Hanukkah - Story Similar to Laban

Happy first night of Hanukkah for all those who celebrate or for those wanting to learn something new. A popular Hanukkah story in the Apocrypha was the story of Judith, a Jewish woman who goes into an enemy camp to meet their leader. She uses her charm to seduce the Assyrian General named Holophernes. After drinking too much wine he passed out, and Judith used a sword to cut off his head and save Israel from oppression.

The Smith family and others would have been familiar with the stories of the Apocrypha. “The Bible that Joseph Smith worked from while engaged in his new translation of the Bible included the Apocrypha. ...shortly before Smith began his translation of the Book of Mormon, a widely publicized debate took place within the British and Foreign Bible Society over the inclusion of the apocryphal books within the Bibles it distributed. Despite the general movement of American Protestants away from the Apocrypha in the early nineteenth century, Mormons did not seem to view the Apocrypha with the same disdain….The American Bible Society decided to remove the “lost books” in 1828." (Producing Ancient Scripture, 2020)