Esther and Herodotus part five.

We are now at Esther chapter two. It begins with the word "later" but how much later? We will find out that the events of chapter two probably begin in the sixth year of Xerxes reign.The banquet in the previous chapter took place about 483 BCE, the third year of his reign.  History tells us Xerxes arrived in Sardis, an important Persian territory,  to gather his army and navy, around 481 BCE. He was going to fight the Greeks as planned. In August of 480, the Battle  of Thermopylae is a victory for the Persians. Please read the links if you want a fuller picture of the events surrounding the history of Xerxes and the empire. They also provide some comments about what Herodotus says about these places and events in his Histories.

 In September of 480, the Persians sack Athens. Later that same month, the Greek navy routs the Persian Navy in the Battle of Salamis. The Persian forces are scattered. Xerxes goes back to Sardis. (Histories IX:108-109) While in Sardis, Xerxes develops a passion for the wife of his brother Masistes, who were both there. He tries to seduce his sister in law, but she refuses him. He doesn't force himself on her. Instead,  decides his son will marry her daughter, his niece, thinking this will soften his sister in law to his will. You see,  Darius was next in line to be king. Darius's wife (also his cousin) could have been the next queen. What woman could resist the man who had honored her daughter thusly?

The royal entourage goes then goes back to Susa. His niece is now in Susa, married to Darius, Xerxes' son. Xerxes  forgets about the mother and focuses his attentions on his daughter in law. They have an affair, if you can call it that. Xerxes offers his daughter in law/niece/mistress a gift of anything she wants. It just so happens she wants a beautiful robe that his wife made for him. He tries everything to dissuade her, but she insists. So, he gives her the robe. His wife, Amestris/Vashti, naturally finds out. She decides to take revenge on the girl's mother, Xerxes original target for his lust.

According to Herodotus IX:110-113, Amestris wanted the death of her sister-in-law, whom she considered responsible for Xerxes philandering, even though she had actually done nothing. Amestris waited until the king's birthday, when there was a  banquet feast. It was tradition that what ever was asked of the king while he  was at his birthday feast would be granted. Amestris asked for her sister in law. Xerxes knew the motivation but not the intention. He reluctantly acquiesced, because the rules compelled him to. In the meantime, Xerxes sent a message to his bother Masistes, telling him he should not  keep his present wife, but marry one of Xerxes daughters instead. Masistes sent a message back saying thanks, but no thanks. He wanted to keep his wife. He had no idea what was happening.

Amestris had her sister in law forcefully captured. Her breasts, nose, ears, lips and tongue were cut off. Masistes wife was sent home in this condition. When Xerxes brother went home and found his wife, he was naturally furious and planned a revolt against his brother. Xerxes found out about it and sent an army after him. Xerxes' army slew his brother, his brother's army and his brother's sons. These events in Susa bring us approximately to the time of the events of Esther chapter two and fill us in to what has been happening in Xerxes' life. How's that for context?
 
P.S. What is it with kings, banquets, and awkward or deadly requests from women? Didn't the same thing happen To Herod, when his step daughter requested the head of John the baptist? This seems like an obvious ancient storytelling trope.

Esther and Herodotus part four

I know this particular study has been slow going, but I do intend to finish it.

We are at Esther chapter one, verse 13. Vashti/Amestris has refused to appear before the drunken king and his drunken entourage.  The king is angry. He decides to speak to his advisers, the seven (there is that number again) highest nobles and wise men in the kingdom. The king asks them to tell him what must be done to the Queen for not obeying his command, according to the law.

Notably, the wise men do not directly answer the king's actual question. Instead, pandering to the king,  one of them says, "Queen Vashti has done wrong not only against the King but also all the nobles and the people of all the provinces."  In other words, for refusing to show up and be shown off in front of a bunch of drunken men, the queen has sinned against the entire Persian empire. However, the noble does not state an actual law to that effect, probably because there isn't one. Yet.

The noble goes on to explain why Vashti has wronged the empire. It is because all the other women will hear about Vashti's conduct, follow her example, and begin to despise their husbands. The wives of the nobles (remember the ladies' banquet?) would hear about this outrageousness that very day and would also emulate the queen's conduct. "There would be no end of the disrespect and discord." Ye olde slippery slope fallacy. The authoritarian men were quaking in their boots. If the queen could defy the king, they were doomed.

If there was a law against the queen's behavior, the king's advisers would have found it. We know there wasn't, because they suggested that the king immediately draft such a law. He was to "issue a royal decree....which cannot be repealed."  Vashti was never again to enter the king's presence. Her royal position was to be given to someone else better than she. That would show all the women in the land that they had better respect their husbands. Right.

