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The Older Book of Esther

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Charles C. Torrey
Charles C. Torrey
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

On several counts, Esther is the strangest book in the Bible. Few of those who read it realize what a variety of curious problems it presents, and how little has been done toward solving them. As a preliminary to the following study, a few of the most troublesome questions raised by the book may be briefly stated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1944 , pp. 1 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1944

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References

1 Employing the convenient designation adopted by the Cambridge LXX and Swete's Old Testament in Greek.

2 Thus in Lagarde's Libri Vet. Test. canon. pars prior graece (1883), and the Cambridge Old Testament in Greek, III, Part I (1940). Fritzsche's Libri Apocryphi V.T. (1871) printed this text on the right-hand page, facing the “standard” text. (Some commentators, designating the two recensions by Roman capitals, have called the standard form Esther A, and the other Esther B.) A portion of the α-text, namely that which is contained in the so-called “Additions,” was translated into English by E. C. Bissell in his Apocrypha of the Old Testament (1880). Aside from the “Additions,” I am not aware that the β-text (called “the LXX”) has ever been translated into a modern language.

3 The coalition of “the Persians and Medes” (1: 3, 14, 18, 19) was by the Jewish writers believed to have been in existence in the time of Ahasuerus, but not of Artaxerxes I, as will be shown elsewhere.

4 The false writing ϕρουρ- is frequent, due to the influence of the verb ϕρουρεῖν, to guard, watch, etc. Also common is the abbreviated form ϕ(ρ)ουραι, for “Purim” has only two syllables, and ϕρουραί is a good Greek word.

5 Eventually, as in the third and fourth centuries, Aramaic was employed to translate from Greek the especially favorite Apocrypha, such books as First Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, and still others, as we learn from Origen and Jerome.

6 In Josephus' account (Antt. 11, vi, 4), when the incident of Mordecai's discovery of the plot against the king is narrated, it is said that “Barnabazus, the servant of one of the eunuchs, being by birth a Jew, … discovered (the conspiracy) to the queen's uncle.” As Nöldeke remarked (Ency. Bibl. II, article “Esther”), it is not likely that Josephus invented this; it was in his source.

7 The Greek is corrupt at this point, but the cause of its corruption (from Ἀγαγαῖος) can be conjectured with probability. One MS. of the α-text still has γωγαιος.

8 The literature of the subject is voluminous. It must suffice here to say that the standard textbooks of the present day and the principal commentaries are agreed in concluding that no satisfactory explanation of the word has yet been proposed.

9 The Hebrew text is defective, having lost ten words necessary to the sense, preserved in the Greek and also in part in vs. 13. The copyist's eye caught the wrong group of letters. The accident is explained, and the original Hebrew text restored, in Our Translated Gospels, p. 160, where other similar cases in the Old Testament are mentioned; and (especially) the two important cases of such accidental omission in the Gospels, caused by the repetition of a group of Aramaic letters, are explained.

10 An even more striking fact is the omission of any mention of the lot by Josephus, who writes out the Esther narrative (from the Greek) in full detail. Did Josephus (and his contemporaries) regard the derivation of pūrīn, pūraiā, from a word meaning “lot” as a fiction? How, otherwise, explain his rejection of the passages which make the assertion? The origin of the name of the festival was an important matter.

11 It might perhaps be objected, that strong emotion and a distressing situation are to be seen in 8: 3, where Esther is pictured as falling down at the feet of the king and beseeching him, with tears, not to carry out the purpose of Haman, to destroy all the Jews. But the shedding of tears, at this juncture, is merely an effective gesture, for the people of Esther and Mordecai are no longer in danger. The queen takes the course which she knows will bring the king to her terms with the least delay.

12 This, of itself, would not suffice to prove Haman a conspirator. It is only in one of the later expansions of the Greek text, Addition E (XVI, 12), that the charge is plainly made, in the king's letter: “He went about to deprive us of our kingdom and our life.” The motif is too effective, however, to be denied to the original author of the Story.

