Judith

The book of Judith is a parody of foreign imperial rulers, written in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt at the end of the second or beginning of the first century BCE. It features a pious Jewish woman who risks her virtue to save her people. Judith violates decorum: she chides the village elders; she lies and deceives; she makes suggestive advances to a foreign general, and enters his intimate quarters to chop off his head. She oversees her people’s charge against the Assyrians and becomes a hero.