Ocean's Two (Transcript)

Chris Sims: "For their mighty one did not fall by the hands of the young men, nor did the sons of the Titans strike him down, nor did tall giants set upon him, but Judith, daughter of Merari, with the beauty of her countenance, undid him." The Book of Judith, chapter 16, verse 6.

[Music: "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs]

C: Hello everybody and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible, but we try not to be jerks about it. My name is Chris Sims. With me as always is the other set of footprints, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you on this crisp fall afternoon?

Benito Cereno: Really good man. Yeah, it's it is very crisp here too. We definitely had a significant temperature drop following some of that rain that we got here the other day.

C: I say crisp, it's like seventy degrees out.

B: Oh really? It's like fifty-five probably here right now.

C: It is the first day in a while that has felt nice.

B: Yeah.

C: As opposed to being sweltering and wet.

B: Yeah, I'm I'm really I'm all about that hoodie weather. Like that's my that's my ideal, so I'm very happy that we're finally getting there. Although, you know, we'll get it for a week and then it'll be 80 again, I'm sure, soon.

C: That's usually how it goes, but you and I, we're some we're some gentlemen who like layers.

B: It's true.

C: Not just as in like underground caves where we plot and scheme, but like multiple clothings over our torsos.

B: Yeah, both versions of that particular homonym. Yeah. I guess it's a homophone, don't correct me. I hear you out there at your Twitters already, it's homophones.

C: Checkity-checkity-check. That's the typing. That's what's happening right now. Benito, what are we doing this week here on the show where that we're supposed to be reading the Bible?

B: Yeah, hey, we're we're doing another one about about a woman with some agency. We're doing the book of Judith. From the Deuterocanon, aka the Capital A Apocrypha. I feel like maybe we shouldn't be squandering them, but at the same time, it feels like the right time to have powerful women doing some murders, cloaked in fire, etc. on our show. Feels like the appropriate time.

C: It feels like a very good time to be discussing Judith. Now I will say, right up at the start, Judith does not cloak herself in fire. She does not cast lightning down upon man-eating seals.

B: No.

C: That's not gonna happen this week. I apologize for anyone who might have been misled.

B: Yeah, this book is surprisingly miracle-free.

C: But it's pretty raw.

B: It's completely raw. And it's basically it's Ocean's Eight if the goal was a murder instead of a robbery. And also there was only two women. So it's like Ocean's 2.

C: Oceans 2 but a murder. That's a completely different kind of movie than Ocean's Eight. Right. You understand that, right?

B: Yeah, I mean yeah, it's yeah. But it's definitely a heist. Everything is planned out. This is a very tightly plotted book, actually, where like there's a lot of stuff set up. A lot of stuff pays off. And if you're listening to this and you're in high school and you're trying to learn about the figurative device that is irony? This is an excellent book because it's got all the ironies. You got your verbal ironies, you got your dramatic ironies, you got your situational ironies. They're all here. Every single one of them. This is a super ironic book. Not in like a Rod Serling sense, but in the in the literary sense, it's got all of 'em. And yeah, everything's just so tight because it'll be like you see Judith doing things and you're like, huh, why's she doing that? Don't worry, it's gonna pay off because she knew what she was doing.

C: You are absolutely right. From a plot standpoint, you know me. I've been frustrated with a lot of these before.

B: Yeah.

C: This one is: there are no frustrations with the Book of Judith. The only thing I have is that Judith herself does not show up until like chapter eight.

B: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

C: There's a lot of build-up and it and it pays off.

B: Yeah, the the heroine of the story doesn't show up until halfway through. But even if we were to look at this from a structural point of view, it's very cool. We won't have to go into it because I don't want to have to explain to everybody what chiasmus is, but this is built on a two-tiered chiasmus structure where the first half, pre-Judith appearance, follows... it's like a reflex reflexive thing. It's like that the Rorschach-focused issue of Watchmen where it starts and ends the same way with the reflection in the middle. If you imagine like that, that's kind of what a chiastic structure is. And the two halves of this book, everything before Judith and everything starting with Judith to the end, it's it's two perfect reflexive structures like that. You can look more into that, but we don't have time to go into all that. But it's very cool. It's very tight from a structural point of view is what I'm what I'm getting at. This is a very well-composed book.

C: You're basically saying it's twice as good as Watchmen.

B: I am saying that.

C: Or alternately like about 1.8 times as good as that issue of G. I. Joe about Tomax and Xamot that the same gimmick.

B: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

C: When did Tomax and Xamot show up in the Bible, by the way?

B: We've already seen one of them, he doubted Jesus, and then later we're gonna see his twin brother, Xamot, later.

C: Oh, how did we get through how did we get through four gospels and I never talked about doubting Tomax?

B: Yeah, I've been sit I've been sitting on the Thomas and Samoht joke for a long time, waiting for an opportunity to drop that one, because he's the twin. He's Thomas the twin. Thomas Didymus, the twin. I was I thought maybe when we got to Acts of Thomas or something. There's so many books attributed to Thomas. We've got the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas. There's no shortage of places I might have brought it up.

C: But Yeah, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is hashtag lit.

B: Yeah, it sure is. But we're not talking about that today.

C: We're not talking about that today.

B: We'll get there.

C: Do we have anything that we need to cover before we get into Judith? Any holidays, any upcoming celebrations. It's state fair time, but I don't believe that exists in doctrine.

B: Yeah, no, I actually was just checking while I was waiting for everything to get set up today. I was flipping through to see. Because obviously we pay a lot of attention to, we've done a lot of Jewish holidays recently, because it obviously was the Jewish High Holidays is the most important ones, but also because the majority of American listeners at least are not super familiar with Jewish holidays, so we've really focused on those. But I was like, maybe we should look more at some of the the different Saint feast days and things. We've mentioned some, but not usually on the days when they're happening. So I actually was flipping through to see if there were any interesting ones and not really.

C: Great segment. Great great time that we spent on that. Good good job.

B: I did miss, I regret that we missed Michaelmas. We should have talked about Michaelmas a couple weeks ago. It was on September 24th. That's a very cool one to talk about. But we'll definitely be hitting, we'll probably be hitting weird Christian holidays almost every episode once we hit like November and we get to Martinmas, that's when the Christmas season, Advent and Christmas season kicks off. So we're gonna have some stuff like every episode after that for sure. So hang on til Saint Martin comes in on his white horse, and we'll be ready to talk about weird Christian festivals for like two months after that.

C: And everybody make sure to tune in on November 1st for All Saints Day, where we read the entire golden legend.

B: Yep, don't do that actually.

C: We're not gonna do all the saints on All Saints Day? What's the point?

B: Yeah. Oh Yeah, so actually that does remind me, speaking of saints, yeah. So I have two things I wanted to pick up on from last week's episode. They're not corrections per se, they're just additions. They came from our two favorite, of course, personal scholars who like to give us a hand every now and then. Number one comes from friend of the show, Ben Rowe. Regarding Saint Isidore of Seville being the patron of the internet, and I was close, I was kind of on top of it, but not quite there. So here's what he says: "Isidore is patron of the internet because his life's work was the assembly of a compendium of universal knowledge. He was the first Christian writer to attempt such a work, preserving abridgments of classical works and serving as the conduit through which they were known by medieval scholars." And so he's basically Christian Wikipedia, ergo, he's the patron of the internet because he was the first person to try to assemble a compendium of all human knowledge. That answers that question a little bit.

C: How many sonic OCs did he get through before he gave up?

B: I think a lot. I think there were very many echidnas. Like he built Knuckles' family up big time. Anyway, here's our second piece of input from of course King of the Gnostics Jonathan Stewart. Regarding Paul and Thecla, he says, "If you want your crackpot theory for the week, the idea that Paul was the same as Simon Magus," remember that's one we hit way back in episode three. "The idea that Paul and Simon Magus were the same person was pretty widespread in the ancient world, so Paul and Thecla was partly written to counteract it. Our early sources say Simon was definitely DTF," if you think about the text where we talked about Simon and Helen, right? We talked about that. And also the bit about magicians corrupting wives that we talked about. And so, "Paul and Thecla was partly written to say that Paul is mega chaste, and of course his best lady friend isn't a sex worker but a very nice girl." Not to say that sex workers aren't very nice. You understand the point. This is ancient. Anyway. So yeah, the idea that Paul and Thecla was written specifically to counteract the idea that Paul and Simon Magus were the same person, a surprisingly common conspiracy theory of the ancient ancient days.

