Book of Esther
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The Book of Esther is a book of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and of the Old Testament. Jewish; The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim. Its full text is read aloud twice during the celebration.
[edit] Setting
The Biblical Book of Esther is set in the third year of Ahasuerus, a king of Persia usually identified with Xerxes I, although other identifications have been suggested. It tells a tale of palace intrigue, attempted genocide and a brave Jewish queen.
[edit] Plot summary
In the story, Ahasuerus is married to Vashti, whom he puts aside after she rejects his offer to visit him during a feast. Mordecai's cousin Hadassah is selected from the candidates to be Ahasuerus's new wife and assumes the "throne name" of Esther. His prime minister Haman (an Agagite) and Haman's wife Zeresh plot to have Ahasuerus kill all the Jews, without knowing that Esther is Jewish. Esther saves the day for her people: at the risk of endangering her own safety, she warns Ahasuerus of Haman's plot to kill all the Jews. Haman and his sons are hanged on the fifty cubit stake he had had built for Mordecai, and Mordecai becomes prime minister in Haman's place. However, Ahasuerus's edict decreeing the murder of the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he issues another edict allowing the Jews to take up arms and kill their enemies, which they do.
[edit] Authorship and date
Esther is usually dated to the 3rd or 4th century B.C.E. Jewish tradition regards it as a redaction by the Great Assembly of an original text written by Mordecai. The Greek additions to Esther are dated to the 2nd century B.C.E. [citation needed]
[edit] Debate over historicity
The historical accuracy of the Book of Esther is disputed.
As early as the eighteenth century, the lack of clear corroboration of any of the details of the story of the Book of Esther with what was known of Persian history from classical sources led some scholars to doubt that the book was historically accurate. It was argued that the form of the story seems closer to that of a romance than a work of history, and that many of the events depicted therein are implausible and unlikely.
From the late nineteenth century onwards, several scholars explored the theory that the Book of Esther actually was a myth related to the spring festival of Purim which may have had a mixed West-Semitic/Akkadian/Canaanite origin. According to this interpretation the tale the triumph of the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar over the deities of Elam or more likely the renewal of life in the spring and the casting out of the scapegoat of the old year. Although this view is not widely held by the religious scholars today, it remains well known. It is explored in depth in the works of Theodore Gaster.
Traditionalists have fought back, arguing that Esther can be seen to derive from real history. For example, historians often give strong credence to the narrative based upon the traditions of a people. Thus, because the feast of Purim (which is a retelling of the book of Esther) is integral to Jewish history, there is strong reason to believe this story is indeed based upon a true, though obscure, historical event.
Also, based on the derivation of "Ahasuerus" from "Xerxes", identification of Ahasuerus with Xerxes I is common and parallels between Herodotus account of Xerxes and the events in Esther have been noted. Others have argued for different identifications, particularly noting traditions referring to Ahasuerus as "Artaxerxes" in Greek. In 1923, Dr. Jacob Hoschander wrote The Book of Esther in the Light of History, in which he posited that the events of the book occurred during the reign of Artaxerxes II Mnemon, in the context of a struggle between adherents of the still more-or-less monotheistic Zoroastrianism and those who wanted to bring back the Magian worship of Mithra and Anahita.
For the last hundred and fifty years, critical scholars have seen the Book of Esther as a work of fiction, while traditionalists argue in favour the story being historical.
Some Christian readers have also tried to see the story as a Christian allegory, in the same vein as the Song of Solomon. The various major readings are considered separately in the sections that follow:
[edit] Interpretation of Esther as a derivative of Babylonian Mythology
The History of Religions school of thought, popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, argued against the historicity of the Bible by drawing comparisons between Biblical narratives and pagan myths.
The fact that the events of the Book of Esther give rise to the spring festival of Purim was a reason for scholars arguing that the story emerged from seasonal myth. As the 19th/early 20th century scholars did not have the benefit of the Ugaritic texts, they sought an origin in Akkadian tradition rather than the more local West Semitic cultures. In particular, these scholars drew comparisons between individuals in the Book of Esther and various real and alleged Babylonian and Elamite gods and goddesses:
- Esther was equated with the similarly sounding Ishtar. Her original Hebrew name Hadassah was compared with Akkadian hadashatu said to be a title of Ishtar meaning "bride".
