Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Esther is the only book of the Hebrew Old Testament never to allude to God, and to refer to neither the Covenant, the sacred institutions of Israel, nor to Jewish religious practice. The book has long engendered a fascinated revulsion in many of its readers, not only for its notable lack (or writing-out?) of God, but also for its overt celebration of genocide and the dubious moral qualities of its protagonists. Luther famously wanted the book excised from the Christian canon altogether, and the nineteenth-century biblical scholar Heinrich Ewald declared that the story of Esther ‘knows nothing of high and pure truths’, and that on coming to it from the rest of the Old Testament ‘we fall, as it were, from heaven to earth’. Humphreys terms Esther one of the ‘most exclusive and nationalistic units within the Bible’, and for Anderson, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, the tale resonates horribly with twentieth-century history and ‘unveils the dark passions of the human heart: envy, hatred, fear, anger, vindictiveness, pride, all of which are fused into an intense nationalism’.
Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish, on the other hand, placed the Book of Esther on a par even with the Torah, a sentiment echoed, centuries later, by Maimonides, who famously declared that when the Prophets and Hagiographa pass away, only Esther and the Law would remain. And this triumphant assertion of the scroll's worth is reminiscent of the attitude of Josephus, who specifically includes Esther in his list of the twenty-two Jewish records, and who devotes the extensive central section of AJ 11 to the Esther pericope. The dating, both relative and absolute, of the texts of Esther has been fiercely disputed, and need not concern us here; it should suffice to note that two extant Greek translations, or rather adaptations, of the Book of Esther—the Septuagint (LXX) and the highly variant Alpha Text (AT)—offer countless minor variations on the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), and insert six extended passages into the narrative.
Translations of the LXX Esther are taken from that of Jobes, K.H. in A New English Translation of the Septuagint, by the International Organisation for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (Oxford 2007), 424–40Google Scholar. Translations of AJ 10 and 11 are adapted from Marcus, R. (tr.), Jewish Antiquities, Books IX-XI (Cambridge MA 1937Google Scholar); translations of AJ 4, Vita and Contra Apionem are those of Feldman, L.H., Mason, S. and Barclay, J.M.G. in Mason, S. (ed.), Flavius Josephus. Translation and Commentary, vols. 3, 9 and 10 respectively (Leiden 2000, 2001 and 2007).Google Scholar
1. E.g. Anderson, B.W., ‘The Place of the Book of Esther in the Christian Bible’, JR 30 (1950), 32–43, at 40f.Google Scholar; ‘Esther is a peculiarly offensive example of many passages in Scripture where the saints show themselves to be sinners’; Pfeiffer, R.H., Introduction to the Old Testament (London 1952), 747Google Scholar: ‘[Flrom the moral point of view the book [of Esther] has little to commend it to civilized persons enjoying the benefits of peace and freedom, whatever their race.’
2. Luther, M., Table-Talk, tr. W. Hazlitt (Fearn 2003), 102Google Scholar: ‘I am so great an enemy to the second book of the Maccabees, and to Esther, that I wish they had not come to us at all, for they have too many heathen unnaturalities.’ Cf. his vitriolic essay ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’, in F. Sherman (ed.), Luther’s Works Vol. 47, tr. M.H. Bertram (Philadelphia 1971), 121–306Google Scholar, at 156f: ‘Their [sc. the Jews’] heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther. Oh, how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.’
3. Ewald, G.H.A., The History of Israel to the Death of Moses (London 1867), 197.Google Scholar
4. Humphreys, W.L., ‘A Life-Style for Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel’, JBL 92 (1973), 211–23Google Scholar, at 211; Anderson (n.l above), 39, whose reading of Esther is, however, essentially optimistic. See e.g. ibid., 40: ‘The Book of Esther testifies to the indestructibility of Israel. Again and again a Haman has arisen to strike terror upon the Jewish community, but still a remnant has survived.’ Bush, F.W., ‘The Book of Esther: Opus non gratum in the Christian Canon’, Bulletin for Biblical Research 8 (1998), 39–54Google Scholar, similarly speaks of Hitler and the Nazis as ‘Hainan’s spiritual descendents’ (53).
