Esther. THE BOOK OF, relates how a Jewish virgin Hadassah (Heb. 'myrtle'), or Esther (Pers. 'star'), who was a foster-daughter of Mordecai, was chosen by the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes) as his wife in room of the disgraced queen Vashti, and brought about the great deliverance of her people which is commemorated in the Feast of Purim ('lots'). Haman, the king's prime-minister, had issued a decree for the extirpation of all the Jews, and had prepared to hang Mordecai; but Mordecai, who had formerly detected a conspiracy against the king's life, was raised to great honour, and Haman was hanged on the gallows 50 cubits high that he had prepared for Mordecai. After this Esther, at Mordecai's instance, revealed her Hebrew lineage, and prevailed upon the king to counteract the former edict by another permitting the Jews everywhere to destroy their enemies. The Book of Esther stands alone among the Hebrew Scriptures as an expression of the uncompromising spirit of Hebrew nationality, containing hardly a trace of religious feeling. The name of God is not once mentioned, while the great king of Persia is referred to nearly 200 times. A possible explanation is the fact that the book was meant to be read at the merry revels of the Purim festival. It has continued in constant use and favour among the Jews, and of the five Hagiographical rolls it is called emphatically 'The Roll' (Megillah). The author is quite unknown, and the date is probably the latest Persian or the earliest Greek period. It has been much disputed whether the Book of Esther contains authentic history, or only 'the Legend of the Feast of Purim' (Reuss). It was discredited by such early Christian writers as Melito of Sardis in the 2d century, and Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Amphilochius of Iconium in the 4th century. Luther, in his De Servo Arbitrio, says: 'Though they have this book in the canon, in my judgment it deserves more than all to be excluded from the canon;' and in his Table-talk he says: 'I am so hostile to the book that I would it were not in existence, for it Judaises too much, and hath a great deal of heathenish naughtiness.' There are two Greek versions of the Book of Esther, containing a multitude of interpolations and additions, the earlier of which, it is clear, was known to Josephus. They are printed together in Usher's De Græca LXX. Interpretum versione (Lond. 1655), and in O. F. Fritzsche's Libri Estheræ græci textus duplex (Zurich, 1848), and Libri Apocryphi Veteris Testamenti græce (1871). In Jerome's translation all the Greek additions are placed at the end, and marked with an obelus. Hence in our Bibles they do not appear, being relegated to the Apocrypha. The story of Esther afforded a subject for the genius of Handel and of Racine.
See Zunz, Die Gottesdienstliche Vorträge der Juden (1832); Fritzsche, Exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen (1851); Oppert, Commentaire du Livre d'Esther (1864); Langen, Die deuterokanonischen Stücke des Buches Esther (1862); and the commentaries by Bertheau (1862), Keil (1878), F. W. Schultz (1876), and Cassel (1878 et seq.). See ARABIAN NIGHTS; and the too ingenious Helenistische Bestandtheile im biblischen Schriftum (Vienna, 1882), by J. S. Bloch.