Is Esther a Jewish book? Is it a book about Jewish identity? If so, is this a predominantly religious or ethnic concept, or neither, or both, and how helpful are contemporary conceptualizations of identity in the first place? The absence of God, as well as other identity markers known to be significant in the Persian era, has led some scholars to argue that Judaism in the Hebrew version of Esther is “ethnic and “no more” (Larkin 1996) or even that Esther is a narrative about how not to be a Jew (Korpel 2008). After some preliminary thoughts on the usefulness of contemporary theories on ethnicity and religion, this article will investigate how the author plays with different forms of belonging that are difficult to capture in conventional approaches to “Jewish identity.” While the addition of prayers and references to food laws make Greek Esther more obviously “Jewish’,” the Hebrew version sketches a more mobile and resilient form of “Jewishness,” one that is hidden between the lines and thus can survive in circumstances that demand a great measure of adaptation. After looking at how the portrayal of Mordecai, the fast in ch. 4, and the institution of Purim contribute to how the book deals with identity and belonging, I close with some remarks about Esther as an example of “becoming,” a concept put forward by feminist scholar Rosi Braidotti.

Unlike the ancient Greek and Latin versions, the Hebrew version of the book of Esther does not explicitly mention God. This particularity has long prompted discussions among biblical scholars. To this day, there is no consensus as to whether it should be interpreted as a marker of the book’s intended secular character or as a sign of a hidden theology, which, once discovered, points to the veiled presence of God in the story. This essay offers a new two-pronged approach to grasping the book’s theology: It analyzes how the Hebrew version of Esther works with reversals, pairings, and double meanings; and it also reflects on how and why the book constantly confronts its readers with the motif of the king and his law.

The dream of Mordecai narrated in EsthOG A:1–11 and its interpretation given in F:1–6(+7–10) will be read through the lens of the only surviving manual on dream interpretation from Hellenistic-Roman antiquity, Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams) by Artemidorus of Daldis. It can be shown that the narrator who creates the character of Mordecai uses known techniques of dream interpretation in combination with his specific idea of the outcome of the dream. In addition, Mordecai’s social position is of some importance for his dream to be accepted as trustworthy, and conversely, his dream confirms his position as an accepted authority.

The study of violence in biblical literature has gained increasing traction in recent years. In particular, a number of monographs and edited volumes have considered the dual topics of violence and women. These studies treat the female characters of biblical literature as victims of violence—and certainly, the Hebrew Bible contains many instances of physical and sexual violence against women, including rape, murder, and mutilation. What has been less often acknowledged is that biblical literature in fact also frequently presents women as the agents of violence. In this article, I consider the portrayal of Esther as an agent of violence. Although it is women who are more typically endangered by men, the book of Esther and the wider presentation of violent women found in the Hebrew Bible reverses this image. It is not women who must fear men, but rather men who must be hypervigilant against these dangerous women. These texts therefore promote an ideology in which women must be subject to male control, and this is harmful for both Esther as well as for women more generally in the world from which the book of Esther emerged. Consequently, the book of Esther presents its female protagonist as an agent of violence. But in so doing, Esther is also the victim of the patriarchal perspectives of the authors of the book of Esther and the ideology of gender in which they participate and promote.

This article investigates the themes of migration and diaspora in the book of Esther, focusing on how types of human mobility and ideas of Jewish life in the diaspora inform the fictional narrative set in the Achaemenid period. First, we draw attention to the phenomenon of migration, “the movement of persons who change their residence from one place to another” (Tacoma 2016, 30–31), and argue that the book of Esther invites us to imagine several forms of movement in the ancient world. While the book depicts the life of a Jewish community in Susa as an outcome of forced migration (Esth 2:5–6) and thus raises the question of a permanent change of residence and related processes of cultural adaptation in the post-exilic context, it also discusses other types of movement that have received less attention in research, especially the forced migration of young girls trafficked (here defined as the transportation of people through force with the purpose benefitting from their work or service in the form of sexual exploitation) to the court and the exchange and migration of letters between communities within the empire. Second, we investigate the view of “diaspora” in the book of Esther, which shows hardly any interest in Jerusalem or the ancestral land and instead constructs Susa as the center of Jewish life from which Mordechai and Esther exercise their leadership and instruct fellow Jews during a crisis. We examine three key elements of diaspora in the book, including dispersion, homeland orientation, and boundary maintenance.

In the last decades, several scholars have detached the book of Esther from its Persian setting and argued for a Hellenistic dating. While most exegetes agree that Hebrew Esther was written before the Maccabean revolt (168–160 BCE), features like the large-scale killing of enemies and the institution of Purim as a victory celebration in Esth 9 have raised doubts about this terminus ante quem. Recent commentaries by B. Ego (2017) and J.-D. Macchi (2018) interpret the book to have resulted from a Hasmonean revision of an older work; they focus on the concluding chapters of the book as a secondary expansion from the Maccabean period. This article offers a critical evaluation of these proposals. It suggests that the entire book of Esther could be understood as a fictionalized reflection of the Maccabean revolt and the early years of Hasmonean rule. In building on previous scholarship on Esther and Maccabean literature, it adds further points for comparison, and it discusses important differences between the book of Esther and the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. Thereby, this article proposes a new historical context for the production of the book of Esther and it opens new ways of interpreting the story’s political and ideological messages.

