A widow with a sword. Judith is one of the Bible's great short stories: a terror-stricken city, an undefeated general named Holofernes, and a beautiful widow who walks into the enemy camp, wins his trust, and cuts off his head with his own sword. The city is saved; the enemy army flees. The setting is a stylized, symbolic stage rather than a chronicle — which is why scholars read it as a parable of resistance written under persecution, probably in the second century BC. Its heroine became a muse for artists from Donatello to Caravaggio, and her story still asks its ancient question: what can one faithful person do against overwhelming power?

This book is also available in the Revised Version (1895) — modern spelling.