5. Ap. 1.40: ‘From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, king of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets after Moses wrote the history of what took place in their own times in thirteen books.’ The Book of Esther is here indicated through the mention of Artaxerxes. Cf. Shutt, R.J.H., Studies in Josephus (London 1961), 55–58.Google Scholar
6. On the possible relations between these texts, see esp. the redaction-critical studies of Clines, D.J.A., The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story (Sheffield 1984Google Scholar), and Fox, M.V., The Redaction of the Books of Esther: On Reading Composite Texts (Atlanta 1991).Google Scholar
7. A king equated by Josephus and the LXX with Artaxerxes, although more commonly identified on historical and linguistic grounds with Xerxes. In terms of nomenclature, this paper aims for lucidity and ease of reference rather than any gesture towards ‘authenticity’, favouring ‘Ahasuerus’ over ‘Artaxerxes’, ‘Vashti’ over ‘Aste’ and so forth.
8. Cf. Arndt Meinhold’s series of studies interpreting the Books of Esther and Joseph as Diasporanovelle, e.g. ‘Die Gattung der Josephsgeschichte und des Estherbuches: Diasporanovelle I und II’, ZATW 87 (1975), 306–24Google Scholar, and ZATW 88 (1976), 72–93Google Scholar. The uses, and limitations, of such Gat-tungstheorie are largely irrelevant here; what will be important is the structuring role this diaspora consciousness plays in Josephus’ version of the Book of Esther.
9. Boyarin, D., ‘Purim and the Cultural Poetics of Judaism—Theorizing Diaspora’, Poetics Today 15 (1994), 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 4.
10. E.g. Daube, D., ‘Typology in Josephus’, Journal of Jewish Studies 31 (1980), 18–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mason, S., ‘Josephus, Daniel, and the Flavian House’, in F. Parente and J. Sievers (eds.), Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period (Leiden 1994), 161–91.Google Scholar
11. As suggested of the AT in a puzzling chapter appended to de Troyer, K.’s otherwise text-critical assessment of the Book of Esther: The End of the Alpha Text of Esther: Translation and Narrative Technique in MT 8:1–17, LXX 8:1–17, and AT 7:14–41 (Atlanta 2000Google Scholar), ch. 6. On this reading, the Mordecai of the AT represents Agrippa, Haman Flaccus, and Ahasuerus Claudius.
12. Beal, T.K., The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation, and Esther (London … New York 1997), 14.Google Scholar
13. T.Megillah 12b.
14. Hdt. 5.18, 9.109; Plu. Art. 5; Esth. 5:4ff.; Neh. 2:6. Paton, L.B., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther (Edinburgh 1908), 149f.Google Scholar, calls Josephus’ assertion ‘untenable’.
15. Feldman, L.H., ‘Hellenizations in Josephus’ Version of Esther’, TAPA 101 (1970), 143–70Google Scholar, at 151.
16. Feldman (n.15 above), 151.
17. Lacocque, A., The Feminine Unconventional: Four Subversive Figures in Israel’s Tradition (Minneapolis 1990), 54.Google Scholar
18. The word recurs, moreover, only twice in the OT outside this book, the first in a corrupt text (Deut. 33:2), and the second also of Persian edicts (Ezra 8:36). By contrast, dat and cognate forms recur a full nineteen times in Esther, a book of only ten chapters.
19. Cf. Ezra 7:14; Hdt. 3.31.
20. Esth. l:13f., where it is, however, implied that these figures are the seven sages.
21. Feldman (n.15 above), 151: ‘There is in Josephus a shift of emphasis from Ahasuerus the ruler of a great empire to Ahasuerus the lover, so characteristic of the Greek romances.’ Cf. Lacocque (n.l7 above), 73.
22. Harvey, CD., Finding Morality in the Diaspora? Moral Ambiguity and Transformed Morality in the Books of Esther (Berlin … New York 2003), 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, of the biblical Esther.
23. Cf. Lacocque (n.17 above), 51f., on the Hebrew text: ‘What is stressed by the magnifying glass of irony is the discrepancy between the pitiful insignificance of the king’s personality and the immense power of decision of his words.’
24. In Josephus, furthermore, Esther prays for heightened eloquence and beauty before approaching the king, that she might use her feminine wiles to draw him to her cause (AJ 11.232–33).
