Moreover, St. Justin Martyr had, even earlier than the
above-mentioned Church Fathers, espoused the view of the
Greek philosophers borrowing from the biblical Hebrews.
In previous articles I have supported
St. Clement of Alexandria’s view that Plato’s writings took their inspiration from the Hebrew Moses, and
St. Ambrose’s belief that Plato had learned from the prophet Jeremiah in Egypt; a belief that was initially taken up by St. Augustine, who added that
Greek philosophy generally derived from the Jewish Scriptures.
And, though St. Augustine later retracted his acceptance of St. Ambrose’s view, realising that it was chronologically impossible for Jeremiah (c. 600 BC) to have met Plato anywhere, considering the c. 400 BC date customarily assigned to Plato, I have, on the other hand, looked to turn this around by challenging the conventional dates.
From the Book of Jeremiah we learn that Jeremiah and Baruch went together to Egypt. So this Baruch, whom tradition also identifies as Zoroaster, would be a possible candidate to consider for St. Ambrose’s ‘Plato who was contemporaneous with Jeremiah in Egypt’.
Again, much of Plato’s most famous work, TheRepublic,with its themes of justice and righteousness, could have arisen, I suggest, from the intense dialogues of the books of Jeremiah and Job of identical themes.
Saint Justin Martyr
Moreover, St. Justin Martyr had, even earlier than the above-mentioned Church Fathers, espoused the view of the Greek philosophers borrowing from the biblical Hebrews. And Justin Martyr too, had, like Plato, written an Apology,in Justin’s case also apparently (like Plato) in regard to a martyrdom. So we read:
Plato Stole his ideas from Moses: True or False ….
The belief that the philosophers of Greece, including Plato and Aristotle, plagiarized certain of their teaching from Moses and the Hebrew prophets is an argument used by Christian Apologists of Gentile background who lived in the first four centuries of Christians.
My comment: I would like to take this a stage further.
that the supposed Athenian statesman and lawgiver, Solon, was in fact a Greek appropriation of Israel’s wise lawgiver, Solomon, so do I believe that the primary ‘Ionian’ and ‘Greek’ philosophers of antiquity were actually Greek appropriations of Hebrew sages and prophets.
Regarding the supposed “Father of Philosophy”, Thales, for instance, see my article:
Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy
Three key figures who presented this thesis are Justin Martyr “The most important second century apologist” {50. Grant 1973}, Titus Flavius Clemens known as Clement of Alexandria “the illustrious head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria at the close of the second century, was originally a pagan philosopher” (11, Robert 1857) and is renowned as being possibly the teacher of Origen. He was born either in Alexandria or Athens {Epiphs Haer, xxii.6}. Our final giant who supports this thesis is Eusebius of Caesarea known as the father of Church history. Each of these in their defense of the Christian faith presented some form of the thesis that the philosophers of Greece learned from the prophets of Israel. Our interest in this paper is on the arguments of the earliest of these writers, Justin Martyr. He represents the position of Christian apology in the middle of the second century, as opposed to the later Clement of Alexandria and the even later Eusebius of Caesarea.
In light of the stature and the credibility of these three Church Fathers even if the idea that Plato learned from Moses seems far fetched we would do well to take a closer look at the argument and the evidence presented by such men of stature. Justin was a philosopher who came from a pagan background. He issued from Shechem in Palestine. He was a marvelous scholar in his own right well read and well qualified to make informed judgments in the arena of philosophy.
Our purpose is to briefly look at the theses presented by Justin Martyr and to try to discern the plausibility of the thesis.
Justin Martyr and the line Plato took from Moses.
My comment on this section: If the great Plato is to be restored as a (perhaps composite) biblical sage, along the lines of characters e.g. my article:
as I think eventually he must be, then this would be not so much a case of Greeks plagiarising the Scriptures as of a biblical wise man (the original Plato) keeping alive the Mosaïc Law and Tradition.
The article continues with a biography of Justin Martyr:
Justin Martyr was a prolific second century Apologist. He was born in Flavia Neapolis (Shechem) in Samaria. Well known for the local Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and a temple built by Hadrian to Zeus Hypsistos. He later passed through Stoicism and the way of Aristotle’s disciples the Peripatetics and was rejected as unqualified to study Pythagoreanism and finally he met a Platonist with whom he advanced in his studies. To him the goal of Platonism was “the vision of God”. One day he met a Christian on the beach and was converted to the faith. He did not become a priest or bishop but took to teaching and defending the faith.
Text
He wrote many works and many more bear his name. However modern scholarship has judged that of the many works that bear his name only three are considered genuine. These are 2 Apologies and the Dialogue with the Jew Trypho.
They are preserved in one manuscript of the year 1364 (Cod Par, gr. 450).
Language
Justin wrote in Greek, and right in the middle of the period of philosophy called Middle Platonism.
The book in which he outlines his thesis that Moses and the prophets were a source for the Greek Philosophers is his first Apology. It is dated to 155-157 BC and was addressed to “The Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antonius Pius Caesar Augustus, and the sons Verissimus, philosopher, philosopher, and Lucius” Grant (52, 1973).
My comment: I would seriously contest these conventional dates for Imperial Rome, given my view that the so-called ‘Second’ Jewish revolt against Rome was (at least in part) the actual Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Greeks.
—————————————————————————————————
It is here that Justin makes a most interesting and intriguing statement
rallying Plato to the side of Moses and Isaiah, in the eyes of the son of the
Emperor whom he calls philosophers.
—————————————————————————————————
The article continues with the writings of Justin Martyr:
Context
Grant (1973) believes the reason which triggered the Apology was the martyrdom of Polycarp in 156 AD and the injustice of it during the bishopric of Anicetus. Even as this martyrdom and its report may have spurred Justin on to write so it had been that it was on seeing the fortitude of the Christian martyrs which had disposed him favorably towards the faith (Ap 2.12.1). ….
In the Apology 1 Justin gives the reason for his writing
“I, Justin, the son of Priscus and grandson of Bacchius, natives of Flavia Neapolis in Palestine, present this address and petition on behalf of those of all nations who are unjustly hated and wantonly abused; my self being one of them” (Apology 1 chap).
The Apology 1 is divided into 60 chapters. The translation we are using is that of the Ante Nicene Fathers and can be seen at www.ccel.org
The topics covered are many. He starts in chapter 2 by demanding justice, he requires that before the Christians are condemned they should be given a fair trial to see if they have committed any crimes or not. They should not be condemned merely for being Christian. He covers many subjects including: the accusation Christians were Atheists, faith in God; the Kingdom of Christ; God’s service; demonic teachings; Christ’s teachings and heathen analogies to it; non Christian worship; magic; exposing children, the Hebrew prophets and their prophecies about Christ, types of prophetic words from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This brings us to about chapter 38.