13 The note, in slightly abbreviated and corrupted form, is found also at the end of a single MS. of the second Greek version, namely the Chigi MS. R, vi, 38, of the Vatican Library (19 of H. & P., h of Lagarde, b′ of the Cambridge LXX), evidently copied from MSS. of the standard text. The only feature of it deserving mention is the reading ϕρουραιηνα (!), combining both Pūraiā and Pūrīn, emphatic state and absolute state, respectively, of the Aramaic plural noun supposed to mean “lots.” An interesting reading, attesting the use of more than one manuscript. The customary miswriting ϕρουρ- has already been explained.

14 Eventually, after this dream had at length been discarded, it was replaced by another one of a different character and more elaborate, now familiar in the rabbinical literature. It is conveniently published in Ad. Merx's Chrestomathia Targumica.

15 The author of the two chapters dealing with the dream was careless in writing “Media and Persia” in 10: 2, instead of “Persia and Media” as in 1: 3, 14, 18, 19. The latter order now expressed the historical situation, according to Dan. 8: 3.

16 It is to be hoped that before long there may be an end of this present confusion, due partly to the false theory of the book and partly to Jerome's disarrangement of the supposed “additions.”

17 It should be remarked that this conjecture of “opposition,” which is derived solely from the conjectured breaking-off of the celebration, is thought to be given justification by a third conjecture (relating to the Persian calendar, see pp. 166–169) which is too obviously far-fetched to be considered seriously.

18 This very common use of the Aramaic verb has an interesting parallel in the Syr. version of 1 Tim. 3: 4, where the good bishop is described: “one that ruleth well his own house , having his children in subjection,” etc.

19 The verb אמר in vs. 18 (Heb.) seems to have the meaning which is more common in Aramaic than in Hebrew, “speak with authority, give orders,” etc.; compare the use in 2: 15, 20; 4: 13, 15.

20 It will be remembered that the late Professor Burkitt was convinced that Ecclesiastes was originally Aramaic, and that our Hebrew is a translation. This may well be the case, though no adequate proof has been furnished.

21 It is thus rendered, and entered as unique, in the standard Hebrew dictionaries: Gesenius-Buhl, Brown-Driver-Briggs, Siegfried-Stade, etc., and this interpretation is required by the Massoretic division of the verse. The rendering of Engl. R.V. is hardly defensible. Bāzeh could not mean “in this wise.”

22 The English R.V. treats the feminine suffix as neuter: “when the matter came before the king”; but this is hardly Hebrew; and all the ancient versions, and the translation of the Jewish Publication Society, recognize that Esther is meant.

23 The origin of the Hebrew version of Esther must have been well known to the Jewish scholars at the time when its divine authority was questioned. What part this fact may have played in the debate can only be conjectured. In later years the book was ranked high, as in the oft-quoted saving of Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish (c. 300 A.D.) placing Esther on a par with the Torah and above the Prophets and the Hagiographa. Maimonides, in the 12th century, said the same thing (Jewish Encyclopedia, X, 275). This is not mere reaction against the opposition to the book, as Wildeboer (Origin of the Canon of the Old Testament, p. 75) and others have held, but rather recognition of its high importance as the document of one of the great Jewish festivals.

24 The literature of the Maccabean struggle, and of the independent Jewish state, was in the air in the latter part of the second century B.C. The friendly official Letter in Aramaic, 2 Macc. 1: 10–2: 18 (see JAOS, Vol. 60, 119–150), with its tone of authority, sent from Jerusalem to Egypt on the occasion of a Maccabean festival, is dated 124 B.C. Second Maccabees, which epitomized Jason's history, used the Letter as its introduction, and probably was written immediately or very soon after this date. Within a year or two of this time First Maccabees may be dated (see above). Jason's work, “in five books,” has features which suggest a relatively early date. It shows no acquaintance with 1 Macc., nor does the author of the latter seem to know of Jason's history. Most probably they were written at about the same time, brought forth by the existing conditions.