Our next stop on our Journey takes us to the Book of Esther. A gripping story of the rise of an orphaned Israelite to become the Queen of the Persian Empire and in so doing saves her people from imminent genocide. This book is the third in the Ketuvim (Writings) portion of the Tanakh and besides the Song of Songs it is the only book in the Bible that does not mention God.
This has been a rather difficult book to nail down as actual history. Certain elements of it are verifiable, such as certain persons of power in the Persian empire as well as various locations and customs. One biblical scholar, Michael Coogan, even claims that the original intent of the Book of Esther by its author was for it to be a historical short story. This was something that was very popular during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, according to Coogan. What is the Hellenistic Period, you ask? Well, that is another blog.
The compilation of the Bible in the modern form we know was a very interesting process and in researching the origin of the Book of Esther I can see why there is so much confusion surrounding this book. Some claim it as history and others claim it to be historical fiction. According to Jewish tradition most of the Tanakh (Old Testament) was completed and compiled by 450 BCE, however it is believed by many scholars that there were a few additions and edits over the centuries and the final Hebrew version was not finalized until between 200 BCE and 200 CE. That is still a pretty big window of 400 years.
The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible aka the Christian Old Testament. There are many wonderful, fantastical tales surrounding its origin in the Greek Empire during the 3rd century BCE. What can be gleaned from them is this. In the 300s BCE the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II, had the Torah translated into the early form of Greek spoken in his region by the Alexandrian Jews. He did this for the purpose of having a copy of their holy book in the Library of Alexandria. Then over the centuries many more Hebrew works were translated into Greek. It is not known when or what was transcribed and its believed that some books could have been translated more than once and revised and combined, possibly even reinterpreted or paraphrased, thus leading to many errors.
I gave all that background to help you understand that, when it comes to Esther, the Hebrew version of the story and the Greek version of the story cannot be reconciled. The Hebrew names for the royalty mentioned put the date of the book centuries off from the Greek translated names of royalty. This causes the actual events and story line to be clouded in a shadow of mystery as to its legitimacy as actual Hebrew history.
Regardless of its origin or its authenticity of the details the Book of Esther had to have come by the time the Hebrew word Yehudim was a popular word with a meaning that was understood by many cultures. The book of Esther is the first book so far to use that word. Yehudim, or ‘Jews’, was a term for the people of Hebrew descent that had been scattered to the four winds and lived among many cultures and were constantly a target for hatred.
Yehudim is derived from the Hebrew word Yehudi which means ‘From the Tribe of Judah’. If you remember the stories before Esther when the kingdom split eleven tribes went north and created Israel while the southern kingdom remained Judah. Israel was destroyed and though Judah was taken away to captivity by Babylon, they survived.
The compilation of the Bible in the modern form we know was a very interesting process and in researching the origin of the Book of Esther I can see why there is so much confusion surrounding this book. Some claim it as history and others claim it to be historical fiction. According to Jewish tradition most of the Tanakh (Old Testament) was completed and compiled by 450 BCE, however it is believed by many scholars that there were a few additions and edits over the centuries and the final Hebrew version was not finalized until between 200 BCE and 200 CE. That is still a pretty big window of 400 years.
The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible aka the Christian Old Testament. There are many wonderful, fantastical tales surrounding its origin in the Greek Empire during the 3rd century BCE. What can be gleaned from them is this. In the 300s BCE the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II, had the Torah translated into the early form of Greek spoken in his region by the Alexandrian Jews. He did this for the purpose of having a copy of their holy book in the Library of Alexandria. Then over the centuries many more Hebrew works were translated into Greek. It is not known when or what was transcribed and its believed that some books could have been translated more than once and revised and combined, possibly even reinterpreted or paraphrased, thus leading to many errors.
I gave all that background to help you understand that, when it comes to Esther, the Hebrew version of the story and the Greek version of the story cannot be reconciled. The Hebrew names for the royalty mentioned put the date of the book centuries off from the Greek translated names of royalty. This causes the actual events and story line to be clouded in a shadow of mystery as to its legitimacy as actual Hebrew history.
Regardless of its origin or its authenticity of the details the Book of Esther had to have come by the time the Hebrew word Yehudim was a popular word with a meaning that was understood by many cultures. The book of Esther is the first book so far to use that word. Yehudim, or ‘Jews’, was a term for the people of Hebrew descent that had been scattered to the four winds and lived among many cultures and were constantly a target for hatred.
Yehudim is derived from the Hebrew word Yehudi which means ‘From the Tribe of Judah’. If you remember the stories before Esther when the kingdom split eleven tribes went north and created Israel while the southern kingdom remained Judah. Israel was destroyed and though Judah was taken away to captivity by Babylon, they survived.