At this point Justin begins to cover the issue of determinism and free will. He argues that although the future was prophesied it does not mean everything is determined according to fate and man has no responsibility for he has no choice. Rather he points to Moses revealing God’s choice to Adam “Behold before thy face are good and evil: choose the good”. (Apol 1 44) And he quotes lsaiah’s appeal to Israel to wash and be clean and the consequences of doing so or not doing so. The consequences of disobedience are that the sword would devour Israel. Justin picks up on the statement regarding the sword and argues that it is not a literal sword which is referred to but “the sword of God is a fire, of which those who choose to do wickedly will become the fuel” (Apol 1 44). Justin having appealed to Moses and Isaiah as a warning to the Roman rulers now appeals to one with whom they are more familiar, Plato the philosopher, to support his case that man is free to choose good or evil.
It is here that Justin makes a most interesting and intriguing statement rallying Plato to the side of Moses and Isaiah, in the eyes of the son of the Emperor whom he calls philosophers.
And so, too, Plato, when he says, “The blame is his who chooses, and God is blameless” took this from the prophet Moses and uttered it.
For Moses is more ancient than all the Greek writers. And whatever both philosophers and poets have said concerning the immortality of the soul, or punishments after death, or contemplation of things heavenly, or doctrines of the like kind, they have received such suggestions from the prophets as have enabled them to understand and interpret these things. And hence there seem to be seeds of truth among all men; but they are charged with not accurately understanding [the truth] when they assert contradictories.
…. He appears to be making the claim that Plato who has “exerted a greater influence over human thought than any other individual with the possible exception of Aristotle” (Demos, 1927.vi) was dependent for his understanding of freewill and responsibility on Moses. The saying “the blame is his who chooses, and God is blameless (Aitia helomenou Theos d’ anaios) {Joann. Mdcccxlii, 224}” was taken from Moses by Plato and uttered it {eipe}”.
[End of quote]
Plato and Job
The combined story of Job and his alter ego, Tobias, son of Tobit
And, as already implied, I believe that this biblical story has also had a huge influence upon ancient (supposedly Greco-Roman) philosophy, which, however, significantly alters the original version. For, whilst there can be a similarity in thought between Plato and, for example, the Book of Job, the tone may be quite different. Plato’s Republic, and his other dialogues such as Protagoras and Meno, brilliant though they may be in places, when compared with the intense atmosphere of the drama of the Book of Job, come across sometimes as a bit like a gentlemen’s discussion over a glass of port.
W. Guthrie may have captured something of this general tone in his Introduction toPlato.Protagorasand Meno (Penguin, 1968), when he wrote (p. 20, emphasis added):
… a feature of the conversation which cannot fail to strike a reader is its unbroken urbanity and good temper.The keynote is courtesy and forbearance, though these are not always forthcoming without a struggle. Socrates is constantly on the alert for the signs of displeasure on the part of Protagoras, and when he detects them, is careful not to press his point, and the dialogue ends with mutual expressions of esteem. ….
[End of quote]
Now compare this gentlemanly tone with Job’s ‘How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?’ (19:1-3), and Eliphaz’s accusations of the holy man: ‘Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities[which supposed types of injustice on the part of Job Eliphaz then proceeds to itemise]’ (22:5).
In Plato’s dialogues, by way of complete contrast, we get pages and pages of the following sort of amicable discussion as taken from The Republic (Bk. 2, 368-369):
[Socrates] ‘Justice can be a characteristic of an individual or of a community, can it not?’
[Adeimantus] ‘Yes’.
[Socrates] ‘And a community is larger than an individual?’
[Adeimantus] ‘It is”.
[Socrates] ‘We may therefore find that the amount of justice in the larger entity is greater, and so easier to recognize. I accordingly propose that we start our enquiry …’.
“… Haaretz reportedthat during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded”.”
Gunnar Heinsohn
The major Caliphates of Islam are listed as these five (1-5):
1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661)
2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750)
3 Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258)
4 Mamluk Abbasid dynasty (1261–1517)
5 Ottoman Caliphate (1517–1924)
It will be my purpose here – abstracting from the immense problems already associated with the Qur’an (Koran) itself (e.g.):
Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry
– to show that virtually none (if any at all) of this presumed history of the successive Caliphates is properly historical, and, hence, underpinned by a reliable archaeology.
Abbasid Caliphate
Aiming right at the centre, the middle one (No. 3 above), the famed Abbasid Caliphate: “The Abbasid caliphs established the city of Baghdad in 762 CE. It became a center of learning and the hub of what is known as the Golden Age of Islam”:
I have already disposed of this supposedly the most glorious age of Islam by arguing that early Baghdad (not the modern city of that name), known as Madinat-al-Salam, “City of Peace”, was actually Jerusalem, meaning just that, “City of Peace”:
In the same article I noted that the imagined early Baghdad had, unsurprisingly, left no discernible archaeological trace. There I wrote:
The first thing to notice about ancient Baghdad is that it has left “no tangible traces”:
“Built of the baked brick, the city’s walls have long since crumbled,
leaving no trace of Madinat-al-Salam today”.
“While no tangible traces have yet been discovered of the eighth-century
Madinat-al-Salam, and as it is currently impossible to conduct excavations in Baghdad, one can only hope that one day material evidence may be discovered”.
It never recovered;[b] its walls were destroyed by 912,[c] nothing of
them remains,[d][6] there is no agreement as to where it was located.[7]”
[End of quotes]
And just as I have shown, time and time again, that the Prophet Mohammed was a fictitious, largely biblical, composite, so, too, basically, I believe, were the luminaries of the so-called Abbasid Golden Age.
And in the names of a handful of presumed Islamic scholars of the Golden Age, the polymathic Al-Kindi (c. 800); Al-Farabi (c. 900); Avicenna (c. 1000); and Averroes (c. 1150), I found what I would consider to be elements of Ahikar’s (Tobit’s nephew) Assyro-Babylonian names: respectively, Aba-enlil-dari and Esagil-kinni-ubba.
Thus:
Al-Kindi – Esagil-Kinni;
Al-Farabi – Enlil-Dar-Ab(i);
Avicenna – Ubb-kinni(a);
Averroes – Aba-(d)ar(i)
In these famous names is largely encompassed Islamic philosophy, science, astronomy, cosmology, history, demography, medicine and music for the Golden Age.
Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism
If the glorious and lengthy Abbasid Caliphate can be thus expunged from history, and the very originator of Islam, Mohammed, found to have been an artificial construct – not to mention Loqmân and Abu Lahab (see below) – then we appear to have no firm archaeological foundations upon which to erect a plausible history of the Caliphate.
And things, apparently, do not get much better.
Rashidun Caliphate
Let us go back for a moment to Mohammed and his presumed era, more than a century before the so-called Abbasids.
Not only has Mohammed been shown to have been a non-historical entity, a fictitious composite based upon real historical (biblical) characters:
Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ
but the historicity of some of Mohammed’s supposed contemporaries, too, is highly suspect.