C: I have a question.

B: Okay.

C: Why not just do another story where Paul fights Simon Magus, like we have?

B: I don't know man. It wasn't enough. It didn't I mean we've got multiple ones, we've got at least three. One of them is in the canon.

C: I feel like Paul and Simon Magus were the same person is the first century CE version of what if Batman was the Joker.

B: Yeah. Or that one about how Avril Lavigne has been a clone since 1998 or whatever.

C: We're really... I am not looking forward to writing up the show notes on this one already.

B: Hey man, let's talk about Judith, I guess.

C: Do we know who wrote this and why is it Deuterocanon?

B: Okay, yeah. So yeah, I got all that information ready to go. Here we go. So Judith, the name comes from the Hebrew name Yehudit, which is the feminine form of Judah and so her name either could mean "she is praised" or "she will be praised" or it just might mean "a Jewish woman," right, in the way that Judah, the son of Jacob, gives his name to Judea and the land of Judah, and then therefore the word Jew and Jewish and Judaism all come from the name Judah. So the name Judith might just mean "Jewish woman." The text, it's a little unclear if the original version of the text was Hebrew or Greek, because the oldest extant version that we have is the one from the Septuagint, which is where basically all of the deuterocanonical books come from. Remember the distinction is that the deuterocanonical books are books that exist in the Greek Septuagint but don't exist in the the later Hebrew canon. And that's where Protestants make the distinction between what they consider canon and what they consider Apocrypha. So the oldest version we have of Judith is Greek. The earliest Hebrew versions are from the Middle Ages, but that does not necessarily mean that the original text was not Hebrew. There are, however, certain phrases and vocabulary choices that indicate that maybe the Greek was the original with the author intentionally imitating stylistic bits from the Greek translations from the Septuagint.

When was it written? Well, there are certain elements that indicate an origin in the Hasmonean period. That's the also known as the Maccabean period, the period of the dynasty of kings following Judah Maccabee following the Seleucid Empire or actually slightly overlapping with the Seleucid Empire, which you know follows up the Hellenistic era. So some of the things that indicate that this was probably from the Hasmonean period, the idea of the worship of a king as a god, which is a thing that our boy Antiochus IV Epiphanes would have wanted. And so that would be something that the Jews at this time would have specifically been rebelling against, I guess. We also see the political and military powers of the high priest in this in this book, Joachim, we see he has a lot of military powers. The supremacy of the Council of Elders, aka the Sanhedrin, we see that with Uzziah and some of the others. They have the kind of supremacy within the city. And also an overall similarity in the story to the story of Judah Maccabee and how he defeated Nicanor, 1. And so it seems most likely that this book was composed during the reign of John Hyrcanus I, which would be somewhere between 135 and 105 BCE.

That said. The book as a whole is full of historical and geographical errors. We see that literally from verse one. Like verse one, continuity is out the window. It's also full of anachronisms, but a lot of people argue that these mistakes are intentional. They're meant to point out that the book is a parable or it's allegory. Some people refer to this as one of the earliest historical novels, but of course some people try to still justify some of the things in the book like why does it say that Nebuchadnezzar was king of the Assyrians? Well, maybe they really meant Ashurbanipal or Artaxerxes or someone else, you know. Even though we don't know where the village of Bethulia is, maybe it's this place or maybe it's that place.

The book as a whole was probably never considered canonical by any Jewish group. Though it was probably written in the Second Temple Era by a Jewish author. It's not in the canonical Jewish text, the Masoretic text. It's not among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is true of a lot of the books that we've seen that are not in the canonical text, do pop up among the dead sea scrolls showing that they were important to some Jewish societies, but this is not the case with Judith. And why might that be? Well, it could be again similar to Tobit and some of the others, it might just be because of the late date in which it was composed, might be because it has a Greek origin. Maybe it's because it endorses deceit and murder as cool things to do that God is in support of, but also there's some other like unorthodox ideas that get a little more specific, including the fact that an Ammonite gets converted to Judaism, which is actually specifically forbidden in the Torah. You're not allowed to convert Ammonites. But despite the fact that this was never seen as canonical in any way, it doesn't mean it wasn't popular among Jewish communities because, give it about a thousand years after its composition, the story of Judith becomes popular as a story in poems and songs in the Talmud. There's a very popular Midrash that ends up tying Judith to Hanukkah, even though this book has nothing to do with Hanukkah. And in fact, some Jewish communities will read the story of Judith at Hanukkah, similar to the way that the story of Esther is read at Purim. And so in that way Judith kind of becomes the Hasmonean equivalent to Esther. Esther is the hero of Purim. Judith becomes the hero of Hanukkah in a way.

C: Question.

C: Yeah.

B: Is there any tradition of Judith being a gift-giving figure?

B: No, but she is tied into a food tradition that I want to get back to once we get into the story, so remind me remind me on that. I probably won't forget that one, but There is a food tradition.

C: So there's nothing about how if you're good all year and you do your chores and clean your plate, then Judith might bring you like a present at Hanukkah time and if you're bad she will cut your head off.

B: No. Strangely.

C: There's not that? That feels like a slam dunk.

B: Exactly. And you know what? Like, Look again, this is me from the outside and I understand that Hanukkah is actually not in the grand scheme of things a very important Jewish holiday and that its importance has been inflated due to its proximity to Christmas. Like I fully understand that. But I keep seeing like in pop culture Hanukkah traditions where they try to just they do these like parodies of Christmas things where you get Mensch on the bench and you get a Hanukkah Bush or whatever. But I'm like, if you want to make Hanukkah cool, why don't you just say that the ghost of Judah Maccabees and the ghost of Judith are gonna come to your house? Like you already have another holiday where you leave a seat open for a ghost to come and sit there. Why can't you have Judah Maccabee the Hammer come? Why can't you have the Hebrew hammer come and hang out at your house on Hanukkah? That would be the dopest holiday. It would arguably be better than Christmas. I don't know. I'm not the boss of holidays, and obviously I'm not any kind of you know actual authority that should be speaking about what they should do for Hanukkah. I'm just saying if you had if you had Judah Maccabee and Judith show up at your house, that would be a very cool holiday.

C: I just feel like Judith's entire deal is that she gets into and out of a place.

B: Unseen.

C: Undetected.

B: Yeah.

C: And what it in her case she takes something and brings it to other people.

B: Yeah, that's true.

C: Spoiler warning.

B: What if someone dressed up as Judith and came in with a pinata that looked like a man's head and it was full of candy and it was Holofernes' head and the kids beat that until I don't know, until gelt fell out. Wouldn't that be a very dope holiday tradition?

C: Yeah.

B: Just spitballing here.

C: Yeah.

B: So anyway, the comparison between Judith and Esther, there we go. But also, I got another cool abrieve coming up. The biblical commentator, Nachmanides, aka the Rabbi Moses bin Nachman, aka Ramban. So he's not the Rambam, he's Ramban, because he's the son of Nachman instead of the son of Maimon, and so he's Ramban instead of Rambam. He quotes Judith pretty heavily in his biblical commentaries. So, some Jewish communities do value the story of Judith even though it was never canonical.

For Christians, however, the book of Judith was included in many Christian canons, but excluded from some others. Jerome in the Vulgate put it in the Apocrypha, but later he quoted it as though it were had the same weight as Scripture. It was accepted as canon by the Nicene Council and the Council of 1442, and it was dogmatically decreed canonical at the Council of Trent in 1546. So again, like all the books of the Deuterocan, it is canon for the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and others. So the Deuterocan again just means later. They're books later. They're from the inter quote-unquote inter-testamental period. And so it was confirmed as canonical by the Eastern Orthodox Church at the Sinod of Jerusalem in 1672. The Episcopal Church reads from Judith on the Feast of Mary Magdalene on July 22nd. However, only the Coptic Church celebrates Judith as a saint, and her feast day is September 17th, so another one that we've just missed. And again, Protestants see it as apocryphal, i. e. not real. However Luther, Martin Luther, in his Bible that included Apocrypha, it was listed first. It was number one among the Apocrypha.

