Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha.
Holofernes complies and subdues most countries to the west of Assyria, except Bethulia, a Jewish town which resists the invader. At this point Judith is introduced. As in the Bible, Judith is depicted as a wealthy, independent widow, who after the death of her husband has chosen to remain single and lead a clean and chaste life (lines 203-207).
The account of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith is given in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, and is the subject of many paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In the story, Judith, a beautiful widow, is able to enter the tent of Holofernes because of his desire for her.
Artemisia Gentileschi's painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1614–1620 Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Cristofano Allori, 1613. Holofernes (Ancient Greek: Ὀλοφέρνης; Hebrew: הולופרנס) was an invading Assyrian general in the Book of Judith, who was beheaded by Judith who entered his camp and decapitated him while he was intoxicated.
The Old English poem is one of many retellings of the Holofernes–Judith tale as it was found in the Book of Judith, still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. The other extant version is by Ælfric of Eynsham, late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon abbot and writer; his version is a homily (in prose) of the tale.
Bethulia is clearly distinguished from Jerusalem (Judith 4:6; 11:14, 19; 15:5, 8; the references throughout the article being to the fuller Greek text), and the topographical details" show that "the story, even if it be only a pious romance, is connected with a definite place. Its site, however, is in dispute.
Holofernes' attraction to Judith, which ultimately leads to a calamitous case of deception and violence, almost mirrors the events of Gentileschi's own life. The symbolic nature and personification of the characters in the biblical story, however, are opposite to the true proceedings of the artist. [7]
The opera Holofernes of Emil von Reznicek was composed on the motifs of the play. Based on the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, Hebbel's adaptation presents a heroine who oversteps the boundaries of proper womanhood as defined by his 19th-century upbringing. Changing the political plot of the biblical story into a psychological investigation ...