_Versions._--Judith was written originally in Hebrew. This is shown not only by the numerous Hebraisms, but also by mistranslations of the Greek translation, as in ii. 2, iii. 9, and other passages (see Fritzsche and Ball _in loc._), despite the statement of Origen (_Ep. ad Afric._ 13) that the book was not received by the Jews among their apocryphal writings. In his preface to Judith, Jerome says that he based his Latin version on the Chaldee, which the Jews reckoned among their Hagiographa. Ball (_Speaker's Apocrypha_, i. 243) holds that the Chaldee text used by Jerome was a free translation or adaptation of the Hebrew. The book exists in two forms: the shorter, which is preserved only in Hebrew (see under _Hebrew Midrashim_ below), is, according to Scholz, Lipsius, Ball and Gaster, the older; the longer form is that contained in the versions. _Greek Version._--This is found in three recensions: (1) in A B, [Hebrew: a]; (2) in codices 19, 108 (Lucian's text); (3) in codex 58, the source of the old Latin and Syriac. _Syriac and Latin Versions._--Two Syriac versions were made from the Greek--the first, that of the Peshito; and the second, that of Paul of Tella, the so-called Hexaplaric. The Old Latin was derived from the Greek, as we have remarked above, and Jerome's from the Old Latin, under the control of a Chaldee version. _Later Hebrew Midrashim._--These are printed in Jellinek's _Bet ha-Midrasch_, i. 130-131; ii. 12-22; and by Gaster in _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_ (1894), pp. 156-163. _Date._--The book in its fuller form was most probably written in the 2nd century B.C. The writer places his romance two centuries earlier, in the time of Ochus, as we may reasonably infer from the attack made by Holofernes and Bagoas on Judaea; for Artaxerxes Ochus made an expedition against Phoenicia and Egypt in 350 B.C., in which his chief generals were Holofernes and Bagoas. RECENT LITERATURE.--Ball, _Speaker's Apocrypha_ (1888), an excellent piece of work; Scholz, _Das Buch Judith_ (1896); Löhr, _Apok. und Pseud._ (1900), ii. 147-164; Porter in Hastings's _Dict. Bible_, ii. 822-824; Gaster, _Ency. Bib._, ii. 2642-2646. See Ball, pp. 260-261, and Schürer _in loc._, for a full bibliography. (R. H. C.)