C: So Tobit wasn't in there or was Tobit just in a different

B: Tobit was just in a different spot. Yeah.

C: Okay.

B: Christians like this story because Judith is seen as an example of a mulier sancta, a holy woman. She's kind of a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary. You can see that because like her name means Jewish woman. She comes from Bethulia, a city whose name means virginity. And she alone, without the help of a man, overcomes the great enemy to deliver her city from evil, right? But also she personifies the virtues of humility, justice, and fortitude, and chastity, which are opposed to her great enemy, Holofernes, who represents pride, tyranny, decadence, and lust. And so, because it's a story that's so popular with Christian communities, of course, that means that it is very popular and very well represented in the various arts. Including, very cool, a very cool thing, there's an Anglo-Saxon epic poem from about the same time as Beowulf that's all about Judith. She is transformed into an Anglo-Saxon Christian woman, which okay, but the invasion of Holofernes and his his people are kind of likened to the Viking invasions of England at around the same time. I have a very short small quote from that that I can share later in the show. The story of Judith was also, for some reason, very popular in sixteenth century French poetry. I don't know any more than that.

It is, of course, a very, very popular motif in painting and sculpture. A lot of these you guys have probably seen. They're very they've been very popular on social media lately. But depictions of Judith and Holofernes in painting and sculpture include but are by no means limited to a very famous sculpture by Donatello, one of the artists famous enough to be a Ninja Turtle, although definitely the least famous of the four Ninja Turtle artists. But more famously one that you've probably seen, a Caravaggio painting, one by Botticelli, one by Titian, a famous Art Nouveau version by Gustav Klimt, you guys have probably seen. It's that famous really sexy one where one of the girls is out and she's holding a head. You've probably seen that one. A version by Goya, and of course the really popular one that's been going around lately is the one by Artemisia Gentileschi where she models Judith after herself and Holofernes after a man who assaulted her. And Judith, if you didn't know, is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. You can see her and her maidservant hiding Holofernes's head like in a pan and covering it up and trying to escape. The story of Judith also appears in music, operas and other things, including pieces by Vivaldi and Mozart, who you guys have probably heard of, and many others. And the story of Judith has been represented in many, many modern plays and pieces of modern art as well. So it's a very popular motif in art, there's no shortage of places where you can see Judith referenced in high art and popular culture. So despite, again, being part of the so-called deuterocanon or the Apocrypha, This is another story that has had a major impact on history and culture.

C: Yeah, it rules.

B: Yeah, it kind of rules. Yeah, it rules.

C: It's a very good story.

B: It's good. So you want to talk about it?

C: Yeah, I think we should.

B: Yeah, I think we should too. We get some errors right off the bat. Like literally chapter one verse one. It was the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh. That's wrong. Chris, do you remember who Nebuchadnezzar was the king of?

C: I do not. I remember Nineveh. Nineveh was where Tobit kept finding all those bodies in the streets.

B: Yeah, well, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, that's true. And Nineveh of course is most famous, I think, probably to most people from the story of Jonah, because that's where he was supposed to go and didn't want to go. But yeah, we have seen Nineveh. We of course talked about the Assyrian Empire at great length in our Isaiah episode. Nebuchadnezzar we would have encountered in our Daniel episode. Does that help at all?

C: Okay, so he was Babylonian.

B: Yes. So yeah, Nebuchadnezzar, who lived from about 605 to about 562 BCE, was the second ruler over the Neo-Babylonian Empire, not the Assyrian Empire. And this story is supposed to be set in the post-Babylonian exile period, right, in which point the the main dudes of the earth were the Persians and not either the Assyrians or the Neo-Babylonians, aka the Chaldeans. And so in fact what we see here is Nebuchadnezzar as king of the Assyrians battling the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans are the Babylonians, the Neo-Babylonians, the people over whom He was actually the king. And so again, I'm not going to point out like every historical error or anachronism here because there's a lot, but this is kind of the major one. The setting is wrong, the king is wrong. So like I said, even early communities accepted this as being a folktale or a parable, however, if you want to follow, you know, the idea that this is, you know, the pure inerrant word of God, then you have to think that, you know, the author was putting in intentional miscues to disguise this, or they were code words for someone else or something like that.

But anyway, so Nebuchadnezzar is being challenged by King Arphaxad, who is not even quite Robin Hood real, we'll say. We know nothing about him whatsoever.

C: Well I know about him. I know that he rules over the Medes in Ecbatana.

B: That's true. That's right.

C: That's Chris one, historian zero.

B: Exactly. And so yeah, Ecbatana we've seen and Medea we've seen as well. We saw those in Tobit. Medea is the northern part of Iran, basically the part of Iran that's not Persia is Medea. And so he rallies together people of the East is the idea. This is gonna be kind of an East and West kind of dispute. And so when Arphaxad gathers together all the countries of the East, Nebuchadnezzar sends out messengers to all the people of the West in Cilicia and Damascus, Lebanon, and anti-Lebanon.

C: Yeah, I had a question about that.

B: Yeah.

C: Is anti-Lebanon where like evil cedar trees are from?

B: Yes, absolutely. Or counterpoint, what if anti-Lebanon is actually the Earth 3 version of Lebanon, Tennessee? And that's a city that consumes Cracker Barrels instead of producing them.

C: Right.

B: I'm just throwing it out there. Just throwing it out there.

C: Right. The the Anti-Monitor needs to destroy all of the infinite Cracker Barrels.

B: Exactly. Yeah. Just think about it. Just think. So comics artist Tony Moore, he used to tell me we would we talk about Lebanon, Tennessee. It's the city where Cracker Barrel comes from. It's a relatively small town. It's the county seat of Wilson County, just to the east of Nashville. It's where comics artist Eric Powell lives or used to live. And it's where Cracker Barrel is from. And Tony Moore used to say that he had never been to Lebanon, in Tennessee they say "Lebanun", not Lebanon. He said he imagined that it was just a giant Cracker Barrel-shaped factory with like smoke pouring out and just like master mold of the sentinels. It just produces smaller Cracker Barrel versions of itself that they then ship out across the southeast. So yeah, anti-Lebanon is the is the opposite of that from Earth 3.

So anyway, Nebuchadnezzar tries to rally together the kingdoms of the West. And when I say West, of course, we're still talking about the western parts of the Middle East, basically. And the problem is they tell him to go heck himself, basically. They're like, "Nebuchadnezzar, you're one dude. I don't care. You don't scare us. No thank you." And so Nebuchadnezzar is like, "I do not appreciate that. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go out by myself, I'm gonna conquer this whole army of the East, and then when I'm done killing them, I'm gonna come around and get my revenge on you guys for not helping me out here." And that happens. So score one for Nebuchadnezzar.

"In the seventeenth year he led his forces against King Arphaxad, defeated him in battle. overthrowing the whole army of Arphaxad and all his cavalry and all his chariots. Thus he took possession of his towns, and came to Ecbatana, captured its towers, plundered its markets, and turned its glory into disgrace. He captured Arphaxad in the mountains of Regal and struck him down with his spears, thus destroying him once and for all. Then he returned to Nineveh." So yeah, he's destroyed the largest army ever combined against him and now he is ready for his revenge against the people who didn't come help him when he asked. And that's kind of what kicks off, that's the inciting incident of the book. We see Nebuchadnezzar assigning his great high general Holofernes or Holofernes And we get pretty great speech here, Chris. Do you want to look at this speech from Nebuchadnezzar? Pretty raw talk here.

C: Yeah, it's pretty dope. "Thus says the great king, the lord of the whole earth, Leave my presence and take with you men confident in their strength, one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers and twelve thousand cavalry. March out against all the land in the west, because they disobeyed my orders. Tell them to prepare earth and water, for I am coming against them in my anger, and will cover the whole face of the earth with the feet of my troops, to whom I will hand them over to be plundered. Their wounded shall fill the ravines and gullies, and the swelling river shall be filled with their dead."