25. See e.g. Niditch, S., ‘Esther: Folklore, Wisdom, Feminism and Authority’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna (Sheffield 1995), 26–47Google Scholar, at 41; Fisch, H., ‘Reading and Carnival: On the Semiotics of Purim’, Poetics Today 15 (1994), 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 65: ‘this is not heroism, but policy’. Though he does not note the contrast between Vashti and Esther within the Esther story, Fisch does map Esther’s mode of resistance on to a contrast between the implacable opposition depicted in the Hanukkah tale (corresponding to a festival ritual strictly encoded in the Mishnah) and the subtler negotiations of Esther (embodied in the far less rigorous ritual obligations relating to Purim). Thus ‘if the Hanukkah story is one of heroic resistance, the Purim story is one of accommodation’ (65).
26. Mentioned twice in the MT (Esth. 1:19, 8:8) but never in Josephus. See Berg, S.B., The Book of Esther: Motifs, Themes and Structure (Missoula 1979), 87Google Scholar n.50.
27. As is the case, to a lesser extent, in the LXX and AT.
28. Cf. Hainan’s accusations in the Hebrew Scripture: ‘their law is different from all of the people and the law of the king’ (MT 3:8), where the allegation of separatism is all the more trenchant for the fact that the very word for Jewish law or instruction (torah) differs from the Persian conception of law (dat).
29. Tac. Hist. 5.5.1; Juv. Sat. 14.103f.; Ael. Arist. De Quatt. 309; Jos. AJ 4.137–38, Ap. 2.79, 121. See Feldman, L.H., ‘Remember Amalek!’ Vengeance, Zealotry and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati 2004), 58f.Google Scholar
30. See Barclay in this volume.
31. Cf. e.g. Ap. 2.146, 151, 175, 235; and see van Unnik, W.C., Das Selbstverständnis der jüdischen Diaspora in der hellenistisch-römischen Zeit (Leiden 1993), esp. 159.Google Scholar
32. This despite the fact that torah should properly be rendered ‘instruction’ rather than ‘law’.
33. Similar sentiments are expressed at Ap. 2.219: ‘Many of our people on many occasions have nobly undertaken to suffer anything rather than utter even a single word in contravention of the law’; cf. AJ 3.223; Ap. 1.43, 2.233, and esp. Josephus’ response to Agatharchides, who had derided the Jerusalemites’ observance of the Sabbath at the expense of their city: ‘To those who investigate it without malice it is evidently significant and worthy of much praise if some people consistently place a higher value on law-observance and piety to God than on their safety and their homeland.’ (Ap. 1.212).
34. Goodman, M., Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1994), 61Google Scholar: ‘-Like Romans but unlike Greeks, Jews accepted the notion that their politeia was not fixed to any particular locality.’
35. L. Troiani, ‘The noXiteta of Israel in the Greco-Roman Age’, in Parente and Sievers (n.10 above), 11–22, at 17 and 18. Cf. Barclay, J.M.G., Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE - 117 CE) (Edinburgh 1996), 425f.Google ScholarCohen, S., ‘Religion, Ethnicity and “Hellenism” in the Emergence of Jewish Identity in Maccabean Palestine’, in Per Bilde et al. (eds.), Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom (Aarhus 1990), 204–23Google Scholar, at 218, points out that πολιτεία in this context denotes far more than ‘constitution’ alone, encompassing a broader and more holistic sense of Jewish ‘culture’ or ‘lifestyle’ at large.
36. Baumann, M., ‘Diaspora: Genealogies of Semantics and Transcultural Comparison’, Numen 47 (2000), 313–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses at 318 the importance of an adherence to the Torah as a counter to the sense of powerlessness often experienced by diaspora Jews.
37. Van Unnik (n.31 above), 57: ‘[D]as Band des mosaischen Gesetzes hielt die Juden zusammen und gerade dadurch unterschieden sie sich von ihrer Umgebung; die wochentliche Sabbatruhe warihrZeichen.’
38. Amaru, B.H., ‘Land Theology in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities’, Jewish Quarterly Review 71 (1981), 201–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 229. Cf. Schwartz, D.B., ‘Herodians and loudaioi in Flavian Rome’, in J. Edmondson et al. (eds.), Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome (Oxford 2005), 63–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 77: ‘Concerning κονδαικόϛ, if one compares the War and the Antiquities, Josephus’ usage seems to show a growing notion of the Jews as people defined not by virtue of their relationship to a place, but, rather, by virtue of their relationship to a religion.’
