Purim, Book of Esther: Denial of a God?

Great Debates
1

It’s interesting to note that the Book of Esther (which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim) does not mention God’s name. The story is about an evil adviser to the King of Persia out to kill all the Persian Jews. But, his Queen Esther reveals she, too, is Jewish and begs the King to spare her people. Additionally, through a twist of fate, the evil advisor (Haman) and his sons are hanged in the very gallows they built to kill the Jews.

Verbally, by word of mouth and legend, God is credited with causing the foreshadowing events leading to Esther becoming queen AND the twist of fate ending. However, there is no reference to God in the text! Because of this, it was once hotly debated if this story should even be included in the Holy Scriptures. So, is this a would-be cover-up regarding the existence of God?

So, you have to wonder the following:
a) How many Jews through the ages, esp. in the Holocaust, were given false hope by this biblical story? And, is false hope better than no hope at all?

b) Could this be the smoking gun evidence, well hidden amongst all the Biblical stories, actually giving suggesting there is no God?

c) How many other would-be Biblical stories were intentionally edited out of the Bible for a similar reason? And, were the
author(s) of the Bible purposely hand selecting stories to avoid this very question (b) above?

What do you make of all of this?

  • Jinx :dubious:
2

**

There are reasons for these things.

God is not mentioned in the Esther for the very simple reason that the text of Esther was to be contained in the kingdom’s chronicles (see the end of the book). As such, to avoid unneccesary desecration, God’s name was left out of it.

In addition, the root of the name “Esther” samech-tuv-reish means “secret” or “hidden” The story is about God’s hidden guidence of history.

**

Well, your questions presupposes that there is no God to begin with, a position that I disagree with. You’d have to prove that the lack of mention of God’s name in Esther somehow proves that all the other books of the Bible are lies.

**

If other books were “edited” out of the bible for that reason, then why was Esther included?

Zev Steinhardt

What do you make of all of this?

  • Jinx :dubious: **
    [/QUOTE]
3

So… the choice was made to add this book to the Bible, and we should conclude from its failure to mention God that there is no God… and we should also conclude that other stories were excluded from the Bible because they fail to mention God, thus giving rise to the conclusion that God does not exist?

I don’t quite follow the inferences.

4

“So, Zechariah, my fellow conspirator, did you remove all the books that show there is no God?”

"Yes, Judah… oops! "

“What do you mean, oops?”

“Well, it looks like I forgot to remove Esther.”

“You cursed fool! NOW everyone will read Esther, notice that it doesn’t mention God, and they’ll know He doesn’t exist! Our sinister scheme is ruined!”

“Gulp… well, maybe nobody will notice…”

5

So, if Esther wasn’t going to save the Jews, God would find another way.

Esther was living a pretty secular life, as the concubine and then wife of a secular ruler who didn’t even know she was Jewish. She probably could have quietly saved herself if she didn’t get involved. But the story is about the necessary continuation of the Jewish community as a separate people, even scattered and in the midst of secularity. While the retribution of the Jews against their enemies is enormous and seemingly out of balance (possibly to make the point that we aren’t talking about mere politics here), it is unworldly–Haman needed money to arrange the planned slaughter (holocaust) while the Jews spurned the spoils of their victims–whatever was going on (and it is not the most obvious Biblical story) seems to be given as an example of the “larger than life” Jewish existence/covenant imposing itself into the secular and political when necessary for its own ends. That the supernatural acts through Esther in this case is a reminder that individuals should be willing to take action for their community.

There are obviously some parallels to the Nazi Holocaust here, but I’m not sure why Esther would have given “false hope” to the Jews of Europe–that they should not bother to act because a heroine would convince the government to relent? Rather read it as a warning that keeping one’s mouth shut if one is involved in the secular world and could pass unnoticed is wrong–Jews must speak up for each other–solidarity in the face of persecution. In any event, the Jews did survive WWII (note that I am not minimizing the Holocaust), so if the message is that God will always ensure that a remnant of his people survive, even scattered in secular societies, that has happened.

6

It would have worked, too - if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

Also notice that there is no mention of clog dancing, or the Zapruder film in the book of Esther. Draw your own conclusions.

Regards,
Shodan

7

Esther asks Mordecai to tell everyone to fast for her; she and her maidens fast also. I had always thought that the fasting went along with prayers for Esther’s success–why else would they fast, except as a supplication to God? So AFAIK God is certainly implied in the story.

But hey, if you’ve got some other reason for a whole community to starve themselves for three days before undertaking a dangerous scheme, let me know. :slight_smile:

8

TO: Zev Steinhart and CM Keller, Co-Coordinators, Straight Dope Infiltration Group, Evil Conspiracy to Enslave Minds, Jewish Division

FROM: Polycarp, Co-Coordinator, Straight Dope Infiltration Group, Evil Conspiracy to Enslave Minds, Christian Division

SUBJECT: The Jig’s Up

Gentlemen, our cover has been blown. When we had our initial strategy session on infiltration of the SDMB, we were warned about how perceptive Dopers were, and that we’d have to adopt a variety of guises to avoid revealing our Evil Plans ™ to Manipulate Minds Under the Guise of Religion.

We discussed the problems with Genesis and decided on the threefold attack that’s worked so well – some of us take the literalist view, some attempt to depict it as figurative, and you guys confuse the heck out of everybody with Talmudic pilpul! Nice job on that.

But the flaw in Esther was our undoing, just as we feared. T~, our Catholic operative, was insistent we should use the Septuagint version, which does mention God’s name in the added-in portions, but you guys wouldn’t listen! “We can handle it! We’ll just rattle off some Hebrew letters and say that His name’s not there because it depicts Him as working behind the scenes.”

We told you that the Dopers were a smart bunch, but no, you wouldn’t listen.

