THE WAY IT WASN’T: THE BOOK OF JUDITH AS ANTI-HASMONEAN PROPAGANDA
THE WAY IT WASN’T: THE BOOK OF JUDITH AS ANTI-HASMONEAN PROPAGANDA

Summary/Abstract: This article supports the view that the Book of Judith is a highly sophisticated, ironyladen tale produced by a member of a group – most likely the Pharisees – highly critical of Hasmonean political excesses. While this assertion in itself is not new, its thesis advances the argument that this masterfully ironic and subversive narrative accomplishes its critical purpose through the actions of its lead character, Judith, who ideally and ironically represents the kind of Hasmonean leadership the author wryly asserts should have been, spanning the gap between the poetic remembrance of Judah as glorious national icon of religious and political freedom on the one hand, and the lived sociopolitical experience under his nephew and great-nephews, especially Alexander Jannaeus on the other. The tone and tenor conveyed in the structural irony of the Book of Judith reflects and witnesses to that brief period of time somewhere near the turn of the 1st C BCE, as criticism of the nation’s leadership, especially in terms of its aggressive military expansion and the use of forced circumcision, led to increasing and eventually violent polarization between the popular Pharisees and their Hasmonean, pro-Sadducean national leaders.

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