39. See further AJ 1.25, 192, 214; 3.94, 143, 205, 218, 230, 257, 259, 264; 3.94, 143, 223, 230, 257, 259, 264; 4.198, 302; 20.268.
40. Amaru (n.38 above), 214; ‘Colonies and the spread of Jews into diaspora living are significant aspects of [Josephus’] notion of the promises to Abraham,’ as indeed they are for Jacob (AJ 1.282); cf. the connection between the refusal to create colonies and (he construction of the Tower of Babel (AJ 1.110f.).
41. Bilde, P., Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works and Their Importance (Sheffield 1988), 89f.Google Scholar
42. Cf. van Unnik (n.31 above), 82: ‘Das babylonische Exil ist das große und typische Vorbild für die Situation des Judentums, die nach 70 n. Chr. die gleiche ist wie sie es nach 586 v. Chr. war.’
43. Irrespective of the positions which Babylon, Persia and Rome are to occupy within this schema.
44. Note that Josephus emphasises the degree of Esther’s and Mordecai’s movement: in the Antiquities both figures travel or are brought from Babylon to Susa, a detail inserted by Josephus, for in the OT the pair were already living in Susa. Compare AJ 11.198 (Esther) and 204 (Mordecai) with MTEsth. 2:5.
45. Van Unnik (n.31 above), 139.
46. Fox (n.6 above), 176. Cf. Gruen, E.S., ‘Persia Through the Jewish Looking-Glass’, in Gruen (ed.), Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity (Stuttgart 2005), 90–104Google Scholar, esp. 97 on the flawed Darius of the LXX.
47. Feldman (n.15 above), 162, who rightly characterises the Ahasuerus of the Antiquities as ‘a serious monarch’ and ‘statesmanlike king’ (163).
48. At AJ 11.187, for instance, Josephus excises the scriptural account of the variously coloured marbles (cf. Esth. 1:6), and at 11.192 omits the names of the sages listed atEsth. 1:10.
49. The passing reference in the MT to ‘Haman the Agagite’ (3:1) is usually interpreted to imply Amalekite descent, albeit indirectly, but only in Josephus does this genealogy play so explicit and central a role.
50. See e.g. Josephus’ allegations that, as a result of their ancient grievances, the Egyptians maliciously distort facts about Jewish history and customs: 
(‘They had many reasons for hate and envy: originally because our ancestors held sway over their land and, when they moved from there to their homeland, again prospered’, Ap. 1.224).
51. Feldman (n.29 above), 27, counts a full 13 references to Amalek in the Antiquities, and the attack of the Amalekites against the Israelites, for instance, occupies eight times as much space in Josephus as in the Hebrew Bible.
52. J. Maier, ‘Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period’, in Parente and Sievers (n.10 above), 109–26, at 113.
53. Maier (n.52 above), 110, referring to e.g. Gen.R. 65.21. See Schlatter, A., The Church in the New Testament Period (London 1955), 255f.Google Scholar; Cohen, G.D., ‘Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought’, in A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge MA 1967), 19–48Google Scholar; Hadas-Lebel, M., ‘Jacob et Esau ou Israel et Rome dans le Talmud et le Midrash’, RHR 201 (1984), 369–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feldman, L.H., ‘Josephus’ Portrait of Jacob’, Jewish Quarterly Review 79.2–3 (1988–89), 101–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 130–33 and 148f. Note the objections of Neusner, J., From Enemy to Sibling: Rome and Israel in the First Century of Western Civilization (New York 1986).Google Scholar
54. As noted by Feldman (n.53 above), 148f.: ‘Josephus, by deft handling of Esau and mostly through omissions, sought to avoid antagonizing the Romans and attempted instead to diminish the alleged conflict between the two nations, the Jews and the Romans, descended from the twins Jacob and Esau.’ This interpretation relies, of course, on the assumption that the rabbinic association of Esau and Rome would have been familiar to Josephus.
55. Maier (n.52 above), 117.
56. Unsurprisingly, the Scriptures make no mention of συνοίκησιϛ; moreover, the rabbinical writings once more stress the separation of Esther and Ahasuerus. Centuries later, the Zohar denies that Esther ever lived with Ahasuerus; instead, God supposedly sent a substitute spirit which took her form. See Zohar, III, 275b–267b and, even more emphatically, Tiqunei Zohar 20f. Cf. L.L. Bronner, ‘Esther Revisited: An Aggadic Approach’, in Brenner (n.25 above), 176–97, at 185.
