two, pp. 67-68):
Uzziah, confirming
Judith’s high reputation, immediately recognized the truth of what she had just
said (vv. 28-29), whilst adding the blatantly Aaronic excuse that ‘the people made
us do it’ (v. 30, cf. Exodus 32:21-24): ‘But the people were so thirsty that
they compelled us to do for them what we have promised, and made us take an
oath that we cannot break’. Judith, now forced to work within the time-frame of
those ‘five days’ that had been established against her will, then makes this
bold pronouncement – again completely in the prophetic, or even ‘apocalyptic’,
style of Joan of Arc (vv. 32-33):
Then Judith said to them, ‘Listen
to me. I am about to do something that will go down through all generations to
our descendants. Stand at the town gate tonight so that I may go out with my
maid; and within the days after which you have promised to surrender the town
to our enemies, the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand’.
A Note. This 5-day time frame, in
connection with a siege - the very apex of the [Book of Judith] drama - may
also have been appropriated into Greco-Persian folklore.
In the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ it is
narrated that when Darius, King of Persia, tried to conquer the Island of
Hellas, the people gathered in the stronghold of Lindus to withstand the
attack. The citizens of the besieged city asked their leaders to surrender because
of the hardships and sufferings brought by the water shortage (cf. Judith
7:20-28).
The Goddess Athena [read Judith]
advised one of the leaders [read Uzziah] to continue to resist the attack;
meanwhile she interceded with her father Jupiter [read God of Israel] on their
behalf (cf. Judith 8:9-9:14). Thereupon, the citizens asked for a truce of 5
days (exactly as in Judith), after which, if no help arrived, they would
surrender (cf. Judith 7:30-31). On the second day a heavy shower fell on the
city so the people could have sufficient water (cf. 8:31, where Uzziah asks
Judith to pray for rain). Datis [read Holofernes], the admiral of the Persian
fleet [read commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army], having witnessed the
particular intervention of the Goddess to protect the city, lifted the siege
[rather, the siege was forcibly raised]. ….
[End of quote]
Apparently I am not the only one who has
noticed the similarity between these two stories, for I now find this (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “The Israeli
scholar Y. M. Grintz has pointed out the parallels between the theme of the
book [Judith] and an episode which took place during the siege of Lindus, on
the island of Rhodes, but here again the comparison is extremely weak”.
Yes, the latter is probably just a
“weak” appropriation of the original Hebrew account. I have written a lot along
these lines of Greek appropriating, e.g.:
Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy
and:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
Whereas the goddess Athena may have been
substituted for Judith in the Lindian Chronicle, she substitutes for the angel
Raphael in that other pseudepigraphal book, Tobit. I made this comparison in
“Similarities to The Odyssey”:
The ‘Divine’ Messenger
From whom the son, especially, receives help during his travels. In the Book
of Tobit, this messenger is the angel Raphael
(in the guise of ‘Azarias’).
In The Odyssey, it is the goddess Athene (in the guise of ‘Mentes’).
Likewise Poseidon (The Odyssey) substitutes for the demon, Asmodeus (in Tobit).
It may also be due to an ‘historical’
mix up that two of Judith’s Assyrian opponents came to acquire the apparently Persians
name of, respectively, “Holofernes” and “Bagoas” (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “Holofernes
and Bagoas are to be identified with the two generals sent against Phoenicia,
Palestine and Egypt by Artaxerxes III towards 350 [BC]. The names are certainly
Persian, and are attested frequently …”.
Greco-Persian history is still awaiting
a proper revision.
“The
Iliad”
Earlier in my thesis (pp. 59-60) I had
written in similar vein, of Greek appropriation, regarding the confrontation
between the characters in the Book of Judith, “Holofernes” and “Achior”:
Achior had made an
unexpected apologia on behalf of the Israelites. It had even come with
this concluding warning to Holofernes (5:20, 21):
‘So now, my master and lord … if
they are not a guilty nation, then let my lord pass them by; for their Lord and
God will defend them, and we shall become the laughing-stock of the whole
world’.
These words had absolutely
stunned the soldiery who were by now all for tearing Achior ‘limb from
limb’ (5:22). Holofernes, for his part, was enraged with his
subordinate. Having succeeded in conquering almost the entire west, he was
hardly about to countenance hearing that some obscure mountain folk might be
able to offer him any meaningful resistance.
