The
Book of Esther is one of the books of the
Ketuvim ("Writings") of the
Tanakh (the
Hebrew Bible) and of the Historical Books of
the
Old Testament. 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, in the evening and again the following morning.
Setting
The Biblical
Book of Esther is set in the third year of
Ahasuerus, a king of Persia. The name
Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes, both deriving from the Persian
Khashayarsha, thus Ahasuerus is usually identified as
Xerxes I (486-465 BCE), though
Ahasuerus is identified as
Artaxerxes in the later Greek version of Esther
(as well as by
Josephus, the Jewish
commentary
Esther Rabbah, the Ethiopic
translation and the Christian theologian
Bar-Hebraeus who identified him more precisely
as
Artaxerxes II ). The Book of Esther
tells a story of palace intrigue and
genocide thwarted by a Jewish queen of
Persia.
Plot summary
The book
commences with a feast organized by Ahasuerus, initially for his
court and dignitaries and afterwards for all inhabitants of
Shushan
. Ahasuerus orders his wife
Vashti to display her beauty before the guests. She
refuses. Ahasuerus removes her as queen. Ahasuerus then orders all
"beautiful young girls to be presented to him, so he can choose a
new queen to replace Vashti. One of these is Esther, who had no
parents and is being fostered by her cousin
Mordechai. She finds favor in the king's eyes, and
is made his new wife. Esther does not reveal that she is Jewish.
Shortly afterwards, Mordechai discovers a plot by courtiers Bigthan
and Teresh to assassinate Ahasuerus. They are apprehended and
executed, and Mordechai's service to the king is recorded.
Ahasuerus appoints
Haman as his prime
minister. Mordechai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into
Haman's disfavor as he refuses to bow down to him. Having found out
that Mordechai is Jewish, Haman plans to kill not just Mordechai
but all the Jews in the empire. He obtains Ahasuerus' permission to
execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of
silver, and he casts lots to choose the date on which to do this -
the thirteenth of the month of Adar. When Mordechai finds out about
the plans he orders fasting. Mordechai informs Esther what has
happened and tells her to intercede with the King. She is afraid to
break the law and go to the King uninvited. This entails the death
penalty. Mordechai tells her that she must. She requests that all
Jews fast and pray for three days together with her, and on the
third day she goes to Ahasuerus,who stretches out his sceptre to
her which shows that she is not to be punished. She invites him to
a feast in the company of Haman. During the feast, she asks them to
attend a further feast the next evening. Meanwhile, Haman is again
offended by Mordechai and builds a gallows for him. That night,
Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court's records are
read to him to help him sleep, he learns of the services rendered
by Mordechai in the previous plot against his life. Ahasuerus is
told that Mordechai has not received any recognition for saving the
king's life. Just then, Haman appears, and King Ahasuerus asks
Haman what should be done for the man that he wishes to honor.
Thinking that the man that the king wishes to honor is him, Haman
says that the man should be dressed in the king's royal robes and
led around on the king's royal horse, while a
herald calls: "See how the king honours a man he
wishes to reward!" To his horror, the king instructs Haman to do so
to Mordechai.
Later that evening, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther's second
banquet, at which she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is
planning to exterminate her people, including her. Overcome by
rage, Ahasuerus leaves the room; meanwhile Haman stays behind and
begs Esther for his life, falling upon her in desperation. The king
comes back in at this moment and thinks Haman is assaulting the
queen; this makes him angrier than before and he orders Haman
hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordechai. The
previous decree against the Jews cannot be annulled, but the king
allows the Jews to defend themselves during attacks. As a result,
on 13 Adar, five hundred attackers and Haman's ten sons are killed
in Shushan. Mordechai assumes a prominent position in Ahasuerus'
court, and institutes an annual commemoration of the delivery of
the Jewish people from annihilation.
Authorship and date

Scroll of Esther (Megillah)
Esther is usually dated to the third or fourth century
BCE. Jewish tradition regards it as a
redaction by the
Great
Assembly of an original text written by
Mordecai.
The Greek additions to Esther (which do not appear in the
Jewish/Hebrew; see "Additions to Esther" below) are dated to around
the late 2nd century or early 1st BCE.
Debate over historicity
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 celebrates the triumph of the Babylonian
deities Marduk and Ishtar (which seem phonetically similar to the names
of the heroes in this book - Esther for Ishtar and Marduk for
Mordechai) 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. This interpretation is explored
in depth in the works of
Theodor
Gaster.
Traditionalists like Joyce G Baldwin, a
principal of Trinity College, Bristol
argue that Esther can be seen to derive from real
history. For example, some historians occasionally give
strong credence to the narrative based upon the traditions of a
people. According to this reasoning 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.