57. In Midr. Panim Aherim 2.2 Esther hides herself for a mere four years; Targ. Esth. II 2.7 and Gen.R. 39.20 allot her a lengthy 75.
58. B. Megillah 13a.
59. B. Hullin 139b, a concept further developed in Midr. Tehillim 22; cf. Targ. Esth. II. 2.8. See Baldwin, J.G., Esther: An Introduction and Commentary (London 1984), 27.Google Scholar
60. As in the psalms of lamentation: ‘O Lord, how long will you hide your face.’ So e.g. Ps. 89:47; Ps. 74:9–10; Ps. 13:2, etc. See Balentine, S.E., The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament (Oxford 1983Google Scholar), as well as the continual emphasis of van Unnik (n.31 above) that ‘[d]ie Zerstreuung gilt als Strafe Gottes für die Sünde des Volkes’ (149).
61. Bronner (n.56 above), 181.
62. Bickerman, E., ‘Notes on the Greek Book of Esther’, Proceeedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 20 (1951), 101–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 125. Cf. Berlin, A., Esther (Philadelphia 2001), 27.Google Scholar
63. Lerner, B.D., ‘No Happy Ending for Esther’, Jewish Bible Quarterly 29 (2001), 4–12Google Scholar, at 8.
64. Humphreys (n.4 above), 216.
65. Barclay (n.35 above), 428. Cf. the ‘focal points of distinctiveness’ outlined by Dunn, J.D.G., The Parting of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London 1991), 28.Google Scholar
66. Barclay (n.35 above), 429.
67. Clines, D.J.A., On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 1967–1998, Vol. I (Sheffield 1998), 3–22Google Scholar, at 18; cf. 19f.: ‘It is a betrayal of ethnicity to adopt the administrative machinery of an alien empire in the hope of preserving the national memory.’
68. Ant. 11.243, 245. Pagán, V.E., Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History (Austin 2004Google Scholar), ch. 4, nicely analyses the dynamics of hiding, silence and revelation in Josephus’ account of the court intrigue against Caligula (AJ 19.1ȓ273), components which similarly permeate the Esther narrative.
69. AJ 11.252–53, a misidentification which Josephus’ Ahasuerus positively encourages, since, in an embellishment of the scriptural accounts at Esth. 6:6, he prefaces his request with praise not, as one might expect, of Mordecai but of Haman.
70. Beal (n.12 above), ix, of the scriptural Esther. Even that commandment central to the festival of Purim, to drink until one can no longer distinguish between ‘Blessed be Mordecai’ and ‘Cursed be Haman’, reflects this blurring of identities.
71. Josephus remarks simply, and without equivocation, that one woman in particular—Esther—
(‘for this was her name’), surpassed all others in beauty (AJ11.199).
72. In Josephus as in the Scriptures: AJ 11. 189; cf. Dan. 1:7.
73. Clifford, J., ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994), 302–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 319.
74. Said, E.W., ‘Reflections on Exile’, Granta 13 (1984), 159–72Google Scholar, at 171f., in relation to exile rather than diaspora.
75. See Goodman, M., Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays (Leiden 2007Google Scholar), ch. 2.
76. Witness, for instance, Suetonius’ account of the ninety-year-old man forced under Domitian to expose himself in the courtroom so as to establish whether he was circumcised and so subject to Jewish taxes (Suet. Dom. 12.2). It is also worth noting that in the AT Mordecai characterises Haman by his lack of circumcision, declaring that he had refused to bow down to 
(Esth.4:17e).
77. See Schwartz, D.R., ‘Doing Like Jews or Becoming a Jew? Josephus on Women Converts to Judaism’, in Frey, J.et al. (eds.), Jewish History in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden 2007), 93–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argues that Josephus’ use of the verb 
reflects a pragmatic attitude towards conversion unparallelled in the Hebrew Bible: ‘where Esther said these non-Jews pretended to be Jews, Josephus wondered how they could do so and assumed they must have circumcised themselves’ (96).
78. All the more when we take into account Josephus’ evident awareness that Jews were not the only 
to practise circumcision. See Ap. 1.169 and 2.142, where Josephus cites Herodotus on the subject.