Mohammed’s very uncle, Abu Lahab, for instance, has been found to have had suspiciously (biblical) Ahab-like traits, as, correspondingly, does Abu-Lahab’s unbelieving wife, Umm Jamīl, somewhat resemble Queen Jezebel:
And their (Mohammed and Nehemiah’s) contemporary, the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, is a most bizarre character, somewhat like a frog in a blender, whom I have described as being “a composite of all composites”:
Again, there is the Islamic sage Loqmân (Luqman) of the Qur’an (31st sura), who quotes from the wisdom of Ahikar, an Israelite nephew of the biblical Tobit:
With so insecure an archaeologico-historical base, beginning with Mohammed himself, the entire Caliphate period, from, say, 650-1250 AD (Rashidun to Abbasid), must needs be looking very shaky indeed.
At this stage I have not analysed the four caliphs closely associated with Mohammed (the Rashidun Caliphate), Abū Bakr (reigned 632–634), ʿUmar (reigned 634–644), ʿUthmān (reigned 644–656), and ʿAlī (reigned 656–661). But, based on the cases of Mohammed and Abu Lahab, I would strongly suspect that these four, too, can be identifiable with one or more biblical characters ranging from, say, Moses to Tobit (possibly also embracing the New Testament).
Let us switch now to the Umayyads (661-750 AD).
Umayyad Caliphate
As with the 1 Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), so, too, in the case of the 2 Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), I have not yet analysed the various caliphs with an eye to biblical comparisons.
But the great shock about the Umayyads came at the very beginning of this article, with archaeologist Moshe Hartal’s observation that the Umayyads existed on the same stratigraphical level as the Romans of the period approximating to Jesus Christ.
How shattering!
According to professor Gunnar Heinsohn’s interpretation of the Umayyads, these were none other than the Nabataeans (era of Maccabees and Jesus Christ):
I do not necessarily agree with every detail (e.g. date) of the following.
….
“Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models”.
In Heinsohn’s SC chronology, the rise of Christianity in the first three centuries AD and the rise of Islam from the 7th to the 10th century are roughly contemporary. Their six-century chasm is a fiction resulting from the fact that the rise of Christianity is dated in Imperial Antiquity while the rise of Islam is dated in the Early Middle Ages, two time-blocks that are in reality contemporary. The resynchronizing of Imperial Antiquity and Early Middle Ages provides a solution to some troublesome archeological anomalies. One of them concerns the Nabataeans.
During Imperial Antiquity, the Nabataean Arabs dominated long distance trade. Their city of Petra was a major center of trade for silk, spice and other goods on the caravan routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome.
In 106 AD, the Nabataean Kingdom was officially annexed to the Roman Empire by Trajan (whose father had been governor of Syria) and became the province of Arabia Petraea. Hadrian visited Petra around 130 AD and gave it the name of Hadriane Petra Metropolis, imprinted on his coins. Petra reached its urban flowering in the Severan period (190s-230s AD).[18]
Mackey’s comment: I actually date the Trajan-Hadrian period to the Maccabean age, not c. 106 AD:
Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian
And yet, incredibly, these Arab long-distance merchants “are supposed to have forgotten the issuing of coins and the art of writing (Aramaic) after the 1st century AD and only learned it again in the 7th/8th century AD (Umayyad Muslims).
” …. It is assumed that Arabs fell out of civilization after Hadrian, and only emerged back into it under Islam, with an incomprehensible scientific advancement. The extreme primitivism in which pre-Islamic Arabs are supposed to have wallowed, with no writing and no money of they own, “stands in stark contrast to the Islamic Arabs who thrive from the 8th century, [whose] coins are not only found in Poland but from Norway all the way to India and beyond at a time when the rest of the known world was trying to crawl out of the darkness of the Early Middle Ages.”…. Moreover, Arab coins dated to the 8th and 9th centuries are found in the same layers as imperial Roman coins. “The coin finds of Raqqa, for example, which stratigraphically belong to the Early Middle Ages (8th-10th century), also contain imperial Roman coins from Imperial Antiquity (1st-3rd century) and Late Antiquity (4th-7th century).” …. “Thus, we have an impressive trove of post-7th c. Arab coins lumped together with pre-7th c. Roman coins of pre-7th c. Roman times. But we have no pre-7th c. Arab coins from the centuries of their close alliance with Rome in the pre-7th c. periods.”
….
The first Islamic Umayyad coins, issued in Jerusalem, “continue supposedly 700 years earlier Nabataean coins.”
….
Often displaying Jewish menorahs with Arabic lettering, they differ very little from Jewish coins dated seven centuries earlier; we are dealing here with an evolution “requiring only years or decades, but not seven centuries.”
….
Architecture raises similar problems. Archeologists have no way of distinguishing Roman and Byzantium buildings from Umayyad buildings, because “8th-10th Cent. Umayyads built in 2nd Cent. technology” and followed Roman models. …. “How could the Umayyads in the 8th c. AD perfectly imitate late Hellenistic styles,” Heinsohn asks, “when there were no specialists left to teach them such sophisticated skills?”
….
Moreover, “Umayyad structures were built right on top of Late-Hellenistic structures of the 1st c. BCE/CE.” …. One example is “the second most famous Umayyad building, their mosque in Damascus. The octagonal structure of the so-called Dome of the Treasury stands on perfect Roman columns of the 1st/2nd century. They are supposed to be spolia, but . . . there are no known razed buildings from which they could have been taken. Even more puzzling are the enormous monolithic columns inside the building from the 8th/9th c. AD, which also belong to the 1st/2nd century. No one knows the massive structure that would have had to be demolished to obtain them.”
….
Far from rejecting the Umayyads’ servile “imitation” of Roman Antiquity, their Abbasid enemies resumed it: “8th-10th c. Abbasids bewilder historians for copying, right down to the chemical fingerprint, Roman glass.”
The millefiori technique, which takes its name from the Italian word meaning “thousand flowers”, reached a culmination in the Roman period. . . .
The technique seems to have been rediscovered by Islamic glassmakers in the 9th century, since examples of millefiori glass, including tiles, have been excavated in the Abbasid capital of Samarra. ….
I included in “How Long Was the First Millennium?” one of Heinsohn’s illustrations of identical millefiori glass bowls ascribed respectively to the 1st-2nd century Romans and to the 8th-9th century Abbasids. Here is another puzzling comparison: ….
Heinsohn concludes that, “the culture of the Umayyads is as Roman as the culture of early medieval Franks.
Their 9th/10th century architecture is a direct continuation of the 2nd c. AD. The 700 years in between do not exist in reality.” …. “The Arabs did not walk in ignorance without coinage and writing for some 700 years. Those 700 years represent phantom centuries. Thus, it is not true that Arabs were backward in comparison with their immediate Roman and Greek neighbours who, interestingly enough, are not on record for having ever claimed any Arab backwardness. . . . the caliphs now dated from the 690s to the 930s are actually the caliphs of the period from Augustus to the 230s.”
….
This explains why archeologists often find themselves puzzled by the stratigraphy. For example, Haaretz reported that during a dig in Tiberias, archaeologist Moshe Hartal “noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation — two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,’ says Hartal. ‘I was simply dumbfounded.’”
….