The tremendous influence of Hellenic language, literature, philosophy, historiography, and even religion on Jewish self-perception from Alexander the Great’s time in the fourth century BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE has been widely acknowledged. However, as Erich Gruen rightly points out, little attention has been paid to a related but quite distinct issue: How did Jews in the Hellenistic world perceive non-Jewish people, nations, and societies? To explore this issue, we will analyze the depiction of the Persian king in Greek Alpha-Text (AT) of Esther 5:1–12, comparing it with Hebrew Masoretic Esther 5:1–2 and Old Greek Esther Addition D. This analysis will show that the Jewish redactor of the AT not only adopted and emulated the Greco-Roman stereotypical view of Persian kings but also adapted it in a new way to address specific concerns related to the Jewish-Alexanadrian conflict in 37–41 CE.

Recent work on canon in early Jewish thought has shifted from a Biblecentric model to an expansive and flexible model, one that takes texts often relegated to “pseudepigrapha” and emphasizes their vital role. In particular, Eva Mroczek has suggested the heavenly archive as a model for how early Jewish authors imagined their compositions as part of an ongoing process of divine revelation. Yet how does the book of Esther relate to this archive? Did it reveal heavenly knowledge or participate in a living tradition of sacred wisdom? In this chapter, I argue that the model of the heavenly archive, which insightfully explains so much of the Jewish literary tradition, may not be the most useful paradigm for analyzing the book of Esther. To the contrary, Esther deliberately differentiates itself from that archive: it avoids religious practices or mentions of God, it eschews genres of prophecy or prayer, and it tells a clearly fictionalized and hyperbolic tale. In the language of modern fan studies, Esther casts itself as “fan fiction” rather than “expanded canon.” This chapter explores how Esther self-consciously distinguishes itself from more “sacred” texts, positioning itself as literature that is both profoundly Jewish and unexpectedly earthly.

Whether there is a Hebrew or Aramaic book of Esther among the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to have been settled: the texts found in Cave 4, labeled as 4Q550a–e, most likely are not witnesses to the biblical book. This contribution will present the research done on 4Q550a–e and show why these fragments are not Esther fragments. That does not mean, however, that the book of Esther was not known in Qumran. The chapter will include an investigation of any potential textual traces of the book in the writings of the Qumran movement, which could indicate it was known by members of the movement after all. Then, the authors will bring new arguments to buttress this hypothesis and, more importantly, demonstrate that not just any version of the book of Esther, but the Hebrew version, was known at Qumran.

This chapter explores the role of the Esther Scroll, and the character of Esther, among rabbinic Jewish communities in Sasanian Babylonia during the foundational era in which the Babylonian Talmud was produced. We demonstrate that the figure of Esther and the biblical text bearing her name were of special significance for the Babylonian rabbis. These communities traced their history to the Babylonian Exile a millennium prior, and to those Jews who remained in their exilic homes in the Mesopotamian heartland of the Achaemenid Empire during the subsequent Hellenistic, Parthian, and Sasanian periods. The story of Esther’s diasporic triumph over Haman was thus a foundational tale for Babylonian rabbinic Jewry, with both Esther and Mordecai imagined as proto-rabbis. We demonstrate how Babylonian depictions of Esther in particular, as a markedly female heroine, along with prior Palestinian motifs regarding the meaning of exile, were mobilized to construct a distinctive sense of Babylonian rabbinic self-understanding. We argue that the Babylonian rabbis identified with Esther as quintessentially rabbinic. They juxtaposed their shared diasporic dynamics with metaphors of femininity in their retelling of her narrative. This served to reinforce their own centrality within communal Jewish life and within the longue durée of Jewish history.