- The custom of preparing hamantaschen at Purim is reminiscent of a description of Ishtar in Jeremiah 7:18, when it was customary "to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven."
- Mordecai was equated with Marduk. Marduk is a cousin of Ishtar in Chaldean mythology, as was Mordecai a cousin of Esther.However, Talmudic sources clearly state that Mordcai was Esther's uncle.
- Vashti was said to be an Elamite goddess named Mashti.
- Haman was said to be an Elamite god named Uman or Human (or other variations) or alternatively a Babylonian demon.
- The festival of Purim was equated with various real and conjectural pagan festivals, including an alleged Elamite or Babylonian festival marking the victory of Ishtar and Marduk over Uman and Mashti similar to the triumph of Esther and Mordecai over their rivals Haman and Vashti. Other suggestions were: the Babylonian New Year festival (Sumerian Zagmuk, Akkadian Akitu, called Sacaea by Berosus) honouring Marduk -it was suggested that purim ("lots") originally referred to a belief that the gods chose one's fate for the year by lots; the Persian festival of Farvardigan; or the Greek festival of Pithoigia ("wine flask opening") - it was noted that Hebrew for wine press is purah resembling purim.
These arguments were subsequently shown to be flawed:
- Ishtar was well known to the Jews who officially opposed her worship. Her name in Hebrew scriptures is Ashtoreth which is phonetically unrelated to Esther despite the superfical similarity when transliterated into English (consonantal root אשתר vs עסתר). Although the vowelization of the Hebrew name is thought to be a deliberate mispronunciation reflecting the vowels of the word bosheth denoting a shameful thing, the consonants accurately reflect the original name. "Esther" is most commonly understood to be related to the Persian word for star and the Median word for myrtle. (See Esther for a discussion of the meaning of the name.)
- Akkadian hadashatu was not a standard title of Ishtar, it occurs once in a description of Ishtar as a "new bride" and its meaning is "new" not "bride". It is a cognate of Hebrew hadash (with a guttural h) and is phonetically unrelated to "Hadassah" (consonantal root חדש vs הדס). Moreover hamantaschen originated amongst Jews of Eastern Europe in relatively recent times.
- The name Mordecai is indeed most commonly connected with that of the god Marduk but its meaning is understood to be "[servant] of Marduk". It is considered equivalent to Marduka or Marduku, well attested in the Persepolis texts as a genuine name of the period. Jewish tradition relates that it was a replacement of his Hebrew name Bilshan. (Similar accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods is seen in the Book of Daniel.) Babylonian gods and goddesses are indeed organized into familes making many including Marduk and Ishtar some form of cousins but this is never a point explicitly stated in Babylonian texts.
- An Elamite goddess named Mashti is purely conjectural and unattested in sources, whereas "Vashti" can be understood as a genuine Persian name meaning "beautiful".
- Elamite theophoric elements such as Khuban, Khumban or Khumma are known but are pronounced with an initial guttural consonant and not as Uman or Human, and are phonetically unrelated to the Persian name Haman meaning "magnificent". The Babylonian demon is named Humbaba or Huwawa also pronounced with an initial guttural consonant kh and unrelated to Haman.
- An Elamite or Babylonian festival marking a victory of Ishtar and Marduk over alleged Uman and Mashti is purely conjectural and unattested in sources. The Babylonian New Year occurs at a very different date to Purim (in the month of Nisan not Adar). A decision of fate by lots by the gods is not attested in any sources. Farvardigan was a five day commeration of the dead bearing no resemblance to Purim. Pithoigia also occurs at a different time to Purim and although Purim is celebrated with wine drinking this is not its focus; moreover the plural of the Hebrew for wine press is puroth not purim.
[edit] Historical reading
Those arguing in favour of an historical reading of Esther, most commonly identify Ahasuerus with Xerxes I (ruled 486 - 465 B.C.E.) or occasionally with Artaxerxes II (ruled 405 - 359 B.C.E.).
