What to make of the story of Ester?

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rgprice
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What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by rgprice »

The Book of Ester is quite intriguing. The work is generally dated to the 5th century BCE, though I do not know how reliable this dating is.

The story is entirely secular, with no references to any aspect of Jewish religion.

Like Moses, Ester is a figure whose Jewish identity was initially unknown. She is selected to be the new queen by the Persian king Ahasuerus. Her Jewish identity is only later revealed.

The king's agent, Haman, is angered by Ester's uncle, Mordecai, who refused to bow down to him. He learns that Mordecai is a Jew, and thus devises a plot to exterminate all of the Jews. Haman notes of the Jews, “There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them."

In the face of this existential threat, the Jews are ultimately saved by the interventions of Esther. Ester reveals Jewish heritage to the king, who ends up executing Haman and issuing a decree allowing the Jews to kill anyone who was plotting against them. The Jews go on to kill hundreds of Persians with the king's blessing and and the festival of Purim is instituted to commemorate the occasion.

Obviously the story is quite absurd. But it interesting that God is never directly invoked. It is also interesting that the story shares many themes with the story of Moses. The story also states that the Jews follow their own laws and do not follow Persian law.

What to make of this story? Can this story really be dated to the 4h century BCE?
andrewcriddle
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by andrewcriddle »

The standard Hebrew version of Esther differs from the Greek versions and the Greek versions differ among themselves. See Esther Scroll by David Clines.

The standard Hebrew text is probably early 2nd century BCE and the standard Greek text even later. The book probably goes back to an earlier (4th century BCE ???) Esther story which had less emphasis on the wholesale killing of the enemies of the Jews and did not mention the feast of Purim.

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Within this range [400 - 100 BCE], there are two schools of thought. One assumes a date well into the Hellenistic period, assigning the text to the second century B.C.E. or the third century at the very earliest; the other school suggests a late Persian or very early Hellenistic date, between 400 and 300.
Johnson, Sara R. “Novelistic Elements in Esther: Persian or Hellenistic, Jewish or Greek?” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2005): 571–89. Quote from p. 578. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43725581
rgprice
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by rgprice »

If the story is Hellenistic, then why is it set in Persian times? Why does the story make no references to God? Why is the deliverer of the Jewish people a woman?

Let's assume its Hellenistic.

Why does God play no role in the salvation of the Jewish people?

Like Moses, we have a Jew who has secretly become a member of the royal court of a host nation who then uses their position to save the people. But in this case, the Jews do not flee, rather they remain and and prestige.
andrewcriddle
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by andrewcriddle »

rgprice wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:19 am If the story is Hellenistic, then why is it set in Persian times? Why does the story make no references to God? Why is the deliverer of the Jewish people a woman?

Let's assume its Hellenistic.

Why does God play no role in the salvation of the Jewish people?

Like Moses, we have a Jew who has secretly become a member of the royal court of a host nation who then uses their position to save the people. But in this case, the Jews do not flee, rather they remain and and prestige.
I suggested that the present form of the text is Hellenistic. The hypothetical original was probably Persian.

Note that the standard Greek deals with the absence of God by adding various prayers.

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:19 am If the story is Hellenistic, then why is it set in Persian times?
Just to respond to this part of your query, can you elaborate on what you see as the actual issue here?

On the face of it, without further explanation, my first thought is that stories set in a "once upon a time" are always captivating. If Lord of the Rings were written in the twentieth century, why set it in a fanciful world of another time and place?

Everyone loves a bit of historical fiction. Persia was an exotic kingdom of the past: Greek novels in Roman times still set their stories in Persian imperial times with Persian kings.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Here is a snippet you might find of interest:
The plot glories in revelry and bawdiness (and this may be the primary reason for the absence of God’s name). The frivolity of the book’s style—with its hyperbole, mockery, and comic misunderstandings and reversals undercuts the gravity of its theme. Yet, for the Purim festival this setting, plot, and style are natural and fitting, part and parcel of the celebration of Purim. The tone of the book fits its purpose: a comic story for a camivalesque holiday.
Berlin, Adele. Esther = [Ester]: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001. p. xvi
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Another interesting snippet on the Book of Esther that challenges the notion of a clear cut-off point culturally between Persian and Hellenistic eras:
One must remember that a dichotomy between a Persian and a Greek origin for the material establishes a false duality. In towns like Susa, in which the influence of Hellenism is clearly evident, the Persian culture and imagination continued even after the advent of Hellenistic rule, and so Susa is practically an ideal place for a Persian-Greek cultural symbiosis. In addition, in the Persian region one must reckon with a high degree of conservatism as regards how they handled their own traditions about Persian royal ideology. Thus, it also is conceivable that there was an educated author who had knowledge both of the authoritative Jewish traditions of his time and also of the Persian milieu and of Greek culture. The problem of a possible differentiation in the Persian ideology of kingship between Israel’s particular law and the general law of the Empire in no way lost its relevance after the onset of Hellenistic rule; rather, Alexander's campaign exerted entirely new pressures on it, since now the balance between actual history and Israel’s theological self-understanding had to be formulated anew.
Ego, Beate. “At the Crossroads of Persian and Hellenistic Ideology: The Book of Esther as ‘Political Theology.’” In Leadership, Social Memory, and Judean Discourse in the Fifth-Second Centuries BCE, edited by Diana Vikander Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2016. pp 159f
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Sinouhe
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Re: What to make of the story of Ester?

Post by Sinouhe »

Esther is a fictional character and her story is a "midrash" of the story of Joseph in Genesis.
The author of Esther imitates some of Joseph's passages in the book of Genesis.
This was a common practice at the time to create new narratives, as Nathanael Vette has shown in his book "Writing with scripture".
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