Holofernes then uttered the
ironic words to Achior: ‘… you shall not see my face again
from this day until I take
revenge on this race that came out of Egypt’ (6:5); ironic because, the next
time that Achior would see Holofernes’ face, it would be after
Judith
had beheaded him.
Holofernes thereupon
commanded his orderlies to take the insolent Achior and bind him
beneath the walls of Bethulia,
so that he could suffer, with the people whom he had just
verbally defended, their
inevitable fate when the city fell to the Assyrians (v. 6).
After the Assyrian brigade had
managed to secure Achior at Bethulia, and had then retreated from
the walls under sling-fire from the townsfolk, the Bethulians went out
to
fetch him (6:10-13). Once safely
inside the city Achior told them his story, and perhaps
Judith was present to hear it.
Later she would use bits and pieces of information supplied by Achior for
her own confrontation with Holofernes, to deceive him.
[End of quote]
In a footnote (n. 1286) to this, I had
proposed, in connection with The Iliad:
This fiery confrontation between
the commander-in-chief, his subordinates and Achior would be, I suggest
- following on from my earlier comments about Greco-Persian appropriations -
where Homer got his idea for the main theme of The Iliad: namely the
argument at the siege of Troy between Agamemnon, supreme commander of the
Greeks, and the renowned Achilles (Achior?).
And further on, on p. 69, I drew a
comparison between Judith and Helen of Troy of The Iliad:
The elders of Bethulia, “Uzziah,
Chabris, and Charmis - who are here mentioned for the last time in the story as
a threesome (10:6)” … - are stunned by Judith’s new appearance
when they meet her at the town’s
gate (vv. 7-8): “When they saw her transformed in appearance and dressed
differently, they were very greatly astounded at her beauty and
said to her, ‘May the God of our
ancestors grant you favour and fulfil your plan …’.”…. Upon Judith’s request
(command?), the elders “ordered the young men to open the gate
for her” (v. 9). Then she and her
maid went out of the town and headed for the camp of
the Assyrians. “The men of the
town watched her until she had gone down the mountain
and
passed through the valley, where they lost sight of her” (v. 10).
“Compare this
scene”, I added in (n. 1316), “with that of Helen at the Skaian gates of Troy, greatly
praised by Priam and the elders of the town for her beauty. The Iliad, Book
3, p. 45”.
We recall that Craven
had grouped together “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of
Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus …”. Whilst Judith and Jael were two
distinct heroines of Israel, living centuries apart, I think that Tomyris, the
slayer of Cyrus must be -given the ancient variations about the death of Cyrus
- a fictitious character. And her story has certain suspicious likenesses,
again, to that of Judith.
Tomyris and Cyrus
Death …
The details of Cyrus's death vary by account. The
account of Herodotus from his Histories provides the
second-longest detail, in which Cyrus met his fate in a fierce battle with the Massagetae, a tribe from the southern deserts of Khwarezm and Kyzyl Kum in the southernmost portion of the steppe regions of modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, following the advice of Croesus to attack them in their own territory.[68] The Massagetae were related to the Scythians in their dress and mode of living; they fought on
horseback and on foot. In order to acquire her realm, Cyrus first sent an offer
of marriage to their ruler, Tomyris, a proposal she rejected.
Compare e.g. (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context): “Holofernes
declares his intention of having sexual intercourse with Judith (12:12). Judith
responds to his invitation to the banquet by saying “Who am I, to refuse my
lord?”, clearly a double entendre! Holofernes, at the sight of Judith, is
described as “ravished.” But he does not get any further with Judith than Cyrus
would with Tomyris, for Judith, upon her return to the camp, will proclaim
(13:15-16):
‘Here’, she
said, ‘is the head of Holofernes, the general of the Assyrian army, and here is
the mosquito net from his bed, where he lay in a drunken stupor. The Lord used
a woman to kill him. As the Lord lives, I swear that
Holofernes never touched me, although my beauty deceived him and brought him to
his ruin. I was not defiled or disgraced; the Lord took care of me through it
all’.