A strong argument against the historicity of Esther is that the
text says that "Mordecai...had been carried away from Jerusalem
among the captives carried with King
Jeconiah of Judah..."(Esther 2:5-6).
Jeconiah ruled
Judah circa 598
BCE (he ruled for 3 months according to the
Book of 2 Kings), but
Xerxes I of Persia ruled from 486-465 BCE. So if
the story were indeed historical, Mordecai would have had to be
well over 100 years of age during the events related in the story.
Identifying
Ahasuerus with
Artaxerxes I or
Artaxerxes II would only make the historicity
of the story more improbable as both of these kings ruled after
Xerxes I.
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:
Esther and 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 a Babylonian 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
and parallels between individuals in the
Book of Esther
and various real and conjectured Babylonian and Elamite gods and
goddesses:
- The name Esther was thought to derive from the similarly
sounding Ishtar, the chief Babylonian
goddess. Her original Hebrew name Hadassah was compared
with Akkadian hadashatu said to be a title of Ishtar
meaning "bride".
- The custom of preparing homentashn 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."
- The name Mordechai was thought to derive from the Babylonian
god Marduk. Marduk is a cousin of Ishtar in
Chaldean mythology, as was Mordechai a cousin of Esther.
- The
name Vashti was thought to derive from an Elamite
goddess
named Mashti. The Persian word 'Vashti' is of uncertain
meaning, but may mean 'beautiful', so in this theory the author
would be using a play on words between the Elamite and
Persian.
- The name Haman was thought to derive from an Elamite demon
named Homayun or Humayun or an Elamite god named Uman or Human (or
other variations) or alternatively a Babylonian demon.
- The festival of Purim was thought to derive from various real
and conjectured Babylonian or Elamite 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 Mordechai over their rivals Haman and Vashti. Other
suggestions were that 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"), and it was noted that Hebrew for wine press is
purah resembling purim.
Some criticisms of the 'Babylonian Mythology' theory:
- 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 superficial similarity when transliterated into
English (consonantal root vs ). 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 (cognate with
English star) and the Median word for myrtle. (See Esther for a discussion of the meaning of the
name.)
- The 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 vs ).
- The Hamantaschen custom originated
amongst Jews of Eastern Europe in relatively recent times. In
Hebrew they are called "the ears of Haman."
- The name Mordechai is indeed most commonly connected with that
of the god Marduk. It is considered equivalent to Marduka
or Marduku, well attested in the Persepolis texts as a
genuine name of the period. The Talmud
relates that his full name was Mordecai Bilshan (Megillah 15a).
This has been understood as the Babylonian
Marduk-bel-shunu ("Marduk is their lord"). 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
families 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 or Haman, and are phonetically unrelated to the
Persian name Hamayun, Homayun or Humayun, meaning "magnificent".
The Babylonian demon is named Humbaba or Huwawa
which is also pronounced with an initial guttural consonant
kh and unrelated to Haman. The 19th century Bible critic
Jensen associated it with the Elamite god Humban, a view dismissed
by later scholars.
- 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 from 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 commemoration 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.
Nonetheless, there are some similarities between some Babylonian
myths and the story of Esther. As for
Haman,
several etymologies have been proposed for this name. It may be
related to the Persian name Omanes, recorded by Greek historians or
with the Persian name Vohuman meaning "good thoughts". It may be
derived from the Persian word
Hamayun meaning
"illustrious" or "magnificent", or from Homayun, or Humayun, or
from the sacred drink Haoma.
Historical reading
Those arguing in favour of an historical reading of Esther, most
commonly identify Ahasuerus with
Artaxerxes II (ruled 405 -
359 B.C.) although in the past it was often assumed
that he was
Xerxes I (ruled 486 -
465 B.C.).
The
Hebrew Ahasuerus is
most 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 in the
past. 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 is an orphan whose father was
a Jew named Abihail.) 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. Rather the Hebrew name Ahasuerus accords with an
inscription of the time that notes that Artaxerxes II was named
also
Arshu, understood as a shortening of
Achshiyarshu the Babylonian rendering of the Persian
Khshayarsha (Xerxes) through which the Hebrew
Achashverosh (Ahasuerus) is derived. .
Ctesias related that Artaxerxes II was also called
Arsicas which is understood as a similar shortening with
the Persian suffix
-ke that is applied to shortened names.
Deinon related that Artaxerxes II was also
called
Oarses which is also understood to be derived from
Khshayarsha.
