Last modified on August 8, 2024, at 15:00

Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is an historical account of the Medo-Persian era of Jewry in the Bible, written in Hebrew, containing 10 chapters and 167 verses.

It is one of the Five Megillot which is part of Ketuvim'.[1]

Also known as The Megillah,[2] the Book of Esther describes the story of the rescue of the Jews who lived under the Persian rule of Ahasuerus, a story that later became known as the "Miracle of Purim". It describes how the resourcefulness and wisdom of "Mordechai the Jew" and Queen Esther were able to reverse the decree of Haman and lead to the salvation of the Jews. It is read aloud at the Jewish celebration of Purim.[3]

Greek orthodox / other version

An allegedly longer version is in the Septuagint (written in Greek instead of Biblical Hebrew or Aramaic), an Alexandrian copy of the Old Testament of the ancient Christian Church, and in the Vulgate, the Catholic Bible.[4] The longer version of the Book of Esther is accepted as inspired and canonical by the Orthodox Church in the Greek Orthodox Bible, and is found in the books of the Old Testament of the Vulgate and included in the canon of inspired scripture by the Third Council of Carthage (397). Since the Council of Trent the complete Book of Esther with all of its parts is dogmatically accepted as inspired and canonical by the Catholic Church in the Catholic Bible.[5][6]

Six chapters of Esther (10:4—16:24), consisting of a collection of portions of the text, which Jerome separated and moved out of sequence and out of context and placed at the end of the book of Esther in his Latin Vulgate translation, were first removed entirely from the Old Testament and placed in the Apocrypha by Martin Luther in the 16th century. This effectively removed from the canon of the Protestant Bible all of the prayers in the Book of Esther and every mention of God. The parts of Esther that were thus removed from the Bible are regarded as apocryphal by less than one-third of Christian believers.[6]

Liberal feminists praise the disobedient Vashti and marginalize the Book of Esther's theme of feminine graciousness and humility.

Content, authorship and date

The Hebrew Book of Esther is more purely historical than any other book of Scripture, except the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees which were removed from the Protestant Bible; and in the shorter Hebrew version is unusual in never mentioning God, and it has this remarkable peculiarity that the name of God does not occur in it from first to last in any form.;[7] instead, the book conveys insights on topics of "knowledge, wisdom, holiness, and love."[8] It has, however, been well observed that, though the name of God be not in it, the original Hebrew version wonderfully exhibits the providential government of God, and the certain judgment that comes upon those who plot to destroy his people.[7]

The book says [9] that Mordecai (who was also of the Great Assembly) and Esther wrote it. Also, one of the last verses[10] that say that Ahasuerus "laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea." seem clearly unrelated to the Megillah, and prove that they were written as a flattery to the Persian government and were written before its fall. It was written in the year after the miracle, year.[11]

Speculation

Written in the third or second century B.C., the authorship of the Book of Esther is unknown.[7] It was evidently written after the death of Ahasuerus (the Xerxes of the Greeks), which took place 465 B.C.[7] The minute and particular account also given of many historical details makes it probable that the writer was contemporary with Mordecai and Esther.[7] Hence we may conclude that the book was written probably about 444-434 B.C., and that the author was one of the Jews of the dispersion.[7] The prayers of Mordecai and Esther which the Hebrew writer omitted were included by the rabbinical Greek translators of the Septuagint, which was the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews of the Dispersion and the original scriptures read by the apostles.

The last verse at the end of the longer Greek version of the Book of Esther (11:1) strongly indicates that the whole of the book in Greek ("this epistle of Phurim") as it appears in the Septuagint was a translation [interpreted] by "Lysimachus the son of Ptolemeus" of the whole of a larger Hebrew text original, a text in content more extensive and inclusive than the version adopted by the Jews for their Hebrew canon.
"In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemeus and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and Ptolemeus his son, brought this epistle of Phurim, which they said was the same, and that Lysimachus the son of Ptolemeus, that was in Jerusalem, had interpreted it." Greek Esther 11:1.