B: Yeah, pretty raw.

C: So Nebuchadnezzar's mad.

B: Yeah.

C: Now, I have a couple questions for you here that you may or may not know the answer to.

Okay.

First of all, what does Holofernes mean?

B: It's actually probably a Persian name or similar to a Persian name, I don't know exactly what it means, because there are historical people with that name or ones similar to it, and so it may have been taken from a Persian general who was a leader in the expedition that invaded the West under Artaxerxes III about 350 BC. So it might come from that, but I do not know what it means.

C: Okay. The second thing is, have we talked about earth and water on the show?

B: We might have, but this is another anachronism because offering up earth and water is a traditional sign of submission among the Persian Empire, and it would have been unheard of with the Assyrians and the Babylonians. So this again, you know, being written in the post-Persian Empire period is a bit of an anachronism.

C: Right. And this is something that I've heard about before, but I could not remember if we had talked about it on the show or if it was just from listening to like episodes of Hardcore History about the tributes that you would give to someone like Xerxes, for instance.

B: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in 300. I think when the scout comes to visit Sparta, they asked for tributes of earth and water...

C: Oh, that's right. He asks for water and that's why he gets kicked into the well.

B: Yes, that's why he gets kicked into the well. That's exactly right. Because he demands earth and water, and so he kicks him into the well. That's exactly right. Yep.

C: Yeah. Holofernes just starts going hard on the West.

B: Yeah, and I should point out that this army is fantastically large. Like...

C: It's huge! It's 132,000 people!

B: Yeah, it is, I mean, when I say fantastically, I mean as in fantasy large. It is stretching the bounds of credibility large. Yeah, and so basically he sets out, "His army was a swarm of locusts locusts like the dust of the earth, a multitude that could not be counted" as he spread out across the West raining Nebuchadnezzar's revenge upon all these people that wouldn't help Nebuchadnezzar against Arphaxad.

And we see him come through a lot of these places. The geography is kind of mixed up, like the order of his march doesn't quite make sense. We see that he comes to the southern borders of Japheth, facing Arabia. And if you remember from one of our Genesis episodes, I guess the first one, Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, his lands were Anatolia, that is the subcontinent on which Turkey is and Europe. So the army is stretching stretching out to either Turkey or Southern Europe, depending on how you want to think about that. They surround the Midianites, those are Arabs basically.

They burn their tents, and they're spreading out all over the world. Sidon and Tyre and all these places. The people eventually submit to Nebuchadnezzar and they're like, "look, stop, we'll we'll be your servants. Do with us whatever you will. Our lands are all yours, our flocks are yours. We'll be your slaves, just don't kill us, don't destroy everything." And Holofernes is like, "yes, good. That is what I will do. Thank you very much for saving me some time." And they start to have a big party. "The people welcomed him in the countryside with garlands and dances and tambourines." But then, "Yet he demolished all their shrines and cut down their sacred groves." Because this is introducing Holofernes now, not just as a military threat, but also as a religious threat, because he's coming through and saying "the only god is Nebuchadnezzar," and so he's destroying all the temples and sacred groves and shrines. And the implication is when he eventually reaches Israel, he's gonna try and do the same thing. And so, a little sinister here on Holofernes's part. And yeah, he eventually makes his way to Judea. And the people there are naturally quite alarmed. Because...

C: Yeah, the the actual heading in the NRSV, because we have the little, they're not chapter headings, they're section headings, I guess, is "Judea on the alert."

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so here's the thing, like Judea, especially this region is very hilly and mountainous. That is something that has been very much to the advantage of Israel throughout history. Of course, probably the most famous example of that is the the fortress of Masada up on the hilltop, but during the Roman siege. It's been much to their advantage, and we can see here that they describe that if they're gonna try and get into Judea, there's really only a couple of passes, and one of them is at Bethulia, and the other one is at Betomesthaim. I did not say that right. But anyway, the idea is these mountain passes are very thin. They're very narrow. They say it's only wide enough for two at a time to pass. And so they're going to buckle down and try and, speaking of 300, they're going to try and 300 this ish, right? And so that that's the plan laid out by Joachim the high priest, who again has vast political and military powers. But the people are, you know, they're freaking out a little bit. Then...

C: You say they're freaking out a little bit. The text says "They even draped the altar with sackcloth and cried out in unison, praying fervently to the God of Israel not to allow their infants to be carried off and their wives to be taken as booty, and the towns they had inherited to be destroyed, and the sanctuary to be profaned and desecrated to the malicious joy of the Gentiles." That's a little more than just kind of freaking out.

B: They're freaking out a lot. Judea, you might say, is on the alert Definitely. So what we get then is Holofernes calls in representatives of the people of Moab and Ammon, the Moabites and the Ammonites. Now, if you'll recall, from our second episode on Genesis, the Moabites and the Ammonites are the descendants of Lot via his daughters, right? We had that very problematic scene. But the the idea there is that that was an etiology for the origin of two long-standing historical enemies of the Israelites: the Moabites, the Ammonites. And so we see them here. So Moab would have been directly east of the Dead Sea, and Ammon would have been to the northeast. And then soon enough we're gonna see the Edomites jump in as well, who are gonna be to the southeast of the Dead Sea. So these are all neighbors of Judea. And the people of Moab and the commanders of Ammon, they come in. And Holofernes is like, "who are these people? What towns do they inhabit? How large is their army?" And that kind of stuff.

And so here we get introduced a supporting character, Achior. Achior, a leader of the Ammonites, and he basically gives the Israelite history for dummies compressed tour for Holofernes. And so most of chapter five is Achior laying out the history of the Israelites starting with Abraham up through the Babylonian exile and the return. And so we basically get everything from you know chapter twelve of Genesis up through Nehemiah, more or less, right? Ezra and Nehemiah.

C: Right. But he crucially talks about that constant back and forth, the struggle with God that we talked about. Which is a key point of this story. He says, "As long as they did not sin against God, they prospered, for the God who hates iniquity is with them. But when they departed from the way that he had prescribed for them, they were utterly defeated in many battles and were led away captive to a foreign land." So basically, Achior is saying, if they haven't sinned, you can't take them.

B: Exactly.

C: No matter what you do.

B: Exactly.

C: Because God's on their side. All you gotta do is wait it out though.

B: So true. And the fact that he's got that planted, that bug planted in his mind is going to be important for later as well. But while that does kind of seem moralistic and simplistic, like from Bible stories, it's definitely true. Like Samson, as long as he trusted in God, he had strength. As soon as he didn't, he lost his strength. You know? And of course the Israelites as a nation, Moses even, you know, everything's good until it's not. And then he's he doesn't trust in God. and and he's punished. And so to see it laid out this way, it's like like Samson and his hair, and the hair is the metaphor for his devotion to God, you know, as long as he keeps that, he's super strong. And so he's like, pretty sure they're on a holy streak right now, so you may not be able to do anything. What happens is Holofernes did not like that response. And so he has he's like, "if you love these Israelites so much, you get to die with them." And so he has him bound and chained.

C: Well well first he he gives him his own super raw speech.

B: Oh yeah, oh for sure.

C: This is in Judith chapter 6 verse 4. "We will overwhelm them, their mountains will be drunk with their blood, and their fields will be full of their dead. Not even their footprints will survive our attack, they will utterly perish."

B: Yeah.

C: Again, I love the effort that this book puts in. Because again, this is chapter 6. Judith is 15 chapters long. Judith has not shown up yet. It's just bad guys and backstory at this point. And they're very, very strong bad guys.

B: Yeah, absolutely they are. This while we're while we're here, this bit right here at verse six in chapter six. Where Holofernes he says, "Then at my return, the sword of my army and the spear of my servants shall pierce your sides, and you shall fall among their wounded." Like part of me is like, "Some medieval Christian guy definitely perked up at the site of `Sphere Through the Side, right?`" Like that's a thing where he's like, "What if this book is about Jesus, though?"

C: Absolutely.

B: Yeah. So enough, I mean, it's we already talked about the parallels with the Virgin Mary, of course, that have been latched onto, but that was one where I saw that and I was like, "Oh man, some guy." Christians, not everything has to be for you, man. Just you don't have to put your finger in every pie. I'm just I'm just saying.

