Samuele Rocca THE BOOK OF JUDITH, QUEEN SHOLOMZION AND KING TIGRANES OF ARMENIA: A SADDUCEE APPRAISAL Although for various reasons the Book of Judith never became part of the Jewish canon of the Bible, still it survived in Jewish con- sciousness as part of H  anukkah, the Feast of the Lights, which celebrates Judah Macca- beus’s reconsacration of the Temple in 165 BCE. It is interesting that, on the contrary, the Book of Esther indeed became part of the Jew- ish canon. In fact the Book of Judith does not describe the origin of H  anukkah, but a previ- ous more ancient event, albeit completely imaginary. The connection with H  anukkah is later and indirect. However, on the contrary, the Book of Esther is dedicated to events inti- mately connected with the Feast of Purim, which the book establishes. There are many parallels with the Book of Esther. Both are heroines who save the Jewish people, albeit in a different manner, with a different character, and a different social standing. Also their area of action is different. Esther acts inside the Royal Palace of Susa, one of the capitals of the Persian Empire, Judith acts in the village of Bethulia, somewhere in the Land of Israel. Still with all these parallels the Book of Esther was canonized, and the Book of Judith was not. Ac- cording to the Sages it was written too late, af- ter the Persian Period, to be inspired 1 . Anyway Jews read today the Scroll of Esther at Purim, but at H  anukkah there is no scroll of Judith that is read. Another possible reason why the Book of Judith was not canonized is that the original Hebrew text had been lost in an earlier date. In Late Antiquity, at the time of the Sages, this original Hebrew text had been irretrievably lost, and only the Greek translation, now part of the Christian canon, survived the ages. Still the Book of Judith did not meet the fate of other non canonical Books. It indeed survived in Jewish consciousness through the ages, tied to H  anukkah. Thus in the Middle Ages the As ˇkenazi Sage, Rashbam, Samuel ben Meir, Rashi’s grandson, could write that the «miracle of Hanukka came through the intervention of Judith» (Tosafot Megillah 4a). On the other side the Spanish Sage Nachmanides in his commentary on Deuteronomy 21, 14 called the Book of Judith as the “Scroll of Shushan”. Thus both Medieval Rabbis, although they were aware that the original had not been ac- cepted in the canon and also that it had been lost, still found it necessary to remember it in connection with H  anukkah, as a scroll 2 . But why was the Book of Judith linked to H  anukkah, and, according to the Medieval masters, why does it somehow play the same task that the Scroll of Esther played in their own days during Purim? The truth is that, al- though some scholars date the Book as early as the Fifth-Fourth centuries BCE, and as late as the Trajanic period, most modern scholars tie the composition of the Book to the early Has- monean Period. Three main reasons are given for an Hasmonean dating. First the vessels pu- rified from profanation do indicate a date after Judah Maccabee purification of the Temple in 165 BCE, second in the Book of Judith the lo- cution Night and Day is always mentioned, which indicates the use of a lunar calendar. But the lunar calendar was commonly used in Judaism only from the Hellenistic Period on- wards, as it had taken the place of the Biblical Solar Calendar, although sectarians continued 1 See M.S. Enslin and S. Zeitlin (eds.), The Book of Judith, Jewish Apocryphal Literature VII, Leiden 1972, pp. 2-24. 2 See Enslin and Zeitlin (eds.), The Book of Ju- dith, cit., p. 25. 85