Gripla - 01.01.2000, Blaðsíða 86

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GRIPLA
advanced the view that the book of Judith has perhaps more things in com-
mon with a folktale than it has with much of the historical literature of the Old
Testament — it is a neat tale of a hero/heroine on a rescue mission (Moore
1985:72-73). There are not too many characters, and the tale is structured
around sets of parallels and opposites as was mentioned above. Against Holo-
femes and his servant, Bagao the eunuch, stand Judith and her maid. Achior
the Ammonite serves as a sort of involuntary catalyst in the story (Roitman
1992). The interaction between the primary opposites Judith and Holofemes
then builds up to the crowning moment, the very picturesque murder. In the
aftermath the roles of the Israelites and the Assyrians are reversed.
The reason the scribes responsible for 764 included Judith in their chrori-
icle lies partly in the fact that Nebuchadnezzar, Holofemes and Judith had
won themselves a secure place in universal histories. No account of the
quinta aetas (from the reign of David to the Incarnation) would be complete
without them. But it will also have mattered not a little that Judith is an excel-
lent story and appealed to the compilers and their prospective audience. One
is reminded of Gabriel Turville-Petre’s remark when discussing early reli-
gious Icelandic prose (1967:125), that
[i]n literature of this kind tales were told of Christ, the Apostles, and
later saints less because they were edifying than because they were ad-
venturous and entertaining.
In the case of the Judith text in 764 entertainment and edification seem to
have gone hand in hand, especially if we believe that the manuscript was in-
tended for the nuns and novices at Reynistaður. Many of the bible passages
included in the manuscript portray women (e.g. Lot’s wife, Delilah, Jael, and
the women in the story of Solomon’s judgment) and the book also contains a
number of texts (stories and miracles) about women saints: Martha, Ursula,
Walburga, the Norwegian Sunnifa, the Virgin Mary. Some of these women
(most notably the saints) are models of virtue, others fall prey to cardinal sins.
All of them have exemplary value for the Christian, in their stories a young
novice could find virtues to emulate or unacceptable behaviour to shirk from.
In terms of space devoted to her, Judith takes pride of place in 764 along with
the Virgin. The Virgin is, in this manuscript, as indeed in biblical literature in
general, mostly silent. Compared to her Judith comes across as a woman of
flesh and blood. She accomplishes her deed with her own hands, admittedly
with the help of God, but the slaying of Holofemes is not depicted as a mira-
cle, it is a heroic action taken by a mortal woman. Judith’s thoughts are re-
vealed through her speeches and her prayers, and the attention given to the