KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 May
Blessed art thou among women
A phrase associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, it has its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and in later Jewish writings with the figure of Jael, on the one hand, and the figure of Judith, on the other hand. They are blessed among women or even above all women. They belong to a quartet of holy women who at once embody the essential features of Judaism: Jael from the Song of Deborah, Esther, Judith, and Susanna. They are each in their own way strong women who had to deal with adversities in one way or another. In turn, they shape the moral imaginary of the Christian world in the figures of Mary and Christ.
We have in Chapel this week read two passages from the Book of Judith. It has only come down to us in Greek, and yet entered much later into Jewish culture and ritual, paradoxically, because of its vitality and presence in the cultures of both Eastern and Western Christianity. For Eastern Orthodoxy the Book of Judith belongs to their canonical (authoritative) scriptures since they derive the Old Testament from the Septuagint. In the Christian West, largely through the interpretative influence of Jerome’s Prologue to the story, the Book of Judith belongs to the Deutero-canonical texts for Catholics and to the Apocrypha for Protestants, such as Anglicans. In other words, the Book of Judith provides an intriguing and interesting example of the interchange and interaction between and within religious cultures, philosophically understood.
It is a story about Jewish identity in the face of persecution and has grown in symbolic significance for Jews and Christians alike. A fictional work, composed sometime in the second century BC, whether first in Hebrew or in Greek is unclear, it is clearly set within a Jewish milieu and in the context of a global power struggle between the Assyrians and the Medes. Set in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, like the Book of Daniel to which the story of Susanna is appended, it concerns the persecution of the Jews by the dominant powers of the day. Judith is a beautiful widow in the fictional city of Bethulia which stands as the gateway to Jerusalem. Holofernes, Nebuchadnezzar’s general, puts Bethulia under siege on his way to capture Jerusalem. At issue is the subordination of the Jews to the Assyrians and to the demand, as in the Book of Daniel, to worship Nebuchadnezzar as god. The siege places the city in great distress with food and water shortages. Its leadership decides that if God does not do something within five days, they will capitulate to the demands of the Assyrians.
