Mention must be made of the fact that our book has come down to us in more than one form. We have, firstly, the Greek form preserved in the Septuagint; our Apocrypha follows this, and it is the one of which some account has been given in the preceding section. This Greek form of the story is much longer than the other, to be spoken of presently; but it exists in three recensions, and the differences between these are considerable. Of these three, one is preserved in the principal uncial manuscripts, A, B, and to some extent in ℵ; this, as just said, is the recension adopted in our Apocrypha. The second is found in two cursive manuscripts, numbered 19 and 108; while the third occurs in a cursive numbered 58[396]; it was from a manuscript belonging to the type of text representing this latter that the Old Latin and Syriac Versions were made.[397] It is probable that all these recensions go back to a single archetype.[398] But, in the second place, there exists, in Hebrew, quite a different and much shorter form of the story; this form is preserved in a Hebrew manuscript, found by Gaster,[399] belonging approximately to the year A.D. 1000; its home was, according to Gaster, “somewhere in Babylon,” and he believes that it “must have belonged originally to the old Megillath Taanith,” a Rabbinical tractate belonging to the Haggadic literature. In this shorter form some of the essential features of the story differ from the longer form; thus, Seleucus takes the place of Nebuchadnezzar; Judith appears not as a widow, but as a maiden, the daughter of Ahitob; the scene of the story, moreover, is not placed in Bethulia, but in Jerusalem; and the relations between Judith and her victim are given in somewhat unblushing detail. This form of the story occurs also in the Megillath Taanith (chap, vi.), as we now have it; here there are again some variations, for, according to Zunz, “Judith is represented as the daughter of Jochanan, or of Mattathiah, and as a heroine belonging to the Hasmonæan period.”[400] The question naturally arises here as to which of these forms most nearly represents the original story. The rather intricate details which would have to be given in order to answer this would be wearisome; we must content ourselves, therefore, with saying that there can be little doubt that the shorter, Hebrew, form must be regarded as coming closest to the original form of the story. In comparing the contents of each form, as given respectively in the Greek MSS. and in the magazine in which Gaster’s manuscript has been published, it will be seen that a variety of indications lead to the conviction that the shorter form is the older. III. THE TEACHING AND PURPOSE OF THE BOOK