Antitypical relevance at the Christian church

The Book of Esther is not quoted in any book of the New Testament. However, some theologians have explored a type/antitype connection between Esther and the Christian church, pointing to the analogy of the church symbolically represented by a beautiful chaste woman mentioned in Ephesians 5 and the Book of Revelation.

Chapter summaries

(italicized section indicates deuterocanonical/apocrpha found in Septuagint/Douay–Rheims)
  1. King Assuerus maketh a great feast. Queen Vasthi being sent for refuseth to come: for which disobedience she is deposed.
  2. Esther is advanced to be queen. Mordecai detecteth a plot against the king.
  3. Aman, advanced by the king, is offended at Mordecai, and therefore procureth the king's decree to destroy the whole nation of the Jews.
  4. Mordecai desireth Esther to petition the king for the Jews. They join in fasting and prayer.
  5. Esther is graciously received: she inviteth the king and Aman to dinner. Aman prepareth a gibbet for Mordecai.
  6. The king hearing of the good service done him by Mordecai, commandeth Aman to honour him next to the king, which he performeth.
  7. Esther's petition for herself and her people: Aman is hanged upon the gibbet he had prepared for Mordecai.
  8. Mordecai is advanced: Aman's letters are reversed.
  9. The Jews kill their enemies that would have killed them. The days of Phurim are appointed to be kept holy.
  10. Assuerus's greatness. Mordecai's dignity.[12]
  11. The dream of Mordecai, which in the ancient Greek and Latin Bibles was in the beginning of the book, but was detached by St. Jerome and put in this place.[13]
  12. Mordecai detects the conspiracy of the two eunuchs.
  13. A copy of the letter sent by Aman to destroy the Jews. Mordecai's prayer for the people.
  14. The prayer of Esther for herself and her people.
  15. Esther comes into the king's presence: she is terrified, but God turns his heart.
  16. A copy of the king's letter in favour of the Jews.

See also

Miscellaneous

The Nazis tried to turn Haman into an Aryan fighting for "the race."[14]

References

  1. ↑ The Ketuvim (Writtings) part of the Bible includes eleven books, and they are: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles (I Chronicles, II Chronicles).
  2. ↑ The Megillah (Book of Esther)
  3. ↑ Judaism 101 Purim פּורים
  4. ↑ Old Testament Statistics - New American Bible, compiled by Felix Just, S.J., Ph.D.
  5. ↑ The Catholic Church is the world's largest Christian body comprised of several distinct "Rites". The Catholic Church (Latin Rite) is the largest religious body in the United States, with over 60 million adherents (4 times as large as the second largest church, the Orthodox).
    “The Global Catholic Population,” © 2011, Pew Research Center.
    The Largest Catholic Communities
    The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also referred to as the Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy, is the second largest Christian church in the world, with an estimated 225–300 million adherents, most of whom live in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Russia.
    The Greek (Eastern) Orthodox Church. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Of America (1983). Retrieved on 7 May 2014.
    Christianity:Basics:Eastern Orthodox Church Denomination. about.com. Retrieved on 22 May 2014.
    Christianity. Major Branches of Religions Ranked by Number of Adherents. adherents.com. Retrieved on 22 May 2014.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 See Percentage of Christians in Protestant Denominations (29.5%).
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Easton's Bible Dictionary, article on Esther originally published in 1897.
  8. ↑ Trivia Library. Bible Numbers and Statistics
  9. ↑ Esther, 9:29
  10. ↑ Esther, 10:1
  11. ↑ Seder Olam, 29, year 3404 (in the Jewish calendar).
  12. ↑ Douay-Rheims Bible Esther Chapter 10:4-13 includes Mordecai's remembrance of his dream at the beginning
  13. ↑ Douay-Rheims Bible Esther Chapter 11:1 is the last verse of the Book of Esther in the Greek, to which is sometimes appended, "Here endeth the book."
  14. ↑
    the war of the Aryan peoples against Jewish ... has been going on for thousands of years...And for evidence: Haman's fate. Hamman was the prime minister of the Persian nation, which is (so called) an Aryan nation. He understood the Jewish (sic) "danger" and decided to solve the (sic) "problem" of the Jews..."

    Nazis, Himmler twisted interpretation of book of Esther, allied with Haman to exterminate all Jews

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