Book Review: Judith, Debora Levine

The present most recent volume in the Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (CEJL) series by Jewish scholar Debora Levine Gera, the Hebrew University Shalom Horowitz Professor of Classics, offers an excellent commentary on the apocryphal Book of Judith. The fresh translation and commentary is based on Robert Hanhart’s edition of the Greek text (Iudit, Septuaginta, Vetus Testamentum Graecum VIII.4; Göttingen, 1979). Gera describes the aim of her translation as follows: “it is meant to be readable, but is also fairly literal, because it seems important to me to preserve the feeling of the Greek original: both its awkward, pseudo-biblical tone and many internal echoes” (viii).