The Old English poem preserved in the same manuscript as Beowulf is Judith. It appears immediately after Beowulf in the manuscript now known as the Nowell Codex.
Judith retells the biblical story of Judith of Bethulia, who saves her people by beheading the Assyrian military commander Holofernes. The surviving poem is incomplete: its opening section is missing, and the text begins in the middle of the narrative. What remains presents Judith as a courageous, wise, and devout heroine whose actions protect her community.
The manuscript dates broadly to about 975–1025 and contains texts copied by two scribes. The second scribe, who completed the latter part of Beowulf, also copied Judith. Damage from the 1731 Cotton Library fire further obscured parts of the poem. Readers sometimes mistake Judith for another famous Old English poem such as The Wanderer or The Dream of the Rood, but those works survive in different manuscripts. Judith is the distinctive companion poem physically bound with Beowulf.