Heinsohn argues that the Umayyads of the Early Middle Ages are not only identical with the Nabataeans of Imperial Antiquity, but are also documented in the intermediate time-block of Late Antiquity under the name of the Ghassanids. “Nabataeans and Umayyads not only shared the same art, the same metropolis Damascus, and the same stratigraphy, but also a common territory that was home to yet another famous Arab ethnicity that also held Damascus: the Ghassanids. They served as Christian allies of the Byzantines during Late Antiquity (3rd/4th to 6th c. AD). Yet, they were already active during Imperial Antiquity (1st to 3rd c. AD). Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BC) knew them as Gasandoi, Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) as Casani, and Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 AD) as Kassanitai.” …. In the Byzantine period, the Ghassanid caliphs had “the same reputation for anti-trinitarian monotheism as the Abbasid Caliphs now dated to 8th /9th centuries.” …. They also, like the Islamic Arabs, preserved some Bedouin customs such as polygamy. ….
[End of quotes]
In a most interesting twist, Taycan Sapmaz identifies:
with more, hopefully, to be written on this subject in the future.
Conclusions
The Prophet Mohammed is clearly a non-historical, composite entity based on a bunch of real historical figures from a vast range of eras.
Mohammed’s relatives, contemporaries, likewise are biblico-historically-based, e.g. uncle Lahab as Ahab; Nehemiah ben Hushiel as the biblical Nehemiah; emperor Heraclius as possibly literature’s most composite of composites.
This necessitates that the closely associated Rashidun Caliphate could have no real historical reality in AD time. This view being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate,
The Umayyad as belonging archaeologically to a Roman period, some six centuries prior to the supposed era of Mohammed. This being totally reinforced by the next Caliphate,
The Abbasid, as having no archaeological trace for its epicentre, ancient Baghdad, Madinat al-Salam, which is really ancient Jerusalem.
“The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people
gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators
suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter,
but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up
to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince,
now a propitious god”.
Plutarch: Parallel Lives.
Hugh J. Schonfield (d. 1988) is well known for his controversial book about Jesus, entitled The Passover Plot, which he wrote in 1965.
According to the author, Jesus, desirous of saving his people, actually – and one must think, somewhat incredibly – orchestrated, as far as he could, his own manner of death, so as to accord with the ancient Messianic prophecies. “… the Crucifixion was part of a larger, conscious attempt by Jesus to fulfill the Messianic expectations rampant in his time, and that the plan went unexpectedly wrong”.
I recently read Schonfield’s follow-up book to The Passover Plot, which, written in 1981, he had entitled After the Cross. On pp. 115-117 of this book the author introduced the Greek historian Plutarch’s piece about King Romulus, supposed first king of Rome, beginning with:
Very few Christians would seem to be aware, however, of the strong similarity that exists between the image of the death and resurrection of Jesus and that of Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome. The latter is set down in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Plutarch was born in the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) and was a contemporary of the authors of the Gospels. The relevant passage is quoted in full from an old English translation, which gives the flavor of the Authorized Version of the Bible. ….
Before quoting this passage (and I shall be using instead John Dryden’s translation), I should like to preface it by recalling, once again, that Greco-Roman mythology and pseudo-history is replete with appropriations and distortions of the original Hebrew biblical tales. I have written articles on this subject, including the Greek appropriation of King Solomon as Solon.
… whereas Romulus, when he vanished, left neither the least part of his body, nor any remnant of his clothes to be seen. So that some fancied the senators, having fallen upon him in the temple of Vulcan, cut his body into pieces, and took each a part away in his bosom; others think his disappearance was neither in the temple of Vulcan, nor with the senators only by, but that it came to pass that, as he was haranguing the people without the city, near a place called the Goat’s Marsh,
[Comment: “… without the city” is appropriate, as is Goat. Recall the goat for sin offering]
on a sudden strange and unaccountable disorders and alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters; during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators [read Sanhedrin?] kept close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god.
The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who, canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused and aspersed the patricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king.
Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus
[Comment: The wife of Pontius Pilate was Claudia Procula]
by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armour; and he, being affrighted at the apparition, said, “Why, O king, or for what purpose have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sorrow?” and that he made answer, “It pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus.” This seemed credible to the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relater, and indeed, too, there mingled with it a certain divine passion, some preternatural influence similar to possession by a divinity; nobody contradicted it, but, laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to Quirinus and saluted him as a god.
Romulus, Remus and Old Testament
“The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be
the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are
the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are
the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus.
Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have
one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved,
but both for different reasons”.
Like so many of the Greco-Roman myths – even the so-called history of ancient philosophy – the well-known characters were distorted, garbled versions of originally Egyptian, Hebrew and Near Eastern persons. These being cultures and civilisations far older than those of the Greeks and the Romans. Thus, for instance, in typical Greek fashion, a Hebrew prophet will be re-presented as a philosopher.
We read earlier in this article that the absolutely unique accounts in the Gospels of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ were picked up (albeit messily) in the writings of the approximately contemporary (as is thought) Greek biographer and essayist, Plutarch, and applied to the legendary first king of Rome, Romulus.
‘Socrates’, the renowned, so-called Greek philosopher, I have argued, had no actual historical reality qua Socrates, but, rather, was a biblical composite.
To consider just one of his biblical ‘manifestations’, Socrates, who is so often likened to Jesus Christ, will be found in Plato’s Meno doing what Jesus in fact did: writing on the ground (John 8:6, 8).
But what will Socrates write? Not something ethical.
In typically Greek fashion he will draw geometric figures in the ground.
The mythological Romulus and Remus, too, are biblical composites.
They are commonly compared with Cain and Abel, and also with Moses.
And one could no doubt find other biblical manifestations of them as well (see e.g. previous comparisons with Jesus Christ and Romulus).
Like Cain and Abel
Romulus and Remus were twin brothers and their mother was princess Rhea Silvia.
So, apparently, were Eve’s sons, Cain and Abel, twins:
It is a well-known fact that Jacob and Esau were twins, but what is not commonly known is that Cain and Abel were also twins. In the normal Hebraic accounting of multiple births the conception then birth of each child is mentioned such as we can see in Genesis 29:32-33 where it states that Leah conceived and bore a son, and then she conceived again and bore a son. Note that there are two conceptions and two births. But notice how it is worded in Genesis 4:1-2.
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain; And again, she bore his brother Abel. (RSV)
Notice that there is only one conception, but two births.
The Hebrew word for “again” is asaph, meaning to add something, in this case the birthing of Abel was added to the birthing of Cain. Cain and Abel were twins.
The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus. Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved, but both for different reasons. Both stories are involved with marks. Cain is marked so everyone knows he killed his brother, Abel. But in the Roman myth, Romulus marks Rome by naming it after himself.
The tradition of twins as the progenitors of tribal units or city builders is very well documented in Semitic and Indo-European cultures. When birth order is specified, the younger twin always receives the blessing over the first born brother. In the account of the sons of Adam, the first born twin is envious of the second and commits fratricide. There are many variations on this theme in other twin genesis accounts. Jacob is fearful that Esau will kill him, Romulus killed Remus and Gwyn and Gwythurin in Celtic tradition duel every May.
The Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, shared a mortal and an immortal existence. Castor was killed on a cattle raid but Pollux persuaded Zeus to allow the brothers to switch places periodically. The word Gemini comes from the PIE root *ym which means ‘to pair’. This word is very similar to the Hebrew im mimation suffix but, of course, linguists say they are unrelated (sigh). ….
Parallels to Moses
Romulus and Remus, abandoned on the bank of the Tiber river, were famously suckled by a she-wolf.
From whence did this pagan myth arise?
We well know the Exodus (2:1-10) account of the birth of Moses and the forced abandonment of him due to the decree of the cruel Pharaoh – how the baby Moses was placed in a papyrus basket and set adrift on the river Nile (which the Romans inevitably replaced with their Tiber). Long before the Romans, I suggest, the ancient Egyptians had corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow – the Egyptian personification of wisdom).
In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses’s own mother (Exodus 2:5-9).
The story evolved from the original Hebrew account, suckled by the mother, to the Egyptian version, suckled by the goddess in the form of a cow, to an entirely bestial suckler in the Roman account, a she-wolf.
Part Two: Apollonius of Tyana
“Presenting further evidence that Philostratus’s biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius;
his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome;
the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him …”.
The supposed C1st AD character, Apollonius of Tyana, is such a Jesus-like figure in many ways that some commentators would insist that the Gospels were based on the life of this Apollonius. Whereas, as I am arguing in this article, the precedence ought to be given to the Gospel version over the pagan one. And there are very good reasons, again, for claiming this to be correct, given the vagueness surrounding the author of the “Life of Apollonius”, the Greek sophist Philostratus, and that he wrote about Apollonius much later than the Gospels, in the C3rd AD.
I favour Fr. Jean Carmignac’s compelling argument, as set out in his Birth of the Synoptics (1987), that the Synoptic Gospelswere written by eyewitnesses at a very earlydate.
Philostratus
As I have often remarked, one of the most common phrases used by the conventional historians of ancient history is this one, “… little is known about …”.
And that fully applies to Philostratus, who himself, I suspect, may not have been an actual historical character, but a ‘ghost’ based upon some previous person – perhaps upon one of the Evangelists. Thus we read of Philostratus:
Very little is known of his career. Even his name is doubtful. The Lives of the Sophists gives the praenomen Flavius, which, however, is found elsewhere only in Tzetzes. Eunapius and Synesius call him a Lemnian; Photius a Tyrian; his letters refer to him as an Athenian. It is probable that he was born in Lemnos, studied and taught at Athens, and then settled in Rome ….
I rest my case.
But furthermore:
The Lives are not in the true sense biographical, but rather picturesque impressions of leading representatives of an attitude of mind full of curiosity, alert and versatile, but lacking scientific method, preferring the external excellence of style and manner to the solid achievements of serious writing. The philosopher, as he says, investigates truth; the sophist embellishes it, and takes it for granted. ….
That appears to be a very shaky historical foundation, indeed, upon which to raise a life story of one who is considered by some to have been the exemplar for Jesus Christ himself.
Apollonius of Tyana
Most commentators simply presume the historicity of Philostratus when considering the Apollonius of Tyana of whom he wrote. Two such, who would regard Apollonius as being modelled upon Jesus Christ, were F. Bauer and Cardinal Newman:
Even as late as 1832, [F.] Bauer attempted to show that not only were there resemblances between the “Life of Apollonius of Tyana” and the Gospels, but that Philostratus deliberately modeled his hero on the type set forth by the Evangelists. He was followed in this view by Zeller, the celebrated Greek historian.
Typical of latter nineteenth century views on the subject is that of Cardinal Newman, a Catholic apologist, who, admitting the identity of Apollonius and the Gospel messiah, considers the former an imitation of the latter, in spite of the fact that he preceded him by three centuries (For the Jesus of the Gospels was evidently born in the year 325 A.D., at the Council of Nicea, rather than when the star appeared over Bethlehem).
To support his view, Newman mentions certain typical examples, such as Apollonius’s bringing to life a dead girl in Rome, which he considers as “an attempt, and an elaborate, pretentious attempt, to outdo certain narratives in the Gospels (Mark v. 29, Luke vii. John xi: 41-43, Acts iii: 4-6). This incident, is described by Philostratus.
Presenting further evidence that Philostratus’s biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius; his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome; the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him; the charge brought against him of disaffection to Caesar; the Minister’s acknowledging, on his private examination, that he was more than man; the ignominious treatment of him by Domitian on his second appearance at Rome; his imprisonment with criminals; his vanishing from Court and sudden reappearance to his mourning disciples at Puteoli–these, with other particulars of a similar cast, evidence a history modelled after the narrative of the Evangelists. Expressions, moreover, and descriptions occur, clearly imitated “from the sacred volume.”
Reville, another Catholic apologist, thinks as does Newman that “the biography of Apollonius is in great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative.’* (*Reville bases his argument on the similarity of the characters of Apollonius and Pythagoras (which is natural in view of Apollonius following Pythagoras as his example); and he seeks to prove that Apollonius, rather than Jesus, is a fictitious creation, rather than an historical character. Reville writes: “It is hard to say whether the Pythagoras of the Alexandrians is not an Apollonius of an earlier date by some centuries, or whether the Apollonius of Julia Domna, besides his resemblance to Christ, is not a Pythagoras endowed with a second youth. The real truth of the matter will probably be found to lie between the two suggestions.”
[End of quotes]
Philostratus’s account of the life of Apollonius of Tyana is thought to have been written as late as the 220’s/230’s AD, which is obviously later than the Gospels.
Wikipedia gives these:
Similarities shared by the stories about Apollonius and the life of Jesus ….
Birth miraculously announced by God
Religiously precocious as a child
Asserted to be a native speaker of Aramaic
Influenced by Plato/ reflected Platonism (Jesus)
[Renounced/ denounced (Jesus)] wealth
Followed abstinence and asceticism
Wore long hair and robes
Was unmarried and childless
Was anointed with oil
Went to Jerusalem
Spoke in [metaphors/ parables] (Jesus)
Saw and predicted the future
Performed miracles
Healed the sick
Cast out evil spirits/ Drove out demons (Jesus)
Raised the daughter of a [Roman official/ Jewish official (Jesus)] from the dead
Spoke as a “law-giver”
Was on a mission to bring [Greek culture/ Jewish culture (Jesus)] to [the “barbarians”/ the ” nations” (Jesus)]
Believed to be “saviors” from heaven
Were accused of being a magician
Were accused of killing a boy
Condemned [by Roman emperor/ by Roman authorities (Jesus)]
Imprisoned [at Rome/ at Jerusalem (Jesus)]
Was assumed into heaven/ Ascended into heaven (Jesus)
Appeared posthumously to a detractor as a brilliant light
Had his image revered [in temples/ in churches (Jesus)]
When Solzhenitsyn’s died, the worldwide press were in a competition to out-do themselves in admiration of the literary giant. Solzhenitsyn was lauded as one of the greatest writers to have ever lived. He was accredited with having played a crucial intellectual role in the fall of Communism. And contrary to the usual candy-floss schmaltzy eulogizing the Western press doles out when a celebrity dies, the praise given Solzhenitsyn is deserved. Incredible. Yet since Solzhenitsyn’s death, there has been very little discussion of his real vocation in national newspapers and even on the blogosphere. No corner of the press – religious or secular has yet given Solzhenitsyn what is rightly his greatest honour. It is this: Solzhenitsyn was the artist who dramatized what Our Lady at Fatima foretold about Russia and the world. No comparison exists between Solzhenitsyn and the Queen of Heaven, there remains only an alliance. Solzhenitsyn (perhaps totally unwittingly) was Our Lady’s servant.
