Book of Judith

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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. It is 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", is the feminine form of Judah. The extant translated manuscripts from antiquity appear to contain several historical anachronisms, which is why the majority of modern scholars consider the book ahistorical. Instead, the book has been re-classified as a parable, theological novel, or even the first historical novel. Although the majority of Catholic scholars and clergy now view the book as fictional, the Catholic Church had traditionally...

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