So anyway, yeah, they they chain up Achior, they take him to Bethulia, and they intend to hand him over to the Israelites. They basically they lay him out on a hill. And here we get introduced to some of the magistrates of Bethulia. We get Uzziah, son of Micah, Uzziah, whose name means "Yah is my strength." It's a fairly common name for Bible characters. We'll see that name again and again in other books. And also we get Chabris, son of Gothoniel, and Charmis, son of Melchiel. So we're gonna see those three guys a couple times here, but they run out under suppressing fire from slings, which is wild.

C: It's pretty dope, actually.

B: They run out and they rescue Achior. And they bring him in, and he basically tells them, like, "hey man, here's what went down with Holofernes. Here's what's gonna happen." But what they don't know Is that while Achior is talking to the Israelites, meanwhile, the Moabites and then the Edomites who have not even been here, like they've not even mentioned before. I like to imagine like I imagine that Edomites busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid man, like, "oh yeah, I hate Israel too." And so they're like, "Here's the plan. You're not going to be able to storm through with your giant army through the hills because they use the geography to their advantage. What you're going to have to do is realize that they rely on these springs down at the bottom of these hills. If you fortify the springs, they won't have enough water and you can siege them that way. They'll have to surrender because without water, they'll have famine and sickness, and they'll start to die, and they'll just surrender on their own if you camp out around those springs."

And so that's the new plan and that's the plan that they start to carry out. And it works – for a while because so the Assyrian army encamped in the plane "And then the Israelites cried out to the Lord their God, for their courage failed, because all their enemies had surrounded them and there was no way of escape from them. Their cisterns were going dry. And on no day did they have enough water to drink, for their drinking water was rationed. Their children were listless, and the women and young men fainted from thirst and were collapsing in the streets of the town and in the gateways, and they no longer had any strength." Things are going exceptionally bad. They intend to surrender, but we see Uzziah come out. And he says, "Courage, my brothers and sisters, let us hold out for five more days. By that time the Lord our God will turn his mercy to us again, for he will not forsake us utterly. But if these days pass by and no help comes for us, I will do as you say." So yeah, things are bad in the town, there's great misery, but in those days, Judith heard about these things.

C: By God! By God, that's Judith's music! What's she doing here?

B: Oh man.

C: Yeah, so here comes Judith. Judith's great.

B: Yeah, and we get this incredibly long and probably fictional genealogy for Judith. "The daughter of Merari, son of Ox," from the enforcers possibly, you can't tell me no. "Son of Joseph, son of Oziel, son of Elkaiah, son of Ananias, son of Gideon, son of Raphain, son of Ahitub, son of Elijah, son of Hilkiah, son of Eliab, son of Nathanael, son of Salamiel, son of Sarasadai, son of Israel." Most of these names do not exist elsewhere in the Bible.

C: Israel, we've got. That's, that's Jacob.

B: Yeah, he's that dude's got a lot of sons. I do not recall one named Sarasadai. So it might be a different Israel. I don't know. These names can't be identified, basically. A lot of them are unparalleled in the Old Testament. Some of them we don't see anywhere else. But we get a little bit of her back story. We learn that Judith is a widow. Her husband's name was Manasseh, not any of the Manassehs we've encountered before, but again that's just a common name. We learned that Manasseh worked in a barley field, and he died of heat stroke. He stood overseeing those who were binding sheaves in the field. He was overcome by the burning heat, and took to his bed and died in his town Bethulia.

So what we then learn about Judith is that she is not only a widow, she's an exceptionally pious one. She does everything she's supposed to do. She fasts every day, except for the days where it is expressly forbidden to fast. On the Sabbath and the day before the Sabbath, days before the new moon, days of the new moon, festivals, and so on. Every other day she's fasting. She wears sackcloth around her waist like she's supposed to. She wears widow's clothing. All the things that she's supposed to do. "No one spoke ill of her, for she feared God with great devotion." So: incredibly pious. Like it's very important to note that except for the major events of deceit and murder, Judith is an incredibly pious person who follows the law of the Torah, like to the T. Even when she goes into Holofernes' camp, like she still keeps Kosh. Like she's so serious about it.

C: In my head, Judith, at this point in the story is wearing overalls and glasses and she's got her hair in a ponytail.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: But don't worry, she's about to She's All That herself.

B: Very soon, in fact, yeah. So she goes out to the people of Bethulia and she schools them, basically. She says...

C: Oh, she says some dope shit.

B: Yeah, you have something you have something you want to feature here, Chris?

C: "Do not try to bind the purposes of the Lord our God, for God is not like a human being to be threatened."

B: Yeah.

C: "Or a mere mortal to be won over by pleading."

B: Absolutely. Her key message is like. "who are you to put God to the test today?" This thing where you're setting a deadline for God, five days, right? "Who are you to put God to the test? God is testing us, idiots," right? And so she kind of bookends her speech with like, don't test God, God is testing us. And so, and I love this bit. This is one of my favorite bits in the whole book. Uzziah comes to her and he's like, "Oh you wanna help? Okay. Very good, sweetie. Here's how you can help. Why don't you go pray that God sends rain so we don't die of thirst?"

C: This is so good. This is so good. This is verse 32 of chapter 8.

B: This is probably the most boss flex we have seen anybody lay out in the entire Bible so far, right? Like is there anything that parallels just like the rawness of this like dope flex right here?

C: Legitimately the only thing I can think of is when the soldier showed up and asked Jesus if he was Jesus and he knocked them over by saying, "I am."

B: That's true. That's true. that's a pretty good one. But yeah, she says, "Listen to me. I'm about to go do something that will go down through all generations of our descendants."

C: Which is true.

B: Which is true, because here we are.

C: Here we are.

B: Over 2,000 years later talking about how raw this is.

C: And then Uzziah says "Go in peace and may the Lord God go before you to take vengeance on our enemies." And she says, "God's gonna sit this one out." No wait, I'm sorry, that was the Punisher. The Punisher said that one.

B: But, you know, no, God's definitely on her side, which again, not quite orthodox because she is definitely planning on breaking some commandments. But chapter nine is basically her is her prayer, her prayer to God. And so a lot of people, you know... The author does not see a moral inconsistency in Judith praying for divine help in her deceit and murder. But obviously some later scholars have. But there's still some a lot of the weight to it. The idea that it's gonna be a single woman who destroys an entire hundreds, thousands strong army, but at that time it would have been like particularly like it's definitely insult to injury, right? The fact that it's a woman who's gonna topple this entire army.

C: Well here's what I thought was interesting about this scene, because we're moving into chapter nine now, this is the prayer of Judith. Judith references the story of Dinah.

B: Yes.

C: And is like there is no ambiguity for Judith about who was right in that situation.

B: Right. It also helps that we learn here that Judith is of the tribe of Simeon. And Simeon was the guy who went and killed all the recently circumcised guys and burnt their city to the ground. Simeon and Levi.

C: Who Death Wish-ed everybody – Death Wish 3'ed everybody in the book of Genesis.

B: Yeah, exactly. So there's a tie there, right, between the story of Simeon and Dinah and Shechem. That's very much n the background, like that's in the idea space. That's the ambient radiation of this story is is Dinah and the revenge there in the background. Definitely, definitely Judith is calling on the power of Simeon to get revenge on some dirty dudes.

C: But like we get another pretty amazing Line from Judith here. "Look at their pride and send your wrath upon their heads. Give to me, a widow, the strong hand to do what I plan. By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince, and the prince with his servant, crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman." Dope.

B: Very dope. Incredibly dope.

C: If you're looking for a tattoo, if you're looking for a verse, something to put on the scroll around the dagger to get you through these tough times. I would say maybe the Book of Judith, chapter nine, verse ten. Is a good one?

B: It's very good. Just a scroll going around a sword stuck through the head of Holofernes. Or whoever.

C: And the great thing is Holofernes can look like whoever you want him to look like.

B: He could look like anyone. He could look like any face that might have been at a Senate hearing in recent days. Any face.

C: So Judith's plan starts out like I think all great plans do. The Joker's plan in the Dark Knight, the plan in Skyfall, Star Wars.