….
Stalinism, Communism, the Gulags and societal Soviet persecution were the stuff of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, but they were also what Our Lady of Fatima termed Russia’s “errors”. Yes, the media correctly identified Solzhenitsyn’s writings as brave exposés of the horrors of Communist Russia.
But the media confined Solzhenitsyn’s apocalyptic analysis to Communist Russia. There is a continuing prevailing sense that the media is trying to establish a sense of superiority over the Russian chumps who made all the mistakes. A sort of “well if the Russians had done Lefty-liberalism-socialism our way, they wouldn’t have got themselves in the pickle Solzhenitsyn described!” In essence, the liberal media’s analysis of Solzhenitsyn has been insufferably, school-prefect-like patronizing. No attempt is made to see that what Solzhenitsyn described was of significance to everyone worldwide. As I will detail, we have not learned from the “errors”.
Solzhenitsyn was informed by his own personal, first hand experience of eight years in the Gulag and had the integrity never to deviate from the truth. It was Solzhenitsyn’s credibility that made the Soviet Russian authorities flinch.
….
And the fact that he was a best-selling author who would eventually sell thirty million books worldwide. Without Solzhenitsyn, the everyday reality and details of what Our Lady at Fatima warned would be our personal imaginings. His talent as a story-teller engaged readers worldwide.
Solzhenitsyn’s meticulous attention to detail captivates attention, we are there with Ivan Denisovich prisoner of the Gulag when he must [choose] either socks or hard boots to scuttle around in the snow; he cannot have both.
Let us first explore Our Lady of Fatima’s urgent message. Before Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children. ….
The children were taught to pray by the Guardian Angel of Portugal. The Angel told them, “to pray a great deal”. Our Lady appeared to them for the first time on the 13th of May 1917. On the 13th of July 1917, Our Lady showed the three seers a vision of Hell. St. Lucia depicted the vision as thus: “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers”. The vision lasted an instant, but Our Lady told the children that poor sinners go there because they have no one to pray for them. Our Lady continued to notify the children that if people did not stop offending God, He would reprimand the world “by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father,” using Russia as His chosen implement of punishment. In other words, Russia would be the means, but the consequences were for everyone. However, it was a precise consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart that Our Lady requested. Our Lady offered very specific instructions, that if not granted, “Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.”
The “errors” of Russia were never clarified for the three seers. By “errors” Our Lady inferred that which is objectively wrong from a Catholic point of view. We can establish that, in Russia, the root “error” was the abrogation of Christianity, the denial of religious formation and the denunciation of religion as ever having played an important role. What Solzhenitsyn would describe as “the total surrender of the soul.”
Firstly in Russian society, it was the concept of God as creator and judge that was utterly abolished.
Hence, the dominant ‘error’ of Soviet education.
The very first thing a Soviet child learned at school was the theory of evolution and where, as “animals”, they were on the evolutionary scale. There is much debate in Catholic circles about the validity of Evolutionary theories, but Catholics have never been taught by Mother Church to teach children that they are primarily animals. Under Stalin, the Soviet officials thought of the Russian people as animals with speech, and were content to treat them as such. In Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the Gulag prisoners are like sub-humans in an abattoir. They scrounge for scraps of food, stand naked in a frozen field during a body search and every minute their survival is threatened. Solzhenitsyn peppers his prose with lots of ironies; how the Gulag guards are in defiance of the Communist ideology of equality for all men. How Communism was meant to eliminate social divides; when in fact total societal breakdown ensues because only the ordained alpha male authority figures are able to protect themselves. The weak are to be used, it’s their fault they are weak. The Gulag guards are atheists, believing in no higher Judge, nor do they have any concept of grace or even kindness for its own sake.
The Communist system has ensured the guards are aware of absolutely no biblical/Christian teaching that would lead them to think of themselves as other than vicious animals. Similarly, Solzhenitsyn’s novel Cancer Ward, ends with a zoo scene, representing the Soviet culture that has reduced [human] society to a jungle.
Whilst not a Catholic, Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a true depiction of the accumulative effect of Russia’s errors on Russia herself. It is Stalin’s Russia in microcosm and portrays Stalin’s Russia as one huge prison camp. The character of Ivan Denisovich embodies the Soviet view of religion. He can only see what religion may do for him in material terms. The ‘Our Father’ is incomprehensible to him, because he does not see how it will give him daily bread. Prayers for Ivan are like the complaints one makes to the Soviet authorities, pieces of raggy paper put in a box that will never get the establishment’s attention and is merely a Pyrrhic exercise. A devout Baptist in the Gulag attempts evangelising Ivan. But for Ivan, talk of God’s love is meaningless babble.
Ivan’s only religious contact is a Russian Orthodox priest who Ivan resented, and thus he distrusts anyone religious, because for Ivan religion and the personality of his cruel and indifferent authority figures are the same.
Ivan’s rejection of religion signifies he is a product of the system he abhors. The challenge of bringing Ivan to the Christian faith is a taste of the challenge of bringing the entirety of Russia back to organised religion.
Solzhenitsyn not only revealed the deplorable conditions of Soviet Russia, he bared the souls of select Russian characters. As the spiritual nucleus of Solzhenitsyn’s works became more obvious, more and more did he stand alone. Solzhenitsyn was the “traitor” of the “nomenklatura”, upsetting Russia’s reputation, but simultaneously ‘\”progressive” politicians and writers found his traditionally religious outlook embarrassing. His devotion to orthodox Christianity and simultaneous rejection of westernization of Russian culture brooked no compromise. Throughout his writing career, Solzhenitsyn increasingly emphasized that the only antidote to Communism was a spiritual resurgence. This assaulted the West’s politically correct smarmy talk of democracy as the only solution. Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force but because it demands total surrender of the soul.”
Whilst Solzhenitsyn knew what medicine the world needed, Our Lady held the prescription pad. Part of the prescriptions given the whole world was to pray the Rosary everyday; indeed six times did Our Lady call for the daily recitation of five decades of the Rosary. Our Lady also advised “the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays”.
“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”.