Wine will also play a vital part in the Cyrus
legend, though in this case the defenders [i.e., the Massagetae - replacing the
Israelites of the original story], rather than the invader, will be the ones
affected by the strong drink:
[Cyrus] then commenced his attempt to take
Massagetae territory by force, beginning by building bridges and towered war
boats along his side of the river Jaxartes, or Syr Darya, which separated them. Sending him a
warning to cease his encroachment in which she stated she expected he would
disregard anyway, Tomyris challenged him to meet her forces in honorable
warfare, inviting him to a location in her country a day's march from the
river, where their two armies would formally engage each other. He accepted her
offer, but, learning that the Massagetae were unfamiliar with wine and its
intoxicating effects, he set up and then left camp with plenty of it behind,
taking his best soldiers with him and leaving the least capable ones. The
general of Tomyris's army, who was also her son Spargapises, and a third of the Massagetian troops killed the
group Cyrus had left there and, finding the camp well stocked with food and the
wine, unwittingly drank themselves into inebriation, diminishing their
capability to defend themselves, when they were then overtaken by a surprise
attack. They were successfully defeated, and, although he was taken prisoner,
Spargapises committed suicide once he regained sobriety.
It is at this point that Tomyris will be stirred
into action, more as a warrior queen than as a heroine using her womanly charm
to deceive, but she will ultimately - just like Judith - swear vengeance and decapitate
her chief opponent:
Upon learning of what had transpired, Tomyris
denounced Cyrus's tactics as underhanded and swore vengeance, leading a second
wave of troops into battle herself. Cyrus the Great was ultimately killed, and
his forces suffered massive casualties in what Herodotus referred to as the
fiercest battle of his career and the ancient world. When it was over, Tomyris
ordered the body of Cyrus brought to her, then decapitated him and dipped his
head in a vessel of blood in a symbolic gesture of revenge for his bloodlust
and the death of her son.[68][69] However, some scholars question this version,
mostly because Herodotus admits this event was one of many versions of Cyrus's
death that he heard from a supposedly reliable source who told him no one was
there to see the aftermath.[70]
Herodotus’s claim that this was “the fiercest
battle of … the ancient world”, whilst probably not befitting the obscure Massagetae,
is indeed a worthy description of the defeat and rout of Sennacherib’s massive
army of almost 200,000 men.
But this was, as Herodotus had also noted, just “one
of many versions of Cyrus's death”. And Wikipedia adds some variations on this
account:
Dandamayev says maybe Persians took back Cyrus' body
from the Massagetae, unlike what Herodotus claimed.[72]
Ctesias, in his Persica, has the longest account, which
says Cyrus met his death while putting down resistance from the Derbices infantry, aided by other Scythian archers and cavalry,
plus Indians and their elephants. According to him, this event took place
northeast of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[73] An alternative
account from Xenophon's Cyropaedia
contradicts the others, claiming that Cyrus died peaceably at his capital.[74] The final version
of Cyrus's death comes from Berossus, who only reports that Cyrus met his death while warring
against the Dahae archers northwest
of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[75]
[End of quote]
Scholars may be able to discern many
more Judith-type stories in semi-legendary BC ‘history’. Donald Spoto, in Joan. The Mysterious
Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007), has referred to the
following supposed warrior-women, a re-evaluation of whom I think may be worth
considering (p. 73):
The Greek
poet Telesilla was famous for saving the city of Argos from attack by Spartan
troops in the fifth century B.C. In first-century Britain, Queen Boudicca
[Boadicea] led an uprising against the occupying Roman forces. In the third
century Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (latter-day Syria), declared her independence
of the Roman Empire and seized Egypt and much of Asia Minor.
[End of quote]
But there are a plethora of such female
types also in what is considered to be AD history.
2.
Glimpses of Judith in (supposedly) AD Time
Before
I go on to discuss
some of these, I must point out - what I have mentioned before, here and there
- a problem with AD time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 600-900 AD),
akin to what revisionists have found to have occurred with the construction of
BC time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 700-1200 BC). Whilst I intend
to write much more about this in the future, I did broach the subject again in
my recent:
Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously
Mangles History. Part Two: From Birth to Marriage
and some of this will have a direct
bearing upon Judith (see Axum and Gudit
below).
But here is a different summary of attempts to
expose the perceived problems pertaining to AD time, known as the “Phantom Time
Hypothesis”, by a writer who is not sympathetic to it (http://www.damninteresting.com/the-phantom-time-hypothesis/):
by Alan Bellows
When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper
on the “phantom time hypothesis,” he kindly asks his readers to be patient,
benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly
unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three
difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was
polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2005, but
rather 1708; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.
The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the
early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar
long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by
deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators. This would mean that all
artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that
all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other
times, or are outright fabrications. For instance, a man named Heribert Illig
(pictured), one of the leading proponents of the theory, believes that
Charlemagne was a fictional character. But what evidence is this outlandish
theory based upon?
It seems that historians are plagued by a plethora
of falsified documents from the Middle Ages, and such was the subject of an
archaeological conference in München, Germany in 1986. In his lecture there,
Horst Fuhrmann, president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, described how
some documents forged by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages were
created hundreds of years before their “great moments” arrived, after which
they were embraced by medieval society. This implied that whomever produced the
forgeries must have very skillfully anticipated the future… or there was some
discrepancy in calculating dates.
This was reportedly the first bit of evidence that
roused Illig’s curiosity… he wondered why the church would have forged
documents hundreds of years before they would become useful. So he and his
group examined other fakes from preceding centuries, and they “divined
chronological distortions.” This led them to investigate the origin of the
Gregorian calendar, which raised even more inconsistency.
In 1582, the Gregorian calendar we still use today
was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to replace the outdated Julian calendar
which had been implemented in 45 BC. The Gregorian calendar was designed to
correct for a ten-day discrepancy caused by the fact that the Julian year was
10.8 minutes too long. But by Heribert Illig’s math, the 1,627 years which had
passed since the Julian calendar started should have accrued a thirteen-day
discrepancy… a ten-day error would have only taken 1,257 years.
So Illig and his group went hunting for other gaps
in history, and found a few… for example, a gap of building in Constantinople
(558 AD – 908 AD) and a gap in the doctrine of faith, especially the gap in the
evolution of theory and meaning of purgatory (600 AD until ca. 1100). From all
of this data, they have become convinced that at some time, the calendar year
was increased by 297 years without the corresponding passage of time. ….
[End of quote]
As with the pioneering efforts of Dr.
Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos)
to reform BC time, some of this early work in AD revisionism may turn out to be
extreme and far-fetched. But I would nevertheless agree with the claim by its
proponents that the received AD history likewise stands in need of a massive
renovation.
In my two-part series on Mohammed -
{who, I am now convinced, was not an historical personage, but a composite of
various biblical (pseudepigraphal) characters, and most notably (for at least
the period from Birth to Marriage), was Tobias (= my Job), son of Tobit} - I
drew attention to a very BC-like “Nehemiah”, thought to have been a
contemporary of Mohammed.
Moreover, the major incident that is
said to have occurred in the year of Mohammed’s birth, the invasion of Mecca by
Abrahas the Axumite, I argued in the “Biography of the Prophet Mohammed”, was simply
a reminiscence of Sennacherib’s invasion and defeat:
… an event that is said to have taken place in the very year that
Mohammed was born, c. 570 AD, the invasion of Mecca by Abraha[s] of the kingdom
of Axum [Aksum], has all the earmarks, I thought, of the disastrous campaign of
Sennacherib of Assyria against Israel.
Not 570 AD, but closer to 700 BC!
Lacking to this Qur'anic account is
the [Book of] Judith element that (I have argued in various places) was the
catalyst for the defeat of the Assyrian army. ....
But, as I went on to say, the Judith element is available, still in the context of the kingdom of Axum -
apparently a real AD kingdom, but one that seems to appropriate ancient
Assyrian - in the possibly Jewish heroine, Gudit (Gwedit, Yodit, Judith),
ostensibly of the mid- C10th AD. Let us read some more about her.
Judith the Simeonite and
Gudit the Semienite
Interesting that Judith the Simeonite has a Gideon (or
Gedeon) in her ancestry (Judith 8:1): “[Judith] was the daughter of
Merari, the granddaughter of Ox and the great-granddaughter of Joseph. Joseph’s
ancestors were Oziel, Elkiah, Ananias, Gideon, Raphaim,
Ahitub, Elijah, Hilkiah, Eliab, Nathanael, Salamiel, Sarasadai, and Israel”, and
the Queen of Semien, Gudit (or Judith), was the daughter of a King Gideon.
