SOURCE: Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk. Introduction to Beowulf and Judith, edited by Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, pp. ix-lxxiv. New York: Columbia University Press, 1953.

In the following essay, Dobbie offers an overview of the scholarship on Judith, discussing its biblical source, fragmentary nature, date and circumstances of composition, and poetic elements.

Judith

[T]he 349 lines of Judith which are still preserved are no more than a fragment of what was once a much longer work. The original length of the poem may be estimated from two bodies of evidence: (1) the relation of the extant text to the poet's source, and (2) the section numbers in the manuscript.

It has long been recognized that the source of our poem was the Latin Vulgate text of the apocryphal book of Judith.¹ The poet, however, did not follow the Latin text closely but omitted many nonessential features of the narrative and introduced a...