Date of Judith

Efthimiadis-Keith addresses questions of the historicity of the book of Judith using a more subjective definition of truth than simple fact or fiction: she interprets the text through Jungian methodology as a dream of the unconscious psyche of the Jewish people, true in its reflection of their collective identity at the time of the text’s composition. The author merges Terrence Dawson’s literary theory concerning the discernment of the effective protagonist of a narrative with Jungian’s method of dream interpretation to analyze the text subjectively from the effective protagonist’s point of view. The author then extrapolates the book’s contents onto a hypothetical historical situation to contextualize the book within the Jewish identity, and uses her findings to conduct an objective analysis from which she proposes a date for the book.