As early as the Mishnah (ca. 10–220 CE), rabbinic tradition has held that Purim’s central event is the act of reading from an Esther scroll. From that time onward, Jews have ritualized the materiality, copying, liturgical use of the məgillat (scroll of) Esther more than any other biblical book outside the Torah. This contribution shows how the material life of the Esther scroll, and the ways Jewish tradition has imagined, created, copied, and ritualized it, form a crucial part of the life of the book of Esther in Jewish tradition. The first section of the article contains an examination of the place of the Esther scroll in the Jewish bibliographic imagination. Here I reveal how rabbinic sources conflate Esther with various written texts described in the book, including the Persian royal chronicles (2:23, 6:1) and the Purim letters penned by Esther and Mordecai (9:20–32). This conflation enables Jews to blur the line between two acts of writing: the imagined ancient authoring of the scroll and the contemporary copying of the scroll. This blurring also allows the scroll used in synagogue liturgy to connect congregants to the heroes of the story in a material, immediate way. Further, I show how the scroll’s ambiguous role as both book (sēper) and letter (‘iggeret) (as in b. Meg. 19a) plays out in halakhic conversations around how the Esther scroll has some, but not all, of the Torah scroll’s sanctity. By connecting the məgillat Esther to the sēper Torah, rabbis can place the Esther scroll in discourses around heavenly books and revealed writings. In the second section, I turn to actual scrolls, which are first attested only in the medieval era. Here, the focus is not on textual criticism but on various kinds of paratexts found in Esther scrolls. I first discuss the scribal midrashim (commentaries), such as the special layout of the ten sons of Haman, the practice of beginning every column of the scroll with ha-melek, and customs of enlarging certain letters to insert the name of God into the scroll. Each of these paratexts, I argue, reflects and generates new interpretations of the biblical text. I then turn to the tradition of illustrated məgillôt, which provide a window into visual midrashic traditions, inner biblical typologies, and ways in which Jews read the book of Esther into their own cultural settings. Overall, I hope to show that when it comes to Esther and its scroll form in synagogue liturgy, the medium really is the message. The way in which Jewish tradition conceives of the Esther scroll, creates the scroll, and displays the scroll in liturgy all open windows into significant aspects of how the book of Esther lives in Jewish tradition.

This chapter will consider the reception of the book of Esther within Islamic cultures and societies, from the seventh century CE until modern times. The topic will be divided into three sections: 1) The Quranic references to Haman and the exegetical elaborations that they generated; 2) The treatment of the book of Esther in classical Islamic historiography, which drew on Jewish, Christian, and “organic” Iranian traditions in acculturating the story within different Islamic contexts; and 3) Modern Muslim conceptions about the book of Esther and Haman, from Egypt to Iran. The chapter draws on sources from various genres—including exegetical literature, pre-modern historical and geographical texts, modern blogs, twitter-battles and internet controversies, all of which demonstrate the diversity of the Muslim societies that received the work, as well as the plurality of contexts in which it could feature, some of them highly unexpected.

The book of Esther has long been central to the Jewish consciousness, liturgically performed in the synagogue on Purim and dramatically performed in shpieln (Purim plays) by children and adults alike. In the modern era, interpretations of the book have revolved around six major issues brought to the fore by contemporary events. These developments have led Jewish philosophers, artists, and scholars to turn their attention to Esther in six general ways. By looking at Jewish commentaries, illustrated editions, art, opera, drama, and scholarship, the contours of this rich discourse about Esther will be described. One central question is the degree to which modern interpreters engage with traditional Jewish sources. A related issue is the role accorded or denied to God in the understanding of the Esther narrative. Especially with the rise of feminism, gender has provided a fruitful lens through which to read the story and theorize some of the key characters, especially Vasthi and Esther, although this has provoked a backlash as well. Politics have provided a further axis around which the readings of Esther have turned. With Zionism, Israel entered the political sphere as a nation for the first time in millennia and turned to the biblical books for precedents and occasionally guidance. For some readers, Esther and Mordecai have provided models of Machiavellian leaders, manipulating the political system to their will and utilizing violence to quash threats to their standing in society. Others have focused on the question of genocide, especially after the Shoah (Holocaust). What sparked Haman’s plot, and are there commonalities with the twentieth-century atrocities?

In this article, I examine and compare how the book of Esther is interpreted on two Swedish and one US based online discussion forums (Familjeliv, Flashback, and Reddit). The study is conducted from a reception critical perspective, highlighting dominant interpretations and their ideological consequences, such as the reproduction of relations of domination. While religious actors tend to praise Esther’s courage, as well as portray her as a strong woman and a feminist role model, nonconfessional actors tend to criticize both the story and the character of Esther. Actors on the Swedish online forum Familjeliv, whose users are mainly women, apply a feminist analysis of Esther, where for instance self-identified non-religious actors argue that she is only celebrated because of her looks and obedience towards men. Actors on the Swedish online forum Flashback, whose users are mainly men, instead focus on the acts of violence in the story and reproduce antisemitic accusations against what the actors interpret as a story, and a Jewish holiday, that celebrates genocide of non-Jews. Actors on the US based online forum Reddit, with a less secularized and more gender diverse user-base, discuss the historical (in)accuracy of the story, as well as use the book of Esther to interpret current events such as US politics. The dominant interpretations of Esther on Reddit tend to be highly positive, stressing Esther’s inner and outer beauty. The interpretations are discussed in relation to underlying ideologies and social media logic, showing how biblical reception online tends to be driven by emotions, personalization, and stereotypes. The article argues for the importance of reception critical studies of biblical reception on social media since social media co-structure notions on religion, including the Bible.