The good ol' boys present at the banquet thought the advice the king had been given was terrific. So, the king made a royal proclamation and had it sent to every province in the empire, in the appropriate language. It stated that every man should be ruler over his own household. All the men of the empire became petty kings of their own domestic castles.

Notes:

There is no reason to believe any of this ever happened, especially if this story is referring to Amestris, Xerxes' one and only official queen. There is no record of another. Even if Amestris fell out of royal favor, she was still the queen and of noble ancestry. She may have been in disfavor, but, she definitely was not killed. She was also still the mother of the royal heirs, hence a person of import. Also, according  to secular history, Amestris had at least six children. She can't have been that despised by the king. Maybe  the worst that would have happened was that she no longer got invited to the king's bed. Too bad.

Now comes an interesting piece of speculation. Amestris was the daughter of one Otanes, a commander in Xerxes army, according to Herodotus  Histories VII:61. There is also an Otanes mentioned in Histories III: 83   who does not contend for the throne on condition neither he nor his descendants was under any obligation to obey the Persian monarch. Since this was possibly the same Otanes who was the father of Amestris, it could be a reason for Vashti/ Amestris to not fear refusing to obey the king's order to appear before the nobles.

Esther and Herodotus part three

We are at Esther chapter one, verse 9. Xerxes is giving a sumptuous banquet for a bunch of important men. The wine is flowing freely. They are possibly discussing an attack on Greece. Queen Vashti (Amestris?) now enters our story. She is giving a banquet for the women in the royal palace. Unlike the description of the men, we are not told who these women are. They could be wives and concubines of the important men, or they could just be Xerxes wives and concubines, his harem, we are not told.  Herodotus's Histories I:135 tells us that the Persians "marry each one several wives, and they get also a much larger number of concubines." Some well documented information about the concept of harem in ancient Iran (Persia) can be found here (link). Secular history tells us that even though Xerxes may have had many wives and concubines, he only had one head wife and queen, Amestris. She live almost as long as her husband Xerxes. Remember that.

It is interesting that the word banquet occurs twenty times in the book of Esther, equal to all the other times it occurs in the rest of the entire bible. This banquet of Xerxes' lasted seven days. On the seventh day, a drunk Xerxes commanded his seven eunuchs to bring in Queen Vashti, "wearing her royal crown, in order to display her beauty to the people and nobles, for she was lovely to look at. But when the attendants delivered the king's command, Queen Vashti refused to come. Then the king became furious and burned with anger."

Why did Vashti/Amestris refuse to do what the king asked? We are not actually told. It's easy to guess. Perhaps she was embarrassed to be shown off in public. Perhaps she did not want to appear in front of a bunch of drunk men and be subjected to their remarks or rude handling. Perhaps she did not want to leave her guests. Perhaps she was just stubbornly independent, as much as a woman of that time could be, and not afraid of the king.  Perhaps she was also drunk. Perhaps she objected to the plans to go to war with Greece. Just because she was a woman in ancient times doesn't mean she was ignorant or without influence. I've heard much speculation that she was probably asked to appear nude, that's why she refused. The text doesn't give any reason at all. I think it would be a mistake to assume any modern western interpretation of Vashti's refusal to appear before the king.

That said, there is a story in Herodotus' Histories V:18 that takes place at the home of a Macedonian man who is providing hospitality to seven (!) high ranking men in the Persian army, who were envoys of King Darius, Xerxes father. The Persians notice there are no women present at the meal, as is the custom in that place. They pressure the host to bring in the women of the household and insist that the women must sit beside them. As would be expected, the drunk Persian men feel free to molest the women. You should read the story, it also contains cross dressing, deception, and revenge.

Did you notice the multiple occurrances of the number seven? Seven is one of the ancient magic numbers. It will appear more times in the story of Esther. Seven and its multiples, 70, 700, 7000, appears many times in Herodotus's Histories.  Events cover seven days and seven nights. There are even multiple instances of numbers that non multiples of seven, but they end in seven, like 17 and 127.  Amazing, isn't it, how superstition crosses time and cultures.

Esther and Herodotus part two

At this point you may be wondering what an atheist is doing, trying to show how secular history and the book of Esther have many points of agreement. Do I believe the events in this story are literally true and historically accurate?   Not at all. However, I do think the book of Esther is one of the most clever pieces of historical fiction in the bible. The person writing this knew their subject well. They seem to be extremely familiar with the Persians and their customs. They are also familiar enough with the Hebrew language to make a fascinating variety of puns and other word games, and familiar enough with the canonical Hebrew history to borrow from it while doing their own world building. I think the author knew exactly what he was doing and had a lot of fun doing it. For these reasons, I find Esther one of the most fascinating books in the bible.