That the latter, Gudit, is probably a fable,
however, is suspected by the following writer (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=314380):
Bernard Lewis (1): The Jews of the Dark
continent, 1980
The early history of the Jews of the Habashan highlands
remains obscure, with their origins remaining more mythical than historical. In
this they areas in other respects, they are the mirror image of their supposed
Kin across the Red sea. For while copious external records of Byzantine,
Persian, old Axumite and Arab sources exist of the large-scale conversion of
Yemen to Judaism, and the survival of a large Jewish community at least until
the 11th century, no such external records exist for the Jews of Habash,
presently by far the numerically and politically dominant branch of this
ancient people.
Their own legends insist that Judaism had reached the
shores of Ethiopia at the time of the First temple. They further insist that
Ethiopia had always been Jewish. In spite of the claims of Habashan
nationalists, Byzantine, Persian and Arab sources all clearly indicate that the
politically dominant religion of Axum was, for a period of at least six
centuries Christianity and that the Tigray cryptochristian minority, far from
turning apostate following contact with Portugese Jesuits in the 15th century
is in fact the [remnant] of a period of Christian domination which lasted at
least until the 10th century.
For the historian, when records fail, speculation must
perforce fill the gap. Given our knowledge of the existence of both Jewish and
Christian sects in the deserts of Western Arabia and Yemen it is not difficult
to speculate that both may have reached the shores of Axum concurrently prior
to the council of Nicaea and the de-judaization of heterodox sects. Possibly,
they coexisted side by side for centuries without the baleful conflict which
was the lot of both faiths in the Mediterannean. Indeed, it is possible that
they were not even distinct faiths. We must recall that early Christians saw
themselves as Jews and practiced all aspects of Jewish law and ritual for the
first century of their existence. Neither did Judaism utterly disavow the
Christians, rather viewing them much as later communities would view the
Sabateans and other messianic movement. The advent While Paul of Tarsus changed
the course of Christian evolution but failed to formally de-Judaize all streams
of Christianity, with many surviving even after the council of Nicaea.
Might not Habash have offered a different model of
coexistence, even after it’s purported conversion to Christianity in the 4th
century? If it had, then what occurred? Did Christianity, cut off from contact
with Constantinople following the rise of Islam, wither on the vine enabling a
more grassroots based religion to assume dominance? While such a view is
tempting, archaeological evidence pointing to the continued centrality of a
Christian Axum as an administrative and economic center for several centuries
following the purported relocation of the capital of the kingdom to Gonder
indicates a darker possibility.
The most likely scenario, in my opinion, turns on our
knowledge of the Yemenite- Axum-Byzantine conflict of the 6th century. This
conflict was clearly seen as a religious, and indeed divinely sanctioned one by
Emperor Kaleb, with certain of his in scriptures clearly indicating the a
version of “replacement theology” had taken root in his court, forcing
individuals and sects straddling both sides of the Christian-Jewish continuum
to pick sides. Is it overly speculative to assume that those cleaving to
Judaism within Axum would be subject to suspicion and persecution? It seems to
me likely that the formation of an alternative capital by the shores of lake
Tana, far from being an organized relocation of the imperial seat, was, in
fact, an act of secession and flight by a numerically inferior and marginalized
minority (2).
Read in this light, the fabled Saga of King Gideon and
Queen Judith recapturing Axum from Muslim invaders and restoring the Zadokan
dynasty in the 10th century must be viewed skeptically as an attempt to
superimpose on the distant past a more contemporary enemy as part of the
process of national myth making. What truly occurred during this time of
isolation can only be the guessed at but I would hazard an opinion that the
Axum these legendary rulers “liberated” was held by Christians rather than
Muslims. ….
[End of quote]
Judith and Joan of Arc
Perhaps
the heoine with whom Judith of Bethulia is most often compared is the
fascinating Joan [Jeanne] of Arc. Spoto again, in his life of Joan, has a chapter five on Joan of Arc
that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a
“second Judith”. Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women
who had provided military assistance to Israel. Spoto, having referred to those
ancient pagan women (Telesilla, etc.), as already discussed, goes on to write (p.