Another view attempts to identify him instead with
Artaxerxes I (ruled 465 -
424 B.C.) - the latter had a Babylonian concubine,
Kosmartydene, who was the mother of his
son
Darius II (ruled 424 -
405 B.C.). 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.). 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.. 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 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. (Attempts have been made to connect both "Omanus"
and "Haman" with the Zoroastrian term
Vohu
Mana, however this denotes the principle of "Good Thoughts" and
is not the name of a deity.)
Whenever the book was written and whatever the historicity of the
events recounted in it, clearly by the time it was written the term
"Yehudim" (יהודים - Jews) already gained a meaning quite close to
what it means up to the present - i.e. an ethnic-religious group,
scattered in many countries, organised in autonomous communities
and the target of intense hatred by fanatic groups.
Allegorical reading
There are many classical Jewish readings of allegories into the
book of Esther, mostly from Hasidic sources. They say that the
literal meaning is true, however there is hidden behind this
historical account many allegories.
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.
Relation to the rest of the Bible
Esther 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.
The story is also the first time that the word Jew (יְהוּדִי) was
used. Before this, Jews were referred to as
Hebrews or
Israelites.
Moreover, whatever the historical validity of the specific events
depicted, the book clearly reflects a situation in which Jews were
an ethnic-religious minority - scattered in many countries,
organised in self-contained, self-governing communities and
subjected to intensive and sometimes violent hatred by some members
of the surrounding society. Clearly, whenever the book was actually
composed, a phenomenon which can already be identified as a kind of
antisemitism was in existence - whether
or not Haman is an actual historical character.
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 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 may reflect Luther's
antisemitism, which is disputed, such as in the biography of Luther
by Derek Wilson, which points out that Luther's anger at the Jews
was not at their race but at their theology.
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. The additions are specifically listed in the
Thirty-Nine Articles, Article
VI, of the
Church of England: "The
rest of the Book of Esther".
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.
Esther Rabbah includes all of
Additions to Esther save the
"letter texts". It is these "letter texts" that contain the
ahistorical assertions that Haman was a Greek.
Reinterpretations of the story
The 2006 film
One Night with
the King is loosely based on the Biblical story of
Esther.
The classic 1960 Hollywood film version of the story,
Esther and the King was directed by
Raoul Walsh starring
Joan Collins and
Richard Egan.
In 1992 a 30-minute, fully-animated video, twelfth in
Hanna-Barbera's bestselling
The Greatest
Adventure series, titled
Queen Esther features
the voices of
Helen Slater as Queen
Esther,
Dean Jones as King
Ahasuerus,
Werner Klemperer as
Haman, and
Ron Rifkin as Mordecai.
There are several paintings depicting Esther, including one by
Millais.
VeggieTales also made an
animated version entitled
Esther… The Girl Who
Became Queen.
References
- E A W Budge, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus,
Gorgias Press LLC, reprinted 2003
- Esther chapters 9-10
- Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Bathra 15a
- Freedman, David Noel; Allen C. Myers; Astrid B. Beck
Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing, 2000 ISBN:978-0802824004 p.428 [1]
- Jacob Hoschander, The Book of Esther in the Light of
History, Oxford University Press, 1923
- Article VI: OF THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE HOLY
SCRIPTURES FOR SALVATION
- Hanna-Barbera's Greatest Adventure Series Videos - Queen
Esther
- The Greatest Adventure Stories From The
Bible
External links
Text and translations
Introduction and analysis
Early 20th century views
Modern scholarship
- Introduction to the Old Testament: Esther
- Beal, Timothy K (Timothy Beal).
The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation, and
Esther. NY: Routledge, 1997. Postmodern theoretical apparatus,
e.g. Derrida, Levinas
- Extract from The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by
Adele Berlin: Liberal Jewish view.
- Michael Fox Character and
Ideology in the Book of Esther, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmanns, 2001. 333 pp., highly-regarded literary analysis
- Sasson, Jack M. “Esther” in Alter and Kermode, pp. 335-341,
literary 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. 1950.
- White, Sidnie Ann. “Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish
Diaspora” in Newsom
Commentaries and other books
- Clines, David J.A. The Esther Scroll. Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 30. Sheffield,
England: Sheffield, 1984.
- Fischer, James A. Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations,
Ecclesiastes, Esther. Collegeville Bible Commentary.
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986.
- Fox, Michael V. Character and Ideology in the Book of
Esther. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001.
- Levenson, Jon D. Esther. Old Testament Library Series.
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997.
- McConville, John C.L. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
Daily Study Bible Series. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985.
- Moore, Carey A. Esther. Anchor Bible, vol. 7B. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
- Paton, Lewis B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of Esther. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh,
Scotland: T&T Clark, 1908.