Time for some more historical context. Though Mordecai and Esther were considered Jews in exile. They were also third generation Persian Jews, born in Persia. They most likely would have never left the general area they were born and raised in. They might not have wanted to.They most likely would have absorbed a great deal of Persian culture. Before they were born, according to the bible,  up to 50,000 Jews had  returned to Israel with permission from Cyrus and Darius, Xerxes' grandfather and father. The "second temple" had been built by 516 BCE, probably also before Esther would have been born. The quotation marks are there because there is no clear evidence of the existence of the first temple, supposedly built by Solomon.

The bible depicts the return of the Jews to their home land as happening in four general waves. The third (458 BCE) and fourth (445 BCE) waves happened after the time period of the story of Esther. I would not be surprised if the author of Esther was among the third or fourth wave of immigrant Persian Jews, possibly leaving with Nehemiah, who was supposed to have been a royal cupbearer to the then current king of Persia, Artaxerxes, the son of king Xerxes of the book of Esther. All we really know is the author has a working knowledge of Persian culture and familiarity with the supposed history of the Jewish monarchy recorded in Samuel and Chronicles. He could also have been familiar with Herodotus's works, which would put the book closer to 400 BCE.

Herodotus was born about 486 BCE and wrote his Histories somewhere about 430 BCE, after he had traveled extensively. Strangely, or not, Herodotus does not mention the Jews/ Hebrews/ Israelites at all. In his Histories Volume II, book VII:89, Herotus does mention people from the region of Syria, including those who lived in Palestine. That would have included the area we know as Israel. It has long been my contention that the Israelites/ Jews  never were as major a name in the area as the bible makes them out to be. All that area was considered part of the first Persian empire for a while. In fact the Jews may never have been autonomously self governing again, if they ever were.

 Many of the people who immigrated to the Palestinian area from various parts of the empire may have ethnically originated from there, but they may not have been religiously united until after the generations of living elsewhere. This seems to be the case in the bible books of Ezra,  Nehemiah, and others. The people had to be told what they were to believe. Also, it is possible that a great deal of the Hebrew scriptures were compiled in an attempt to create a unified monotheistic cult of Yahweh that didn't actually exist pre-exile. There were Egyptian Jews with their own yahweh temple in Elephantine, as late as 411 BCE, who seem to have no knowledge of the torah or much of the claimed Jewish pre-exile history. They were also polytheistic.

It is taking me longer than usual to write these posts because of all the research and cross checking. Even so, it is quite possible some of my claims are erroneous. You are free to check anything that sound off to you.

Esther and Herodotus, part one

Now let us get into the text of Esther. The story tells us it takes place during the time of Xerxes, who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Cush (Egypt). This is referring to the Persian Empire, also known as the Achaemenid Empire, between 486-465 BCE. The author tells us "Xerxes reigned from his royal throne in the citadel of Susa."

The links are an important part of this study. They provide tons of historical context and include many of Herodotus's references to the people places and events we will be covering. It is too much for me to include all that information in the blog posts. It is your homework to read it for yourself. Chase down any rabbits you wish to follow. Who knows, you may find you disagree with some of what I say. That is okay.

The author of Esther tells us that the time period is three years into the reign of Xerxes, which would make it approximately 483 BCE. Xerxes would be about 39 years old. He had just finished suppressing revolts in Egypt and Babylon. The Persian Empire under Darius, Xerxes father, had lost a war with Greece, an attempt to expand the empire. In 483, Xerxes was planning to back to war with Greece. The author of Esther tells us Xerxes "gave a banquet for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the province were present." For a full 180 days before the banquet, he had been putting his kingdom's wealth and glory on display.

We can read about Xerxes and his rise to power in book VII of Herodotus's Histories. In paragraph VII:8, we can read where Xerxes "summoned a chosen assembly of the best men among the Persians" that he might learn their opinions and also declare his intentions. According to Herodotus, Xerxes addressed the men with this speech: "....from the day on which I mounted the throne, I have not ceased to ponder by what means I may rival those who have preceded me in this post of honor, and increase the power of Persia as much as any of them." He wants to make a name for himself, like his father (Darius 1) and grandfather (Cyrus) before him. His plan is to annex Greece into his empire, obtaining satisfaction and revenge. Xerxes goes on to say, "For this cause I have now called you together, that I might make known to you what I design to do."

