God Of War 3 Iso

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IDepartment of History,Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands IIDepartment of Old and New Testament, Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The heroine Judith basically brings about the defeat of the Assyrian empire on her own, although she receives some help from her maidservant, and her fellow-Israelites actually put the Assyrians to flight. The salient point leading to the defeat is, of course, Judith's decapitation of the enemy commander Holofernes. Judith is able to eliminate Holofernes by seducing him with her words and her appearance. Judith's appearance is crucial for her seduction, but the appearance of her opponent is important as well and characterises him as a pampered person (with Schmitz 2010; see the section Appearance below). As we will see, Judith represents the Israelite or Jewish nation and Holofernes represents the Assyrian empire, although there is another level of the conflict in the story in which Nabouchodonosor opposes God because he aims to enforce his religion on everybody (Jdt 3:8, see the section Personification of empire below). God and Nabouchodonosor, however, remain largely passive in the story; the actual conflict takes place between Judith and Holofernes, who personifies the empire.

The Judith story underlies a view that a nation or state can be personified by somebody. The personification of the state by identifying it with its leader is a modern phenomenon, as is obvious from the famous French quote 'the state: that's me' (l'état, c'est moi). The French King Louis XIV allegedly expressed this statement on 13 April 1655 before members of parliament in Paris.1 The quote is probably not historical, but it highlights the point I intend to make in this article. Empire in Judith is personified empire, and that is why personal appearance is so important. As a matter of fact, the personification of the state in Judith may already reflect Hellenistic representations of the ruler in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid empire as well as Judah.2 The ruler personifies the state in these representations, as Hölbl (1994) aptly observes:

While the pharaoh operates as an independently acting entity next to a collective group of Egyptian priests, the Ptolemaic Basileus personifies the principle of the state on his own like his Seleucid colleague. (p. 83)3

Numerous historians have asserted that the Seleucid empire was not in fact territorial but a 'personal monarchy', according to which the state, unnamed, was made up of a set of institutions - king, court, and army - without a strong spatial attachment and in which royal legitimacy was based in certain unmoored kingly practices, primarily warfare and benefaction. The Seleucid kings, the argument continues, retained ambitions to universal rule and so refused to admit territorial borders. (p. 4)

Kosmin (2014:4) rightly argues that the richness of the Seleucid territory as landscape, experience, spectacle and aspiration needs to be taken into account, as well as 'the basic physicality of Seleucid power and the territorial commitment of its rulers'.

My analysis of the role of appearance in Judith will not focus on territory and material culture but on the representation of the empire and the Israelites by persons in a text, taking a narratological perspective (ed. De Jong 2012; eds. De Temmerman & Van Emde Boas 2018; Ryan 2009). A spatial aspect is relevant also because appearance and personification are presented through a spatial lens in Judith. Henri Lefebvre's notion of conceived space as part of the conceptual triad developed in his monograph The Production of Space (Lefebvre 1974 [1991]) may therefore be helpful for my discussion. Conceived space concerns space as reflected or imagined in one's mind, and the bodies of the protagonists in Judith can be seen as a form of personified conceived space. In the remaining sections of this contribution, I will successively discuss the personification of the Assyrian empire, the importance of appearance and Judith's use of appearance and speech in her seduction and murder of Holofernes.

A survey of all the actions of the Assyrian empire in chapters 1 and 2 immediately shows that the king is the leading actor. King Nabouchodonosor not only represents the empire, but also takes the decisions and the initiative to act:

The personification of the empire in chapters 1-2 is, among other things, apparent from Nabouchodonosor's call for support to Persia and the nations in the West (1:7-11) and his response to the rejection of this call (Jdt 1):

12 And Nabouchodonosor became violently angry at all this land and swore by his throne and by his kingdom that he would punish the entire region of Cilicia and the Damascene and Syria and that he would dispatch with his sword all the inhabitants of the land of Moab and the sons of Ammon and all Judea and all those in Egypt, until one comes to the region of the two seas. [bold added] (vv. 11-12)

These two passages contrast each other, but both highlight that the empire is represented by one man, Nabouchodonosor, as the phrases in bold show. They also show that honour and shame are important categories for the representation of empire, with success as a crucial factor (Bernhardt 2017:166-216; Gehrke 2013; ed. Matthews, Benjamin & Camp 1996 concerning Antiochus IV). Nabouchodonosor is unsuccessful and shamed by the treatment of his messengers. He will be shamed later on through the shaming of Holofernes by Judith. He himself shames Arphaxad in the 17th year of his reign with the capture and looting of Ecbatana (1:13-16): 'its honor he [Nabouchodonosor] turned to its shame' (1:14). The first passage also contrasts Nabouchodonosor with God through the phrase 'for they did not fear him (οὐκ ἐφοβήθησαν αὐτόν)', which echoes biblical phrases highlighting the fear of God (e.g. Pr 1:7; also Jdt 8:8, Schmitz & Engel 2014:83-84).