Judith 16:23-25
Introduction
Judith became immensely famous in the eyes of the people of Israel, for, as we 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 youth (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
the author (Judith 8:7; 10:4);
the elders of Bethulia (10:7);
the Assyrian unit and soldiery (10:14, 19);
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!’
‘Blessed by God Most High, beyond all women on earth’.
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]:
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 [sic] 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. ….
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 make for 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 e.g. my article:
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.
She has a further significant biblical presence in the form of Huldah, teacher and expounder of the Torah:
I believe that Judith has, as well, 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 epic tale, 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.:
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 the Book of 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.
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.
“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 also a plethora of such female types in what is considered to be AD history.
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 article:
Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ
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:
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 articles 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, 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 (var. 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.
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. ….
Perhaps the heroine with whom Judith of Bethulia is most often compared is the fascinating Joan [Jeanne] of Arc.
Donald 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 – she 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”
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 Catherineof 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”:
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
‘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’.
Judith 16:17
Judith of Bavaria
‘second Judith’ or ‘Jezebel’?
“The poems depict her as “a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation”.
of a whole list of supposedly historical queens Isabelle (or variations of that name) who have been likened to the biblical Jezebel, or have been called ‘a second Jezebel’.
Now the Bavarians do not fare too well, because apparently they also had a C9th AD queen Judith who was likened to Jezebel – though, alternately, to the pious Judith:
Scandals: Contemporary criticisms of Judith’s role and behavior ….
However, the rise of Judith’s power, influence and activity in the court sparked resentment towards her. Agobard of Lyons, a supporter of Lothar, wrote two tracts Two Books in Favor of the Sons and against Judith the Wife of Louis in 833. These tracts were meant as propaganda against Judith from the court of Lothar in order to undermine her court and influence.
The tracts themselves attack her character, claiming her to be of a cunning and underhanded nature and of corrupting her husband. These attacks were predominantly anti-feminist in nature. When Louis still did not sever marital ties with Judith, Agobard claimed that Judith’s extramarital affairs were carried out “first secretly and later impudently”.[4]Paschasius Radbertus accused Judith by associating her with the engagement in debauchery and witchcraft … of filling the palace with “soothsayers… seers and mutes as well as dream interpreters and those who consult entrail, indeed all those skilled in malign craft”.
Characterized as a Jezebel and a Justina … Judith was accused by one of her enemies, Paschasius Radbertus, of engaging in debauchery and witchcraft with her purported lover, Count Bernard of Septimania, Louis’ chamberlain and trusted adviser. This portrayal and image stands in contrast to poems about Judith.[2] The poems depict her as “a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation”.[2]
However, Judith also garnered devotion and respect. Hrabanus Maurus wrote a dedicatory letter to Judith, exalting her “praiseworthy intellect”[11] and for her “good works”.[11] The letter commends her in the turbulent times amidst battles, wishing that she may see victory amidst the struggles she is facing. It also implores her “to follow through with a good deed once you have begun it”[11] and “to improve yourself at all times”. Most strikingly the letter wishes Judith to look to the biblical Queen Esther, the wife of Xerxes I [sic] as inspiration and as a role model ….
[End of quote]
A tale of two more Judiths
“In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who,
during the siege of Jerusalem [sic] by the Assyrians, saves her city
by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him
If mythical women stood at the beginnings of origin legends, this may be because real flesh-and-blood women stood at the beginnings of great aristocratic families.
After all, such families of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries largely owed their status, their lands, and their power to women. As Constance Bouchard and before her Karl Ferdinand Werner have pointed out, the great comital families might often appear to spring from “new men” in the ninth or tenth centuries, but actually these new men owed their rise to fortuitous marriages with greater, established families. ….
Family chroniclers and genealogists were well aware of the importance of such marriages in preserving and augmenting family power and honor — it was a constant and essential element in generational strategies throughout the Middle Ages. As Anita Guerreau-Jalabert has argued, the image of a strictly agnatic descent through generations is more an invention of nineteenth-century genealogists than a reflection of medieval perceptions of kinship.2 At the same time, the question of how much credit for the successes of kindreds should be attributed to these women rather than to the men of the kindred remained very much in question. As Janet Nelson points out, elite women played a double symbolic role within their husbands’ lineages: first, they made possible the continuation of the lineage, but at the same time, because they did not themselves belong to it, they made possible the individualization of a particular offspring within the lineage.3 Thus reconstruction of family histories meant coming to terms, under differing needs and circumstances, with the relative importance of such marriages and of the women who put not only their dowries and their bodies but their personalities and kinsmen to work on behalf of their husbands and their children. Over time, the ideological imperative of illustrious male descent could best be fostered if memory of the women who made their rise possible was removed from center stage in favor of the audacious acts of men.
In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who, during the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, saves her city by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him and return in triumph to her people.4 The biblical Judith was thus, as Heide Estes has pointed out, one of the few models of a woman playing an active role in public life available, although the reception of the story of Judith in the Middle Ages shows the dangerous ambiguity attached to this woman.5 The younger of the Judiths considered in this chapter was the grand-daughter of the elder, and their stories illustrate the two principal ways that women could be at the start of families’ fortunes. The story of how these beginnings were reformed over time suggests the complexities of aristocratic dynastic memory in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
….
… the alliance that moved this kindred to the very center of the Frankish stage was the marriage of Judith, daughter of Welf and Heilwig, to the emperor Louis the Pious in 819, following the death of Louis’s first wife, Irmingard. Judith, according to the Annales regni Francorum and the account of an anonymous biographer of Louis known as the Astronomer, was selected in a sort of beauty pageant, in which the emperor examined daughters of the nobility before making his choice, a practice some have seen as imitating Byzantine tradition.14 More recently, Mayke de Jong has pointed out that this description, and particularly that of the “Astronomer,” is less a reflection of Byzantine court tradition than an image of Judith modeled on the biblical figure of Esther, a comparison already made by Hrabanus Maurus in his defense of the empress. ….
[End of qu0te]
“… ideal of the Christian woman”
“Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as
the ideal of the Christian woman … but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum”.
Maryan Ainsworth and Abbie Vandivere
The two authors write, with relation to Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen’s, famous painting of c. 1530 AD (conventional dating), “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (pictured above):
When considering for whom this painting of Judith, expressing female power, wisdom, and fortitude, may have been painted, a likely candidate comes to mind — Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. It may well have been through Jan Gossart or perhaps Bernard Van Orley (ca. 1491/92–1542) that Vermeyen was introduced to Margaret, who held her court in Mechelen.
He must have entered the service of Margaret in 1525, for a document of 1530 petitions the regent for back pay for a period of about five years, indicating that Vermeyen had already been working for her.37 During this time, Vermeyen seems to have been mostly engaged in making portraits of the royal family and other nobles, such as the Portraitof Cardinal Érard de la Marck that with the HolyFamilyformed a diptych which belonged to Margaret.
The importance of the widow Judith as a model of strength and feminine virtue for Margaret of Austria and the iconography of the Burgundian-Habsburg court cannot be underestimated. The reminders of Judith’s importance as a just, vigorous, and brave ruler took many forms. Some of these were ephemeral, such as the tableauxvivants devoted to Judith that were performed at the official entries of princesses, such as Margaret of York, Mary of Burgundy, and Juana of Castile, into Netherlandish cities.38 Margaret of Austria owned a Judith tapestry (no longer extant) that was originally part of her trousseau for her marriage to Juan of Castile, and when she returned to Flanders after Juan’s death, the tapestry accompanied her.39 Possibly commissioned by Margaret from Bernard van Orley (her court painter), although not mentioned in the inventory of her possessions, was a tapestry of the Triumph of Virtuous Women that survives only as a petit patron (Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. no. 15463).40 Featured in the foreground before the triumphal all’antica chariot are Jael killing Sisera, Lucretia committing suicide, and Judith with the head of Holofernes on the tip of her sword. Margaret’s court sculptor, Conrad Meit, produced one of the masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture, a Judithwith the Head of Holofernes (Munich, Bayerische Nationalmuseum), circa 1525–28. Although it is not listed among Margaret’s belongings, it certainly reflects courtly taste and was most likely commissioned by a woman for whom Judith was a noble exemplar.41
Margaret’s library contained books on virtuous women, among them Giovanni Bocaccio’s De femmes nobles et renomées (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Fr. 12420). Judith has a featured role in one of the most influential texts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Parementet triumphe des dames, written in 1493–94 by Olivier de la Marche. Here the author gives lessons to a noble lady of the virtues of humility, wisdom, loyalty, fidelity, and so forth in prose stories of famous virtuous women. Margaret of Austria owned an early version of the text, published between 1495 and 1500 (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. 10961-70).42
In 1509, Agrippa of Nettesheim dedicated to Margaret his treatise De nobilitate et praecellentia foemini sexus, where he notes that Judith “depicted herself as an example of virtue, which should be imitated not only by women but also by men,”43
Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as the ideal of the Christian woman44 but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum.45 Just as Judith saved her people from the Assyrians, so, too, did Margaret defend her people in a politically active role.
Her success in this endeavor was acknowledged in a monumental woodcut by Robert Péril (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 849-21), showing the genealogy of the Habsburgs, which praised Margaret as: “the Regent and sovereign of the Low countries, which she wisely ruled for Emperor Charles, her nephew; she opposed the enemy with the force of weapons and transferred the lands of Friesland, Utrecht and Overissel into the following of his majesty [Charles V].”46
In terms of Margaret’s remarkable political acumen, a singular event comes to mind that may have a specific connection to Vermeyen’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes. In August of 1529, around the time of the painting’s presumed date, Jan Vermeyen accompanied Margaret to the signing of the so-called Paix des Dames or Ladies’ Peace, otherwise known as the Peace of Cam- brai: the most extraordinary diplomatic achievement of the regent’s career. Meeting her sister-in- law Louise of Savoy (mother of Francis I) almost in secret in Cambrai, Margaret — representing her nephew Charles V — negotiated a peace between the French and the Habsburgs. This treaty, which included the arranged marriage of Eleanor of Austria (sister to Charles V) to Francis I, ended, at least for a time, the fighting between the forces of King Frances I and Emperor Charles V. An obvious parallel exists between Margaret and Judith: two virtuous and powerful women, who managed to find a solution to the lust for battle of men and nations and create peace. Whether this painting commemorates a specific event or generally celebrates the heroic achievement of one woman, it is certainly a product of the milieu of Margaret of Austria’s court. ….
[End of quote]
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Odabella
“Odabella implores him to kill her, but not to curse her.
She reminds his fiancé the story of the Hebrew Judith,
who saved Israel from the Babylonians [sic] by beheading
their leader Holofernes. Odabella has sworn to revenge …”.
“Attila” by Giuseppe Verdi
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Ildico
“The tradition that Attila diedin a wedding-night may be true.
ButAttila is so much like Holofernesand Ildico so much like Judith…
thatwe suspect the tradition, even in its most sober version”.
[Attila’s] spectacular demise, on one of his many wedding nights, is memorably described by Gibbon:
Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors…. Yet, in the mean while Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired, at a late hour, from the banquet to the nuptial bed.
His attendants continued to respect his pleasures, or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil…. The king…had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which instead of finding a passage through his nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. ….
The real story goes as follows (Judith 13:1-10):
When evening came, his slaves quickly withdrew. Bagoas closed the tent from outside and shut out the attendants from his master’s presence. They went to bed, for they all were weary because the banquet had lasted so long. But Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was dead drunk.
Now Judith had told her maid to stand outside the bedchamber and to wait for her to come out, as she did on the other days; for she said she would be going out for her prayers. She had said the same thing to Bagoas. So everyone went out, and no one, either small or great, was left in the bedchamber. Then Judith, standing beside his bed, said in her heart, “O Lord God of all might, look in this hour on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. Now indeed is the time to help your heritage and to carry out my design to destroy the enemies who have risen up against us.”
She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, “Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!” Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag. ….
Elizabeth I as Judith: reassessing the apocryphal widow’s appearance in Elizabethan royal iconography
Abstract
Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England was paralleled with many figures from the Bible.
While the analogies between Elizabeth and biblical figures such as Deborah the Judge, King Solomon, Queen Esther, King David, and Daniel the Prophet have received detailed attention in the existing scholarship, the analogy between Elizabeth and the Apocryphal widow Judith still remains on the fringes. Not only did Elizabeth compare herself to Judith, the analogy also appeared throughout the course of the queen’s reign as a biblical precedent for dealing with the Roman Catholic threat. This article re-assesses the place of the Judith analogy within Elizabethan royal iconography by chronologically analysing of many of the surviving, primary source, comparisons between Judith and Elizabeth, and demonstrates that Judith was invoked consistently, and in varying media, as a model of a providentially blessed leader. ….
On one … of the first portraits of [Elizabeth I] as a queen she appears in a religious context, she washes the feet of twelve poor women at a Maundy ceremony. …. On the title-pages of the different editions of the Bible Elizabeth’s figure appears: she is surrounded by the four cardinal virtues on the 1569 edition, while on the 1568 edition between the figures of Faith and Love she personifies the third New Testament virtue, Hope.
At the beginning of the Coronation Entry as she left the Tower she praised God for her deliverance from prison during the reign of Mary and compared herself to the prophet Daniel spared by God by special providence: “I acknowledge that Thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with me as Thou didst with Thy true and faithful servant Daniel, Thy prophet, whom Thou deliverest out of the den from the cruelty of the greedy and raging lions. Even so was I overwhelmed and only by Thee delivered.” ….
During the first decade Elizabeth was mostly compared to figures of the Old Testament. In the fifth pageant of the Coronation Entry she appeared as Deborah, the Old Testament judge, listening to the advice of three figures representing the three estates of England, the clergy, the nobility and the commons. …. In sermons she was compared to Judith who rescued her people, and to Esther who interceded for her people. …. She was seen also as a new Moses leading his people out of the captivity of Egypt, and as Solomon the wise king.
Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception 