B: Yeah.

C: She's gonna get captured on purpose.

B: Yeah. I thought you were gonna say a makeover, and then I was trying to apply that to some of those movies. The Joker, I was there with you, but then I was like, is there a makeover in Skyfall? I don't remember. Yeah, she changes out of her widow's clothes. She puts on her most beautiful clothing and jewelry. It goes to great lengths to explain how beautiful she is.

C: Before there were montages, there was this.

B: Yeah. "She combed her hair, put on a tiara, dressed herself in the festive attire that she used to wear while her husband Manasseh was living. She put sandals on her feet put on her anklets, bracelets, rings, earrings, and all other jewelry. Thus she made herself very beautiful to entice the eyes of all the men who might see her." Yeah, and then, yes, as Chris says, she goes to get captured on purpose. She wanders out to the the encampment of the Assyrians, and she basically flirts her way into the tent of Holofernes.

C: No, she's not alone.

B: No, she has a maidservant who, like we said, Ocean's 2.

C: Do we know anything about her? Because I don't believe she's named in this.

B: No, she's not.

C: Unless I missed it.

B: No, I don't think there's a name or any other information about her.

C: There's no midrash about this?

B: Oh, there might be. I shouldn't say that. Yeah, there might be midrash. I don't know. I don't know them. It might be in the Talmud. if you know, give us a shout. Someone hook us up with a link to the the secret backstory of Judith's hand servant, and that would be good.

C: Let's just call her Alfred.

B: We'll call her Alfred. Yeah.

C: Okay.

B: Yeah, so she goes in. All the guys in the Assyrian camp are basically Tex Avery wolves at this point. They're like, "who are you?" "I'm a daughter of the Hebrews. I'm fleeing from them, for they're about to be handed over to you to be devoured. I'm on my way to see Holofernes, the commander of your army, to give him a true report. I'll show him a way by which he can go and capture all the hill country without losing one of his men, captured or slain." And they're like, "Cool, this is good. You just saved your own life by defecting to us." They lead her to Holofernes.

And we get this description of Holofernes in his tent. "The guards of Holofernes and all of his servants came out and led her into the tent. Holofernes was resting on his bed under a canopy that was woven with purple and gold, emeralds and other precious stones. When they told him of her, he came to the front of the tent with silver lamps carried before him. When Judith came into the presence of Holofernes and his servants, they all marveled at the beauty of her face. She prostrated herself and did obeisance to him, but his slaves raised her up." So I want to take a minute because this is the one quote that I have from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem about Judith. This is the description of this scene. "There was hung all golden a fair fly net round the bed of the folk leader that the baleful one, the chief of warriors, might look through on each child of the brave who came therein, and none might look on him." So the idea here is that this gold links chained canopy is like a mosquito net and it's designed in such a way that he can see out but people can't see in. And so that gives him you know kind of an upper hand over there. But that's that's the only little quote I have from the Anglo-Saxon Judith. I'll probably try and find– I'm sure there's a text of it online that I can link to for anyone who might be interested in that.

Okay, so here we're at chapter 11 now, and what I love about this is like there is a clear demarcation now where pretty much everything Judith says is a complete equivocation where it's true on the surface, but it has another meaning. So if you're looking for like examples of this kind of verbal irony, a lot of it plays on the idea of her using the phrase, "my lord," right? Holofernes, of course, assumes that she means him when in fact she's talking about you know, capital L Lord, God. So when she says something like, "If you follow the words of your servant, God will accomplish something through you, and my Lord will not fail to achieve his purposes."

C: That's the first thing she says to him.

B: Yeah.

C: That's like at the end when there's the flashback.

B: Yeah.

C: And like the coffee cup drops.

B: The coffee cup is dropping. You cut back to like, "oh I see what you mean now," yeah. Yeah, this is starting to set up all the bits, and if you're paying close attention, especially if you know what's going to happen, you can see her sowing the seeds, and there's definitely a strong air of dramatic irony about so much of what she says, because she's always like, "Yes, my lord will prevail." "Something that no one will ever forget is about to happen today." Right? That kind of stuff is is happening all the time.

And so what she says to him, her information to him is that she repeats the things that Achior had told him before, the idea that Israel's strength waxes and wanes with their devotion to God. And she says, "I happen to know that because of the dire thirst that the people are experiencing, the famine and the drought, their faith is at an all-time low. It's absolutely ebbing at this point, to the point where they are eating and drinking food and wine that they're not supposed to. They're planning to kill livestock that had been set aside for God. They're consuming the first fruits of the grain which is set aside for God. The tithes of wine and oil they're going to use." And so what she says to him, and this is important, like it seems like a weird detail, but it's important to the heist. She says, "Every night in the middle of the night, I need to go out of your tent and out into the valley to pray to God. And God will tell me when they're being their most unfaithful, and that's when you can go and attack. So I'm here and I'm gonna go out of your tent every night, out into the valley and I'm gonna pray." And so she sets this up and establishes this early on. And Holofernes is like, "this sounds great. I'm on board."

C: Yeah, and then she tells him, this might as well be "and then Judith turned and winked to us."

B: Uh-huh.

C: She tells him T"hen I will lead you through Judea until you come to Jerusalem. There I will set your throne."

B: Yep, again.

C: That could not be more ominous.

B: All true. It's all true In a technical sense, it is all true. Yeah, and so then we get this established for a couple of days. Judith and Holofernes...

C: Holofernes then goes, "Sounds great."

B: "Sounds great. I'm very on board. I'm incredibly on board to all the things you just said."

C: And she's like, "Yeah, I think you're going to get 'a head' in this war."

B: Yeah. Yeah, oh yeah.

C: "I'll make sure to stay sharp when I go out at night.

B: We start getting the pattern established where she spends her days with Holofernes.

C: "As soon as I hear the good word from God, I'll 'be-heading' back to this tent."

B: There we go.

C: To let you know.

B: There is. Hey Chris, why do you keep 'cutting me off?' Anyway, so yeah, the pattern is established. She spends the day with Holofernes in the tent, at night she goes out in the middle of the night to pray. So Holofernes' guards and servants are used to her going out in the middle of the night.

C: And as you mentioned, she she only eats and drinks her own food that her and her maid brought.

B: He invites her to a banquet and he's like, I have all this stuff, and she's like "Nah, I have this big bag full of kosher food and I'm just gonna eat that." And he's and he's like, "Well if your supply runs out, will you eat with me?" And she's like "Don't worry, it's not gonna run out."

C: Oh, I won't be staying that long.

B: Yeah. No, she says, "your servant will not use up the supplies I have with me before the Lord carries out by my hand what he has determined."

C: "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

B: Yeah.

C: Yeah. And then once again, we finally get to the day. It's happening.

B: It is happening.

C: Judith rolls up into Holofernes' tent. Holofernes is the thirst is real with my dude.

B: Yes, both in both senses.

C: Yes. He had been waiting for an opportunity to seduce her, so he says, "Have a drink and be merry with us." And Judith says, "I will gladly drink, my lord, because today is the greatest day of my whole life." And then she proceeds to straight Marion Ravenwood him and get him trashed.

B: Right. And so here's where that mid-rosh comes in. Okay? According to the the midrash about Judith, the way she gets him to keep drinking wine is she keeps feeding him cheese, and the cheese makes him thirsty. Or phleghmy or something, I don't know. So he keeps drinking wine, and because of all that cheese, he gets drunk because he has to drink all the wine to wash down his cheese. And so, some people eat a lot of cheese at Hanukkah. And so I I know that's not as popular as some as obviously latkes or like sufganiyot or whatever else you might eat, the fried foods that you eat at Hanukkah. But I do know some Groups do eat cheese. Let me know if you eat cheese at Hanukkah, also let me know if you eat those mozzarella sticks because then you got the fried thing going on. for Judah Maccabee and you got the cheese for Judith. So please let me know if you just like you you hit a TGI Fridays for Hanukkah and you're just like unlimited. mozzo sticks, please. Oh, that didn't I didn't mean to say matzah, but like mozzarella. Whatever. Maybe matzah breaded mozzarella. Let me know. Just let me know if you got that fried cheese going on at Hanukkah because you can. It's here in Bible. Yeah, now Holofernes's good and drunk. He's completely turnt. And so the slaves are leaving because they know what's supposed to be happening now. Right? This is like the fourth day in the tenth, so it's basically third date rules, I guess.