The conflict between Nabouchodonosor and the Israelites follows upon the command to destroy all sanctuaries and worship Nabouchodonosor alone in 3:8. This goes beyond the command as given to Holofernes by Nabouchodonosor in chapter 2:

The sanctuaries of the subjected nations are destroyed, which is as an encompassing measure unique in the ancient world (Schmitz and Engel 2014:129). Yet it matches, to a certain extent, the transformation of the Jerusalem temple cult as described in Daniel 11 and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Judith 3:8 also expresses the divine aspirations of Nabouchodonosor, which triggers associations with this king as depicted in Daniel 3 (Schmitz & Engel 2014:130), as well as with the presentation of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 1 and 2 Maccabees.8 The passage implies a monotheistic claim for Nabouchodonosor, which is without parallel for a king in ancient history9 and creates an antithesis between him and God.10 The clash between Nabouchodonosor and God is made explicit in Holofernes' speech to Achior in 6:

Holofernes's words are put into action in his campaign against the Israelites (Jdt 7:1-7, 16-18), for which he has an alliance with all other nations (7:1).11 This implies that the conflict between Nabouchodonosor and God is fought out on another level in which Holofernes and Judith are the main protagonists. As the story unfolds, Nabouchodonosor and God become or remain passive, and the focus is foremost on the interaction between Holofernes and Judith.

Judith's use of her beauty and her manipulation of the enemy with words (Van Henten 2015) are highlighted already in Judith's encounter with Holofernes' soldiers. When she runs into them, she explains her purpose to them as follows:

When Judith meets Holofernes, a give-and-take in words starts (10:23-12:15). Judith first makes her appearance and pays her respect to the commander. Her beauty has an immediate impact on all present:

Holofernes' strategy to seduce Judith is also based on the effect of appearance. He first tries to impress her with a prestigious meal (12:1-5). He orders to bring her to the place where his dinnerware is kept (12:1). The references to silver dinnerware (see also 10:21), spread out food and Holofernes' own wine (12:1) indicate that he intends to seduce Judith by inviting her to participate in his luxurious lifestyle, which implies prestige and magnanimity for him (Van den Eijnde 2018; Vössing 2004).

Holofernes' second step concerns setting up the drinking bout that leads to his death (12:10-13:10). Judith is the only invited guest, and obviously she dresses up and beautifies herself for this event (12:15). Appearance is key once again. This time the narrator's description focuses on the setting at the beginning of the banquet. He highlights Judith's position in the tent, right in front of Holofernes (12:15), on the lambskins that Bagoas had given her. The lambskins suggest to Holofernes that Judith would behave according to his plan (Gera 2013:385). The servant's act of putting the skins in Holofernes' tent foregrounds Judith's entrance, told in the next verse. She makes a stunning appearance, as Holofernes' reaction to her entrance shows. At this moment the narrator reveals Holofernes' intentions:

From Holofernes' point of view, everything is seeming to happen as planned. Any signal given by Judith indicates that she will behave as he wished she would. This is also implied by the subsequent exchange of words, which focuses euphemistically on eating and drinking (12:17-20).

Holofernes becomes the victim of his own strategy to seduce Judith, drinking himself into a stupor. The description of Holofernes stretched out on his bed and being dead drunk (13:2; cf. 13:15) is comical: Holofernes is where he wanted to be, but incapable of executing his plan. His bed is foregrounded in the description (13:2, 4, 6, 7) and signals that the male protagonist is over and done with (cf. 8:3 and 9:3). Judith's prayer already highlighted that the bed is also the location of justified punishment for foreign males who dare to rape Israelite women (9:3). The return of Judith and her maid to Bethulia leads once again to the shaming of Holofernes (13:11-20). The story highlights for the last time the importance of Judith's appearance, this time without mentioning her words as the second tool of seduction (similarly 16:6-9 in the song of praise for Judith). After her return, Judith displays the head of Holofernes and ridicules him: 2b1af7f3a8