The Hebrew Ahasuerus is mostly likely derived from Persian Khshayarsha, the origin of the Greek Xerxes. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Xerxes sought his harem after being defeated in the Greco-Persian Wars. He makes no reference to individual members of the harem with the exception of a domineering Queen consort Amestris, a daughter of one of his generals, Otanes. (Ctesias however refers to a father-in-law and general of Xerxes named Onaphas). Amestris has often been identified with Vashti by those arguing the historical reading. The identification is problematic however - Amestris remained a powerful figure well into the reign of her son, Artaxerxes I while Vashti is portrayed as dismissed in the early part of Xerxes's reign. (Alternative attempts have been made to identify her with Esther, although Esther's father is a Jew named Abihail and she is portrayed as merely one of numerous concubines in Ahasuerus' harem.) The name Marduka or Marduku (considered equivalent to Mordecai) has been found as the name of officials in the Persian court in thirty texts from the period of Xerxes I and his father Darius, and may refer to up to four individuals with the possibility that one of these is the Biblical Mordecai.
The Septuagint version of Esther however translates the name Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes - a Greek name derived from the Persian: Artakhshatra. Josephus too relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks and the Midrashic text, Esther Rabba also makes the identification. Bar-Hebraeus identified Ahasuerus explicitly as Artaxerxes II. (This is not to say that the names are equivalent: Hebrew has a form of the name Artaxerxes distinct from Ahasuerus and a direct Greek rendering of Ahasuerus is used by Josephus as well as in Septuagint occurrences of the name outside the Book of Esther.) Identification as Artaxerxes II has been more popular than with Artaxerxes I (ruled 465 - 424 B.C.E.) however the latter had a Babylonian concubine, Kosmartydene, who was the mother of his son Darius II (ruled 424 - 405 B.C.E.). Jewish tradition relates that Esther was the mother of a King Darius and so some try to identify Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I and Esther with Kosmartydene.
Based on the view that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit is identical with that of the Book of Esther, some have also identified him as Nebuchadnezzar's ally Cyaxares (ruled 625 - 585 B.C.E.). In certain manuscripts of Tobit the former is called Achiachar which like the Greek: Cyaxares is thought to be derived from Persian: Akhuwakhshatra. Depending on the interpretation of Esther 2:5-6, Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish was carried away from Jerusalem with Jeconiah by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 B.C.E. The view that it was Mordecai would be consistent with the identification of Ahasuerus with Cyaxares. Identifications with other Persian monarchs have also been suggested.
Jacob Hoschander (The Book of Esther in the Light of History, Oxford University Press, 1923) has argued that evidence of the historicity of Haman and his father Hamedatha is seen in Omanus and Anadatus mentioned by Strabo as being honoured with Anahita in the city of Zela. Hoschander argues that these were not deities as Strabo supposed but garbled forms of "Haman" and "Hamedatha" who were being worshipped as martyrs. The names are indeed unattested in Persian texts as gods. (An alternative explanation attempts to connect Omanus with the Zoroastrian term Vohu Mana, however this denotes the principle of "Good Thoughts" and is not the name of a deity.)
[edit] Narrative reading
Many modern scholars consider the Book of Esther a work of fiction. The name Ahasuerus is seen to be based on Xerxes but the exploits of a real Persian king do not enter into the Book of Esther, which is a fictional tale of palace intrigue, attempted genocide and a brave Jewish queen. Some have read the story as a parable of quintessentially assimilated Jews who discover that they are targets of anti-Semitism, but are also in a position to save themselves and their fellow Jews. In support of the idea that the story is a fiction, scholars have pointed to the many improbabilities of the story (that Esther is taken from the house of the Jew Mordecai, but is not known to be a Jew; that the edicts of the Medes and Persians cannot be rescinded; that Ahasuerus would agree to kill an entire people without being told their name; that Ahasuerus would give the Jews leave to murder thousands of their enemies) as suggesting that it is a fictional story. They also note that none of the events depicted in Esther are attested from any other source. There is some disagreement about the degree of familiarity the author of Esther shows with its setting in the Persian court - some scholars have used this as evidence for the book's fictionality, while others have suggested that these background aspects are among the more historically accurate parts of the book.