C: And Judith's like, "hey, if you hear any chopping noises or screaming for help. Totally normal. Don't worry about it."

B: "That's just how that's just how we do it in Bethulia. So if you if you hear any..."

C: "If like if you hear like a man's voice saying 'what are you doing with that sword?'"

B: Yeah.

C: "Totally it's a metaphor, we don't need to get into it, but just everything's totally, totally norms."

B: "Yeah, this is this is just how my people do. If you do it different in Assyria, I'm sorry." Yeah, so everyone's cleared out except for Judith and Holofernes. She takes down Holofernes's own sword.

C: There's three major players in this. There's Judith, there's Holofernes, and there's Holofernes's sword. "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."

B: Yeah, that's a good prayer if you're about to behead somebody.

C: Yeah. Here's what I think is the most brutal detail in this entire story.

B: That it takes two chops?

C: It takes two. She doesn't get all the way through with the first one.

B: Yeah. So, yeah, she cut through his neck twice with all her might, cut off his head, rolls the body onto the floor, then steals his canopy. And then we see why she have that giant bag for food? Well it's her s-s-sneaking-sneaking out a head bag. It's Ocean's 2, baby. Ocean's 2. That bag's there for a reason. And then we see like she and her handmaid go out to the valley to pray, and everyone's like, "that is normal. That has what is what has been happening every night," Except they're not going to pray, they're going to run back to Bethulia. And so, like, very well thought out heist, head heist. It's still robbery. They just stole a man's head. That's what it was.

C: I mean, at this point, he's not using it. It belongs to Judith.

B: Yeah, it's Judith's now. Why steal a diamond when you can steal the head of the general of your greatest enemies? Yeah, so pretending that they're going back to the valley to pray, they make their way back to the hills where the people of Bethulia greet her, and are kind of wigged out that she managed to do this thing. She pulls the head out of the bag and says, "Look, the head of Holofernes, the commander of the Assyrian army, and also his canopy, which I stole for some reason." "The Lord has struck him down by the hands of a woman. As the Lord lives who has protected me in the way I went, I swear that it was my face that seduced him in his destruction, and that he committed no sin with me to defile and shame me." That's an important detail, right? Because, she has to prove that she did not actually do the deed with him. He was just thirsty for her face. And to prove that she remained completely chaste. The people are astonished.

And we get this kind of cool detail when Achior comes in. "They summon Achior from the house of Uzziah. He came in and he saw the head of Holofernes and he fainted." This is cool. This is...

C: Normal.

B: This is cool because we also got that set up earlier when when he kicks Achior out, Holofernes says to him, he's like, "You're not gonna see you're not gonna see my face again until the day of my victory." And here it here it is. It's not his victory, but victory over him, I suppose. And so yeah, Achior is the first to thank God for the for the death of Holofernes and the destruction of the Assyrian army. And so here, yeah, in complete flagrant disregard for Deuteronomy 23:3, they convert Achior to Judaism and he's circumcised and everything. That verse says that Ammonites and Moabites...

C: Two chops.

B: Yeah. Moabites and Ammonites cannot be converted. Yeah. Oh yeah, two chops, yeah. Moabites and Ammonites can't be converted to Judaism because, it turns out, because they did not bring out food and water for the Israelites when they returned from the desert they were supposed to have a bigger party for them and as a result they're not allowed into heaven, etc. I know Judaism doesn't have heaven per se, but you know what I mean. They're not allowed into covenant with God.

So yeah, they hang the head of Holofernes on the wall, and then their plan is Judith sends their army to come out as if they're about to attack. And so when the Assyrians wake up in the morning, they look and they see, "oh shoot, the Israelites are coming, go wake up Holofernes." And so then when Bagoas, this is the name of Holofernes' eunuch, who's in charge of stuff, including women, as eunuchs frequently were. He goes and knocks at the entry of the tent, because he supposed that Holofernes was sleeping with Judith, "But when no one answered he opened it and went into the bedchamber, found him sprawled on the floor dead, with his head missing. He cried out with a loud voice and wept and groaned and shouted and torn his tore his clothes." And so yeah, the Assyrians start to panic, they start to run away, that doubles down. When Uzziah sends messengers out to the other villages of the Israelites, and now the full Israelite army comes and is able to chase off the Assyrians who are now literally headless. The head of their head has been cut off, and so they have no commander. And they basically get chased back. to Assyria.

C: Look, Holofernes is the Death Star. We got it.

B: Yeah.

C: Like he's the thing. They do have a hundred and seventy thousand other dudes there.

B: Yeah. None of them it turns out were good at army. So, yeah.

C: I am not at all cheapening Judas actions. I'm saying it is established: there are a hundred and seventy thousand people surrounding Jerusalem at this point.

B: Yeah.

C: Quick comparison. During the reign of Augustus, the Roman army numbered 250,000.

B: Yeah.

C: Entirely. For the empire.

B: Right. This is again, an implausible number of people.

C: It's a very large number of people. It's a San Diego Comic-Con of people.

B: Yeah. And you know what? If someone cut off Wil Wheaton's head, they would have run away too.

C: Definitely not advocating it. Definitely not advocating it.

B: Definitely not. I'm not saying, I'm not saying I'm not advocating violence against Wil Wheaton. I'm just saying that if you cut off Wil Wheaton's head, the entirety of San Diego Comic-Con would run through the whole district. They'd be gone.

C: That is fair. That is fair.

B: We get the again truly implausible detail that it took them thirty days to plunder the camp. There could not have been that much stuff there. But Judith gets the tent of Holofernes with all of his silverware and his beds, his bowls, his furniture. She loads them up on a cart and she brings them back with the intent to dedicate them all to God because again, Judith is a very pious and devout woman who always does the right thing. We get ivy-wreathed wands, we get olive wreaths. That's another clue that this is probably in a post-Hellenistic world because that's a thing that Greek people did, olive wreaths, that's not a Jewish thing. And then we get Judith's hymn of Thanksgiving, which is basically, she writes an epic ballad about herself from the perspective of a personified Israel. Which is pretty baller.

C: Pretty great. And then much like we did last week, we have a woman with agency who accomplishes something great and then lives a long and happy life.

B: Yeah, we see her live to the age of 105. She never marries again. She stay she remains a widow for the rest of her life, even though she's the most beautiful woman in Israel. She is she's the face she's the face that killed 175,000 men.

C: Canonically, "her sandal ravished his eyes." That's how hot she is.

B: Yeah.

C: Yes. Her shoes.

B: Her shoes.

C: Unless it's just Unless we are to believe that Judith 169 is just telling us that Holofernes was like a foot guy.

B: Could be both. Could be both.

C: Could be both.

B: Could be both.

C: Could be both.

B: And yeah, so she lives to be 105, she never remarries. she is honored by the whole country. Despite the fact that many men tried to woo her, she did not give in. 105, she grew old. She set her maid free. She died in Bethulia, she's buried next to her husband, and then all of her belongings, which were great wealth, we know, because she took the highest and best plunder from the camp of Holofernes, all of that was distributed to her relatives in accordance with the law. So even post-death, Judith is still following the Torah to a T.

C: Yeah, and the entire House of Israel mourned her passing for seven days, which is pretty good.

B: Yeah.

C: They lowered Holofernes' head to half staff.

B: Yeah. Yeah, they just flew that gold canopy on a flagpole. So what do you think, Chris?

C: I think the story of Judith is pretty great, is what I think.

B: Yeah, we had zero miracles.

C: Zero miracles.

B: Yeah. Another thing that ties it into Esther a little bit, right? Esther pretty famously the canonical book that does not explicitly mention God, although God is mentioned many, many times in this book, we don't see active use of his hand. And yeah, no miracle healing fish or angels popping down to do anything. Yeah, it's just...

C: Yeah, Raphael does not show up to go fight Satan in Egypt at any point in this story.

B: Right.