Sure. Well, look where it got us. 3,500 years of effort, and all for nothing. If this gets out, our efforts to keep people’s minds in narrow religious paths will be for nothing.

And you guys are not getting your toaster ovens![sup]1[/sup]

  1. What, you folks thought Lesbians invented that good a marketing concept? Sheesh!
9

TO: Polycarp, Co-Coordinator, Straight Dope Infiltration Group, Evil Conspiracy to Enslave Minds, Christian Division

FROM: Zev Steinhardt, Co-Coordinators, Straight Dope Infiltration Group, Evil Conspiracy to Enslave Minds, Jewish Division

SUBJECT: Toasters

So what? Passover is coming up soon. What are we going to do with toasters? Toast matzoh? :smiley:

Zev Steinhardt

10

I think you have it backwards. The way I read the book of Esther, it’s not a way to give false hope, but a call to action. Esther and Mordecai didn’t just sit around saying, “I hope G-d will save the Jews”. They acted to help save themselves and the Jewish people. That, to me, is the message of Esther, and during the Holocaust, the modern Mordecais and Esthers were the partisans, they were the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Treblinka uprising, and even though most of the Mordecais and Esthers died, they died unbeaten, and they made their killers pay a high price for their deaths.

It’s not a false hope. It’s a real hope, mixed with the message that you have to be one of the contributors to your own salvation, and it isn’t enough to wait to be saved.

11

Esther, Mordecai
Ishtar, Marduk

12

Now at least zev and poly are in the spirit of Purim.

Jinx, Purim is a farcical little holiday. Even many very literalist Jews take this one as a fable. It is sort of a Jewish Mardi Gras … costumes, doing things all wrong. Heck, it is a holiday during which religious Jews are commanded to get shitfaced drunk.

Enjoy the party; some things defy analysis.

13

I have heard that names &/or titles of God are hidden in key points of the Hebrew text. Any truth to that?

14

There are several places where God’s name (the Tetragram) can be found. Two such places are:

  1. Esther 5:4 “The King and Haman should come today…” The Hebrew for this is Yavoh Hamelcech V’Haman Hayom…. The first letter of each word makes up God’s name.

  2. Esther 7:7 “for he [Haman] saw that there was evil determined against him…” In this case, it is the last letter of each of the four words in this Hebrew phrase that contain God’s name.

Zev Steinhardt

15

Exactly. Just as there are unquestionable parallels between the early chapters of Genesis and the Enuma Elish – the former picking up on particular elements of the latter as a way of saying “Those Babylonian idiots are wrong; with regard to Tiamat and the primordial Deep, this is what really happened,” so Esther is a “Judaification” of the Babylonian myths: “Even Ishtar and Marduk are pious believers in YHWH,” so to speak. :slight_smile:

I’ll grant that many people take Esther and Daniel as literal historical accounts, but that’s their privilege: one man’s Mede is another man’s Persian, so to speak! ;j

::: ducks and runs :::

16

Philosophocles:

It’s also quite possible that the story was real, these were real Jews, and they had adopted or been assigned Babylonian names during the exile, a la the Judean youths in the first Chapter of Daniel (Daniel = Belteshazzar, Hananiah = Shadrach, Mishael = Meshach, Azariah = Abed Nego). It should be noted that both Esther and Mordecai are referred to by other names in the Bible - Esther’s original name is Hadassah (Esther 2:7), and Mordecai is referred to as “Mordecai Bilshan” in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

The similarity of the names in Esther to names that also coincidentally occur in Babylonian mythology is hardly proof that Esther is a corrupted version of some unknown Babylonian folk tale.

DSeid:

What Jew that you know takes the rest of the Torah and Tanakh literally considers Esther to be a fable?

That bit is SO used out of context, it’s become almost sick. Not pointing a finger at you specifically, I’m referring to the behavior of many religious Jews on Purim that they claim is justified by that law. A slight buzz is what we’re commanded to get. Shitfaced drunk is out-and-out against what the law of the holiday suggests.

Polycarp:

I don’t get this comment. Yes, I know it was accompanied by a smiley, but…is there some issue about the Persians and Medes that non-religious folks claim as one of their list of Biblical inconsistencies? Weren’t there, historically, both Median and Persian kings named Darius?

17

“One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian” is merely an old joke, based on “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

18

IMHO, CM, while what you suggest is possible, I’m inclined to see the Esther story as a novelization of a traditional story, with the two “theophoric” names used for precisely the purpose I suggested – to bring even the false gods of the Babylonians under the ambit of believers in the real God.

Nope.

There was, in fact, a Median general and satrap in the Persian Empire who governed Babylonia under Cyrus after leading his armies in its conquest; his name was Gubaru, and he’s often thought to be the historical referent for “Darius the Mede”. Others have equated this figure with Cyaraxes II the last independent king of Media, and Cyrus’s father-in-law.

19

Polycarp:

That sounds plausible from what I’ve learned of the period from traditional Jewish sources; I’m pretty certain they do refer to “Darius the Mede” as Cyrus’s father-in-law. As for the name discrepancy, it is quite possible that he had both a Persian name/title and an actual, Median name, a point of view which I’m pretty certain also has support from traditional Jewish sources.

Chaim Mattis Keller

20

Chiam,

Well, my old orthodox roommate wasn’t a total literalist so maybe he doesn’t count … and my other source for that info was a Reform rabbi who probably doesn’t count either.

As to getting drunk- isn’t the commandment to get drunk enough that you can’t tell “Blessed be Mordechai” from “Cursed be Hamen” or something like that? I’d think of that as more than a slight buzz. Or am I wrong here? I’ll defer to your greater knowledge on these matters.

My point remains. It is a playful little holiday, nothing too serious.