The Reality of the Book of Judith / הראליה הגאוגרפית והארכאולוגית של ספר יהודית

In recent years the geographical and archaeological reality of the Apocryphal Book of Judith has been newly explored. Scholars of different generations have viewed the book as a possibly religious, half-legendary creation based upon political considerations in the Hellenistic or Persian period. The book speaks of a campaign of a certain Holofernes from "Assyria" to the west with a great army, to suppress a revolt against the king. A siege is laid on the Jewish cities near the Dothan Valley, and a Jewish woman, Judith, kills Holofernes and saves the Jews. Almost none of the places in the text was known, and the story itself did not have support from other ancient historical books. The Manasseh Survey, exploring the hill country of Samaria and the Jordan Valley, found many similarities between the story and its geographical arena and the surveyed area around the Valley of Dothan. Hence, the locations of Bethulia (and probably Bethomestaim), the two half-legendary Jewish cities, were identified with some reliability; the descriptions of the siege, the battle, the camp of general Holofernes, the "great pass to Judea," etc., were thus made real and could be drawn on the map. In addition, the archaeological and geographical background of the book was found to belong to the Persian period (fourth century BCE), as had already been suggested by several scholars lacking indications in the field.