C: It is a regular non-flaming and eye-covered sword that chops off Holofernes' head. Also, as you mentioned, solidly written, like engagingly written, and translated, we specifically, I think we mentioned this at the beginning. We used the NRSV version of this story. But like very fun and action-packed. A good one to read, I think.

B: Yeah, and it's it's not that long either. It's yeah, sixteen chapters. In my edition of the NRSV it takes up it's about twenty pages, but that includes lots of footnotes. So you could probably find it shorter than that. So if you if you haven't read it yet, I do recommend maybe giving this one a read. It's very cool. It's a really good one. And you can see why it's a popular inspiration for different pieces of art. I will definitely be posting a gallery of different paintings and sculptures of Judith on our Tumblr. for this week.

C: Did you have a verse that we didn't already talk about?

B: I think we basically covered all the ones I wrote down as possibilities because The first one I wanna wanted to talk about was the was from Holofernes' speech about the about the valleys filling with blood. That was one. Then I considered possibly Judith's very raw drop about doing something that will go down through all the generations. And then I also considered 13:4, which was... oh yeah, this is her prayer right before she kills Holofernes. "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." So I had all those picked, but we covered we kinda covered all of them during the show, which I kind of figured we would because there's so many very raw speeches in this one. Did you have one, Chris?

C: We already did them, but I specifically highlighted 8:32, which is Judith announcing that she is gonna go down in history.

B: Yeah.

C: Calling her shot.

B: Like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or George Washington. Yeah.

C: Or Judith.

B: Yeah.

C: But I think the the winners in this one are Judith 9:9-10.

B: Yeah.

C: Judith chapter nine verses nine through ten: "Look at their pride, and send your wrath upon their heads. Give to me, a widow, the strong hand to do what I plan. By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant; crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman." Especially that last bit. That is solid. Solid stuff...

B: It's very choice.

C: ...from our pal the Bible. So that is the story of Judith. Very, very fun. But we are going to come back next week with the first part of a two-part Halloween Scare-tacular.

B: That's right. Yeah, two-part Spook-toberfest. We're gonna do the one where the devil descended to hell, The Gospel of Nicodemus, aka the Acts of Pilate, aka the Descent into Hell. We're gonna see Jesus, what he did on his Saturday off between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

C: Oh, that's right, everybody. It's time for the harrowing of hell.

B: That's the one. There's some other stuff that happens.

C: You know I love it.

B: Some other stuff happens too.

C: You know I love it.

B: But yeah. We're definitely gonna see Satan as a character with with lines that say stuff. So yeah, we're gonna get a little bit of a rehash of the the crucifixion and resurrection, but plenty of stuff in hell. We're gonna see the return of many of these patriarchs that we have encountered recently. Some names that should be familiar. But yeah, it should be a fun time. Part one of a two-part Spooktoberfest, Spooktacular, Boo-serbration. I don't know. I've completely lost it there.

C: But that is gonna be next week. And I am very excited about it. You know that's a story I've been talking about since we started that I did not know was not in the canonical Bible.

B: Yeah.

C: But I think that that goes to your point. Like this this stuff exists even to me in pop culture.

B: Yeah.

C: Until we're back in action here, where can everybody find us, Benito?

B: Yeah, so like I've been mentioning throughout the show, if you want to see supplementary materials like links, we posted a lot of links to articles given to us by our good friend David Wolkin, recently. We also post images of art related to the stories that we do, also fan art when we get it. We had a very choice piece of Thecla art that came in this past week that you guys should absolutely go check out if you haven't seen it. It's definitely Thecla shrouded in fire, a vat full of dead seals and so on. You can find all that stuff on our Tumblr at apocrypals dot tumbler dot com. Follow us there. We also post links, especially to things that you can't find or may not be able to find in a print version of the Bible. When we read things like, for example, the Gospel of Nicodemus, we'll have links on our site that you can find there.

Also, if you enjoy the show and you want to help us continue to make the show, if you want to help support us a little bit monetarily, you can do so by going to K O dash F I dot com slash apocrypals. That's kofi dot com slash apocrypals, where you basically can help support the show in the form of a tip in multiples of $3. So if you feel like we're doing a good job and you want to help us continue to make the show, pay for things like hosting, music, reference books, and that kind of stuff that we use on the show, drop us a little bit of cash to show your appreciation. We appreciate it.

If you can't do that, or you just don't want to do that, but you do want to still help the show, not in a monetary fashion, you can do that by dropping us a review on your favorite podcaster of choice, whether that be iTunes. Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, I don't think has reviews, but you know, especially iTunes, if you give us a rating and a review, or Apple Podcasts, I suppose they call it now, but give us a give us a rating and review. We've gotten some really nice reviews in the last week. Like sometimes it'll go a while without any reviews, but we've gotten like four in the last couple of days that were all really great and we super appreciate you guys doing that. So yeah, leaving us rating and reviews help us get featured, help us bump up that Christian comedy chart, which is our our number one goal, obviously.

C: I feel like the number one goal is the clutch @Pontifex retweet.

B: Yeah, still waiting on that. We do definitely have a Catholic priest from Alabama who plays the guitar, who's very much in our corner, and we appreciate that. He's also dropped us some money at Kofi, which I appreciate, super appreciate. I know he's listening to this and will hear this. I think he's a couple episodes behind, but we definitely appreciate that. But yeah, still waiting for that @Pontifix. Otherwise, if you want to find me, I'm on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, just search for Benito Cereno. You'll find me. I'm there. Chris, what about you?

C: You can find all of my stuff by going to T H E dash I S B dot com. That has links to all the stuff that I write around the web and also has links to comic books that I write. The Army of Darkness Halloween special is coming out soon. That has stories by both of us. Me and my writing partner, Chad Bowers and Benito did stories in there. I've also got Infinity Wars Sleepwalker coming out now. Chad and I wrote that one with art by Todd Nauck, and it's really fun. If you've ever wondered what the insides of the Infinity Stones look like, then Sleepwalker will take you on a tour. And I got to see the the reality stone interior today for the first time, like full color finished. It's great.

B: I love it. I gotta tell you, Chris, it's very good. I read it, it's very good. Like it's been a long time. It's been a long time since I've bought... There's been a like a comic book event story where I've bought all the tie-ins. It might have been like Final Crisis might have been the last time I did that. And Final Crisis might literally be the only other time I've ever done this. But I've bought every tie-in to Infinity Wars like and Infinity Countdown before that. And like you had stuff for that. You did the Darkhawk story. And like everything has been good. All of these Infinity Warp stories have been very cool. The Sleepwalker is very cool. I was very glad to see the return of Silhouette, one of my favorite characters, even though I know that was Chad's addition and not yours, because you did not read early 90s New Warriors. But I've been saying for years that Silhouette is ripe for a return. Like this is the era in which Silhouette could flourish and nobody's been using her. So I'm glad to see her pop up in your book. That was very cool.

C: People were very excited about her. You're not alone.

B: Yeah.

C: Also, this is the first place I have said this, because it came in while we were recording, actually.

B: Yeah.

C: Dracula the Unconquered number four is done.

B: Hey!

C: That is a comic that's been in the works for years. Dracula the Unconquered was a series that I started with Steve Downer and Josh Croc. Seven years ago.

B: Yeah, alright.

C: Number four is done.

B: Nice.

C: So I'm very excited about it. This is it's probably gonna be out on Halloween on Comixology and it's got Carmilla in it. This is the Carmilla issue that I'm very excited about, and it it looks great. And I'm very excited for people to read it. I really – it's been long enough since I wrote it that I kinda read it for the first time today and it was really fun.

B: Yeah, and if people if people have not read that, you should check it out because the premise is what if Dracula was also an Uncle Scrooge? It's very good.

C: Yeah, what if Dracula had world traveling adventures with his young lady sidekick?

B: Yeah.

C: In Europe in 1901. so that's that, everybody. Also, Benito, you've got a bunch of Halloween comics, but we we're we're plugging, we can't we can't be here all day.

B: No, no, no, no, definitely not.

C: Check all that stuff out. Thank you for listening. So be here next week when we talk about the gospel of Nicodemus. Until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also with you.

[Music: "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs]