Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/631

JULIANA ess), Achior (brother of light), and Bethulia (?Bethel, i. e. ?Jerusalem, or perhaps from the Hebrew in ‘a virgin"-in the shorter Hebrew version Judith is called not "the widow" but "the virgin", i. e. Bethula), sound rather like symbolic names than those of historical places or persons; (x) in Judith's speech to Holofernes there is (xi, 12, 15) some apparent con- fusion between Bethulia and Jerusalem; (xi) while the events are referred to the time of Nabuchodonosor, and therefore to the close of the Hebrew monarchy, we seem to have in v, 22, and viii, 18-19, an allusion to the time subsequent to the Restoration; (xii) there is no king in Palestine (iv, 5), but only a high priest, Joachim or Eliachim; and in iv, 8; xi, 14; xv, 8 (Sept.), the San- hedrin is apparently mentioned; (xiii) the book has a Persian and even a Greek colouring, as is evidenced by the recurrence of such namesas Bagoas and Holofernes. These are serious difficulties, and a Catholic student must be prepared to meet them. There are two ways of doing so. (a) According to what we may term conservative" criticism, these apparent difficulties can every one be harmonized with the view that the book is perfectly historical and deals with facts which actually took place. Thus, the geographical errors may be ascribed to the translators of the original text or to copyists living long after the book was composed, and consequently ignorant of the details referred to. Cal- met insists that the Biblical Nabuchodonosor is meant, while in Arphaxad he sees Phraortes whose name, as Vig- ouroux (Les Livres Saintset LaCritique Rationaliste.iv, 4th ed.) shows, could easily have been thus perverted, Vigouroux, however, in accordance with recent Assyrian discoveries, identifies Nabuchodonosor with Assur-bani-pal, the contemporary of Phraortes. This enables him to refer the events to the time of the captivity of Manasses under Assur-bani-pal (II Par., xxxiii, 11; cf. Sayee,"Higher Criticisin and the Ver- dict of the Monuments", 4th ed., p. 458). It is fur- ther maintained that the campaign conducted by Holofernes is well illustrated in the records of Assur- bani-pal which have come down to us. And these facts will undoubtedly afford an explanation of the apparent allusion to the captivity; it was indeed a Restoration, but that of Manasses, not that under Esdras. The reference, too, to the Sanhedrin is doubt- ful; the term yepovola is used of the "ancients" in Lev., ix. 3, etc. Lastly, Conder's identification of Bethulia with Mithilia (loc. cit. supra) is highly prob- able. Moreover, the writer who described the strate- gical position in iv, 1-6, knew the geography of Pales- tine thoroughly. And we are given details about the death of Judith's husband which (viii, 2-4) can hardly be attributed to art, but are rather indications that Judith represents a really existing heroine. With re- gard to the state of the text it should be noted that the extraordinary variants presented in the various versions are themselves a proof that the versions were derived from a copy dating from a period long an- tecedent to the time of its translators (cf. Calmet, "Introd. in Lib. Judith"). JULIANA ix, 16, and Ps. exlvi, 10; xiii, 21, and Ps. cv, 1). Some of these psalms must almost certainly be re- ferred to the period of the Second Temple. Again, the High Priest Joachim must presumably be identified with the father of Eliashib, and must therefore have lived in the time of Artaxerxes the Great (464-424 B. C. Cf. Josephus, “Antiquities", XI, vi-vii). We referred above to a shorter Hebrew version of the book; Dr. Gaster, its discoverer, assigns this manuscript to the tenth or eleventh century A. D. (Proceedings of Soc. of Bibl. Archæol., XVI, pp. 156 sqq.). It is ex- ceedingly brief, some forty lines, and gives us only the gist of the story. Yet it seems to offer a solution of many of the difficulties suggested above. Thus Hol- ofernes, Bethulia, and Achior, all disappear; there is a very natural explanation of the purification in xii, 7; and, most noticeable of all, the enemy is no longer an Assyrian, but Seleucus, and his attack is on Jerusalem, not on Bethulia. (b) Some few Catholic writers are not satisfied with Calmet's solution of the difficulties of the Book of Judith; they deemn the errors of translators and of scribes to be no sufficient explanation in this matter. These few Catholics, together with the non-Catholics that do not care to throw the book over entirely into the realm of fiction, assure us that the Book of Judith has a solid historical foundation. Judith is no mythi- cal personage, she and her heroic deed lived in the memory of the people; but the difficulties enumerated above seem to show that the story as we now have it was committed to writing at a period long subsequent to the facts. The history, so it is maintained, is vague; the style of composition, the speeches, etc., remind us of the Books of Machabees. A remarkable knowledge of the Psalter is evinced (cf. vii, 19, and Ps. ev, 6; vii, 21, and Ps. lxxviii, 10, exiii, 2; ix, 6, 9, and Ps. xix, 8; If it could be maintained that we have in this manuscript the story in its original form, and that our canonical book is an amplification of it, we should then be in a position to explain the existence of the numerous divergent versions. The mention of Seleucus brings us down to Machabean times, the title of Judith, now no longer the "widow" but the "vir- gin" (nn), may explain the mysterious city; the Machabean colouring of the story becomes intelligible, and the theme is the efficacy of prayer (cf. vi, 14-21; vii, 4; II Mach., xv, 12-16). CANONICITY.-The Book of Judith does not exist in the Hebrew Bible, and is consequently excluded from the Protestant Canon of Holy Scripture. But the Church has always maintained its canonicity. St. Jerome, while rejecting in theory those books which he did not find in his Hebrew manuscript, yet consented to translate Judith because "the Synod of Nicæa is said to have accounted it as Sacred Scrip- ture" (Præf, in Lib.). It is true that no such declara- tion is to be found in the Canons of Nicea, and it is uncertain whether St. Jerome is referring to the use made of the book in the discussions of the council, or whether he was misled by some spurious canons attri- buted to that council, but it is certain that the Fathers of the earliest times have reckoned Judith among the canonical books; thus St. Paul seems to quote the Greek text of Judith, viii, 14, in I Cor., ii, 10 (cf. also I Cor., x, 10, with Judith, viii, 25). In the early Christian Church we find it quoted as part of Scripture in the writings of St. Clement of Rome (First Epistle to the Corinthians, lv), Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian. Consult the various Biblical dictionaries and introductions; also Cirilta Cattolica (1887). The best summary of the various views and arguments on the question is in GIGOT, Special In- trod., I; cf. also especially SCHURER, The Jewish People in the Time of Christ, div. II. vol. III; VIGOUROUX, La Bible et les Découvertes Modernes, IV (5th ed.), 275-305; BRUNENGO, Il Nabucodonosor di Giuditta (Rome, 1888). HUGH POPE.

Juliana, SAINT, suffered martyrdom during the Diocletian persecution. Both the Latin and Greek Churches mention a holy martyr Juliana in their lists of saints. The oldest historical notice of her is found in the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum" for 16 Feb., the place of birth being given as Cumæ in Campania (In Campania Cumbas, natale Juliana). It is true that the notice is contained only in the one chief manu- script of the above-named martyrology (the Codex Epternacensis), but that this notice is certainly au- thentic is clear from a letter of St. Gregory the Great, which testifies to the special veneration of St. Juliana in the neighbourhood of Naples. A pious matron named Januaria built a church on one of her estates, for the consecration of which she desired relics (sanc- tuaria, that is to say, objects which had been brought into contact with the graves) of Sts. Severinus and Juliana. Gregory wrote to Fortunatus, Bishop of