74):
Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give direction
to soldiers. .... Africa had its rebel queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth
century. In the seventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently
accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which
she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially
repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine
took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess
of Montfort, took up arms after her husband died in order to protect the rights
of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and dressed in full
armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s
rear camps.
Joan [of Arc] was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected
poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk of
both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both
reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her
as the prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel
with an army of men?
Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her
confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had
been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would
have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy.
[End of quote]
I think that, based on the Gudit and Axum
scenario[s], there is the real possibility that some of these above-mentioned
heroines, or ancient amazons, can be identified with the famous Judith herself -
gradually being transformed from an heroic Old Testament woman into an
armour-bearing warrior on horseback, sometimes even suffering capture, torture
and death - whose celebrated beauty and/or siege victory I have argued on many
occasions was picked up in non-Hebrew ‘history’, or mythologies: e.g. the
legendary Helen of Troy is probably based on Judith, at least in relation to
her beauty and a famous siege, rather than to any military noüs on Helen’s part.
In the name Iodit (Gwedit) above, the name
Judith can be, I think, clearly recognised.
The wisdom-filled Judith might even have been
the model, too, for the interesting and highly intelligent and philosophically-minded
Hypatia of Alexandria. Now I find in the Wikipedia article, “Catherine of
Alexandria” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Alexandria), that the latter is also likened to Hypatia. Catherine is said to have
lived 105 years (Judith’s very age: see Book of Judith 16:23) before Hypatia’s
death. Historians such as Harold Thayler Davis believe that Catherine (‘the
pure one’) may not have existed and that she was more an ideal exemplary figure
than a historical one. She did certainly form an exemplary counterpart to the
pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the medieval mindset; and it has
been suggested that she was invented specifically for that purpose. Like Hypatia,
she is said to have been highly learned (in philosophy and theology), very
beautiful, sexually pure, and to have been brutally murdered for publicly
stating her beliefs.
Interestingly, St. Joan of Arc identified Catherine of Alexandria as one of the Saints who
appeared to her and counselled her.
Who really existed, and who did not?
Judith of Bethulia might be the key to answering
this question, and she may also provide us with a golden opportunity for
embarking upon a revision of AD time. For there are also many supposedly AD
queens called “Judith” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Judith):
Queen
Judith may refer to:
- Judith of Babenberg (c. late 1110s/1120 – after 1168), daughter of Leopold III, Margrave of Austria and Agnes of Germany, married William V, Marquess of Montferrat
- Judith of Bavaria (925 – June 29 soon after 985), daughter of Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria and Judith, married Henry I, Duke of Bavaria
- Judith of Bavaria (795-843) (805 - April 19 or 23, 843), daughter of Count of Welf and Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria, became second wife of Louis the Pious
- Judith Premyslid (c. 1057–1086), daughter of Vratislaus II of Bohemia and Adelaide of Hungary, became second wife of Władysław I Herman
- Judith of Brittany (982 – 1017), daughter of Conan I of Rennes and Ermengarde of Anjou, Duchess of Brittany, married Richard II, Duke of Normandy
- Judith of Flanders (October 844 – 870), daughter of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans, married Æthelwulf of Wessex
- Judith of Habsburg (1271 – May 21, 1297), daughter of Rudolph I of Germany and Gertrude of Hohenburg, married to Wenceslaus II of Bohemia
- Judith of Hungary (d.988), daughter of Géza of Hungary and Sarolt, married Bolesław I Chrobry
- Judith of Schweinfurt (before 1003 – 2 August 1058), daughter of Henry, Margrave of Nordgau and Gertrude, married Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia
- Judith of Swabia (1047/1054 – 1093/1095), daughter of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor and Agnes of Poitou, married Władysław I Herman, successor to Judith of Bohemia
- Judith of Thuringia (c. 1135 - d. 9 September after 1174), daughter of Louis I, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hedwig of Gudensberg, married Vladislaus II of Bohemia
Judith 16:17
'Woe
to the nations that rise up against my people!
The
Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment;
he
will send fire and worms into their flesh;
they
shall weep in pain forever'.
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