The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith, meaning "praised" or "Jewess", is the feminine form of Judah.
Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Cristofano Allori, 1613 (Royal Collection, London)
Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Simon Vouet, (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes
Judith and Holophernes, by Michelangelo, (Sistine Chapel, Vatican City)
The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, but which modern Jews and Protestants regard as apocrypha.
Copies of the Luther Bible include the deuterocanonical books as an intertestamental section between the Old Testament and New Testament; they are termed the "Apocrypha" in Christian Churches having their origins in the Reformation.