There is much more of Xerxes speech about how he planned to attack Greece in Herodotus's Histories, including replies by some of the men present and a few dream sequences. It is my belief that it is quite likely this gathering of Xerxes's is one and the same as the one mentioned in the opening verses of the book of Esther. The time period certainly works.

Verses 5 and 6 of Esther chapter one describe the setting of the banquet held for all those important men. It was in an enclosed garden. Around the garden were hangings of "white and blue linen, fastened with white linen cords and purple material to silver rings on marble pillars. There were couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement made of porphyry, marble, mother of pearl, and other costly stones." Wine was being served in golden goblets, and it was flowing as generously as the guests wanted it to.

This leads me to another passage in Herodotus Book I:113. Speaking of Persian customs, Herodotus claimed, "They are very fond of wine and drink it in large quantities....it is also their practice to deliberate on affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before the by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is approved, they act on it; if not, they put it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine." This also seems to line up with the story in Esther.

Esther and Herodotus: the main characters

The first main character of the book of Esther is, of course, Esther herself. There is no record of Esther in history,  outside of the bible. That is not surprising. Why should there be? If she actually existed, she would not have been important to anyone but the Jews. We will see later that her position in the palace was not as exalted as is usually assumed. If she existed, her name may not even have been Esther. Many characters in bible stories are given symbolic names that have meaning attached to the story being told.

In spite of being the main character, Esther does not appear in the story till chapter two, after the stage is set. There we learn that her father and mother were dead. She was brought up by her cousin Mordecai, as his daughter. Mordecai and Esther were Jews living in Susa, Persia (Modern day Iran). They were three generations from Kish, their great grandfather of the tribe of Benjamin, "who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar." We will talk about that more later.

Esther's original Hebrew name was Hadassah. Her Persian name, Esther, may mean star or could be derived from the name of the goddess Ishtar, who was also known as the queen of heaven. Please read the linked article on Ishtar/Inanna. I consider it quite possible that the name Esther is in fact a deliberate association with the goddess. Perhaps Yahweh is never mentioned in the book because it is actually meant to be a way that the Hebrews, who were forbidden to worship the Queen of heaven, could obliquely honor Ishtar without getting in trouble with the Hebrew priests. Perhaps they attributed their salvation during the Persian era of their exile to the goddess. It is important to remember that religions were not so firmly separated and delineated in ancient times as they are now.

Esther is said to be very good looking, "lovely in form and feature," which is a key element to the story because her beauty gets her into the palace of the king, Xerxes I, our other main character. There is plenty of extrabiblical source material for this man. Xerxes, called Ahasuerus in the Hebrew bible, was son of Darius and king of Persia from 486-465 BCE. There is some dispute as to whether the Ahasuerus of the Hebrew scriptures actually was Xerxes  I, but for the purposes of this study we will assume they are one and the same. We will see that the historian Herodotus's description of Xerxes seems to mesh quite well with what the bible tells us.

Esther and Herodotus- introduction

Hello, readers! I'm going to attempt something ambitious here in the coming weeks, a comparison of the bible book of Esther and what history and Herodotus have to say about the Persians at the time period presented. When I was a christian, I led a women's bible study with this theme. Now I will try to do it justice as an atheist. This is one study I wanted to complete on this blog before I stop posting for good. I don't know if I will stop after this, but it is an option. Just in case, I will have accomplished my goals for this blog and can leave at any time, feeling closure. My life has been rebooted in the last few months and I no longer feel the same strong need for this outlet that I once did.

As usual, I will be using the NIV version of the Bible.

First let us take a look at the book of Esther here. No one actually knows who wrote Esther, but tradition often attributes it to Mordecai, one of the characters in the book. The story takes place during the reign of Ahauserus, also known as Xerxes, between 485 and 465 BCE. The author appears to be very familiar with the culture and of Persia and its royalty. This leads to a belief by some that it was written within 100 years of the supposed events.

The descriptions of people and customs mesh so well with the writings of Herodotus, a Greek historian, that it is my personal opinion that the author of Esther was either familiar with Herodotus's writings or he once lived in the same general area and time as Herodotus. Herodotus lived and wrote around the same time period that Xerxes was king of Persia. I will be using and quoting from an English translation of  Herodotus's Histories, found here.

Esther is most likely a work of historical fiction, placing fictional people's lives in a genuine historical setting. It's purpose appears to be an etiological explanation of how the celebration of the Jewish holiday Purim came about. The theme is the continuing salvation of a remnant of the Jews in Persian exile. This book is unique in that it implies a hidden hand working on behalf of the Jews but never mentions god/Yahweh at all.

I hope you will find this study fascinating and fun. It is not meant to be too serious, mostly speculative. Join me in the journey. Till next time.