Other scholars consider claims that the Book of Esther is a work of fiction to be a result of an anti-semitic bias, similar to claims that the holocaust never happened, since it is essentially the same story - a politically powerful man wants to destroy all Jews. Where this theory falls down is the fact that many of the scholars who have explored the earliest roots of the Book of Esther such as Raphael Patai and Theodor Gaster were themselves Orthodox Jews.
[edit] Allegorical Reading
Some Christian readers consider this story to contain an allegory, representing the interaction between the church as 'bride' and God. This reading is related to the allegorical reading of the Song of Solomon and to the theme of the Bride of God, which in Jewish tradition manifests as the Shekinah.
[edit] Relation To Other Books In the Bible
Esther is (in the Hebrew version) one of only two books of the Bible that do not directly mention God (the other is Song of Songs). It is the only book of the Tanakh that is not represented among the Dead Sea scrolls. It has often been compared to the first half of the Book of Daniel and to the deuterocanonical Books of Tobit and Judith for its subject matter.
[edit] Additions to Esther
An additional six chapters appear interspersed in Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek translation, which then was noted by Jerome in compiling the Latin Vulgate; additionally, the Greek text contains many small changes in the meaning of the main text. The extra chapters include several prayers to God, perhaps because it was felt that the above-mentioned lack of mention of God was inappropriate in a holy book. Jerome recognized them as additions not present in the Hebrew Masoretic Text and placed them at the end of his Latin translation as chapters 10:4-16:24. However, some modern Catholic English Bibles restore the Septuagint order, such as Esther in the NAB.
By the time Esther was written, the foreign power visible on the horizon as a future threat to Judah was the Macedonians of Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian empire about 150 years after the time of the story of Esther; the Septuagint version noticeably calls Haman a Macedonian where the Hebrew text describes him as an Agagite.
The canonicity of these Greek additions has been a subject of scholarly disagreement practically since their first appearance in the Septuagint –- Martin Luther, being perhaps the most vocal Reformation era critic of the work, considered even the original Hebrew version to be of very doubtful value. Luther's complaints against the book carried past the point of scholarly critique, and led in part to the complaint of anti-Semitism frequently made against him.
The Council of Trent, the summation of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation, declared the entire book, both Hebrew text and Greek additions, to be canonical. While modern Roman Catholic scholars openly recognize the Greek additions as clearly being additions to the text, the Book of Esther is used twice in commonly used sections of the Catholic Lectionary. In both cases, the text used is not only taken from a Greek addition, the readings also are the prayer of Mordecai, and nothing of Esther's own words is ever used. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint version of Esther, as it does for all of the Old Testament.
Some scholars suggest that Additions to Esther is the work of an Egyptian Jew, writing around 170 BCE, who sought to give the book a more religious tone, and to suggest that the Jews were saved from destruction because of their piety.
[edit] Reinterpretations of the story
The 2006 film One Night with the King is based on the Biblical story of Esther.
The classic Hollywood film version of the story is the 1960 Esther and the King starring Joan Collins and Richard Egan and directed by Raoul Walsh.
There are several paintings depicting Esther, including one by Millais.
VeggieTales also made an animated version entitled Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen.
[edit] External links
[edit] Text and translations
- Jewish translations:
- Esther (Judaica Press) translation with Rashi's commentary at Chabad.org
- Mechon Mamre Full text, Aleppo Codex: text of Esther in Hebrew
- Christian translations:
- Online Bible at GospelHall.org
- The Book of Esther Full text, KJV, (also available at Arabic)
- Esther in the NAB
- Esther NRSV translation with photos of Susa
[edit] Introduction and analysis
[edit] Early 20th century views
- The 1910 Jewish Encyclopedia: Early 20th century critical perspective as well a discussion of traditional Jewish views of Esther.
- The 1911 Encylopedia Britannica: Early 20th century critical perspective.
- The 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia: Counter arguments to early 20th century criticism.
[edit] Modern scholarship
- Recommended texts on Esther
- Introduction to the Old Testament: Esther
- Extract from The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by Adele Berlin: Liberal Jewish view.
- The Historicity of Megillat Esther: Gil Student's survey of scholarship supporting an historical reading of Esther
- Esther, Book of: A Christian perspective of the book.
- Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East by Theodor Gaster. 1961.
- Patai, Raphael. (1990) The Hebrew Goddess. 3rd enl. / edition. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press.
