Episode 235: Aaron Koller - Biblicizing Esther
Aaron Koller joins Pete and Jared in this episode of The Bible for Normal People to explore the book of Esther, discussing scholarly opinions of its historical accuracy, major themes within the narrative, challenges to current Jewish beliefs, and how the story interacts with Purim. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What happens in the story of Esther?
Is Esther historical or fictional?
What do scholars say about the timing and circumstances during which the book of Esther was written?
Why was Esther written? What did the author want to communicate?
How does exile play into the narrative of Esther?
What are some of the historical problems or difficulties with the book of Esther?
How does Esther challenge current Jewish beliefs?
What are ways that Jewish interpretation or tradition history, or maybe even Christian interpretation, has handled the message of Esther in light of scholarship?
How does the Catholic Bible story of Esther differ from the Jewish and Protestant story?
How do Jewish communities celebrate or honor Purim? How does the story of Esther tie into that?
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Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
What is the Jewish life like in exile? I think the book of Esther is, in a large part, meant to try to open those questions and say something about life in exile. — Aaron
There's nothing about fiction that makes it inferior to nonfiction. Fiction is sometimes the best books in the world, which actually can address questions in more profound ways than something that's constrained by facts. — Aaron
Esther is even more realistic than the vast majority of biblical stories, because there's nothing supernatural in this book. Esther is actually entirely believable in the sense that nothing miraculous happens. The whole story is on a mortal plane. — Aaron
There's nothing in the story that makes it inherently impossible to take as accurate. We just sort of run into facts that make it likely that the story is a really good historical fiction rather than nonfiction. — Aaron
It's really only because we happen to know a lot about the ancient world, that we assume the story is fictional. — Aaron
This is gonna sound sort of obvious, it’s worth saying anyway—the author of Esther didn't know that he was writing a biblical book. — Aaron
There's no mention of God. And this is, on the one hand, a really obvious observation about the book of Esther. On the other hand, probably the most important thing to say about the book of Esther, because that's so crazy for a book in the Bible not to talk about God. — Aaron
It used to be that if you opened a Catholic Bible, the book of Esther would start in a very different way than if you opened a Protestant or Jewish Bible. — Aaron
We have a real gap here between traditional readings and a scholarly approach, and it's not that one's right, one's wrong. It's that they really are asking different kinds of questions. — Aaron
Mentioned in This Episode
March Class: Why God Died: How Atonement Theories Try to Explain Salvation taught by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw
Books: Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought by Aaron Koller
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Pete
You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared
And I'm Jared Byas.
[Intro Music]
Jared
Welcome, welcome, everyone to this episode of the podcast. Before we get started, we wanted to mention that our March class is coming up, and it's called "Why God Died: How atonement theories try to explain salvation."
Pete
Yeah, this is going to be taught by our friend, and nerd in residence, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw.
Jared
She's fantastic. I feel like people—you know, I'm getting a little bit of a complex because…
Pete
Yeah, annoyed a little bit actually.
Jared
Exactly. I think people like her more than us. But that's okay. That's okay. That's what we want. As always, the class is pay-what-you-can until the class ends, and then you can download it after that if you sign up later for $25. But if you sign up and you can't make the live class, no worries, you can still do pay what you can, go ahead and sign up and then we'll send a link afterward that you can access later.
Pete
Yeah. And you're asking, "Where do I sign up?" Well go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/atonement. Simple as that.
Jared
That's it. And our topic today, to get back to the task at hand, is biblicizing Esther, and our guest is Aaron Koller.
Pete
Yeah, Aaron is a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University, and he's currently a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, and he's written a number of books, one of which is "Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought," which is immediately relevant for this episode.
Jared
Absolutely. So let's jump in and do a deep dive on Esther.
[Intro music]
Aaron
“There's nothing about fiction that makes it inferior to nonfiction. Fiction is sometimes the best books in the world, which actually can address questions in more profound ways than something that's constrained by facts. So if the Jews are really worried by some pretty deep issues about like, "what does it mean to be a Jew in the diaspora at this point," it could be that a really probing fictional work can raise those issues in a much more profound and searching way.”
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Jared
Well, welcome to the podcast, Aaron, it's great to have you here.
Aaron
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Jared
Yeah, and for our listeners—they won't know—But it's 10pm where you are and you're recording in a library. So it feels a little, like, doubly mysterious. It's late at night, we're in a library, talking about Esther. So thanks for jumping in.
Pete
A bit nerdy too. I mean, what five year old dreams of talking about Esther at 10 o'clock at night in the library?
Jared
[Laughs]
Pete
You know, they wanna be an astronaut. No, we're stuck talking about Esther.
Jared
Exactly. Alright-
Aaron
What could happen if I got into the library after closing hours?
Pete
Yeah, right? [Laughs]
Jared
This is what happens.
Pete
There's a movie about that somewhere.
Jared
This is a cautionary tale. So let's start with, we really want to dig into the story of Esther. But maybe it's helpful for folks who aren't familiar with the story to get a little overview of, you know, the setting, the plot, the main characters, what happens here?
Aaron
Sure! Okay. The story is set in the Persian capital of Susa, and there are four main characters. Two of them are the Jewish characters, who sort of compete for the title of main character of the story. That's Esther—who winds up being the Queen—and her uncle, Mordecai—who we don't know much about biographically in the story, he doesn't get a lot of backstory, but has a pretty big role to play in the narrative itself. And then there's the king—who in the Hebrew texts is called Achashverosh or Ahasuerus. His English name, since this refers to a real person, is Xerxes and that... So those names actually match up if you go back to his original name. And then there's a Persian official named Haman. So those are the four big characters.
And there's essentially two plotlines in the story that sort of start together and then diverge and then come back together. And that's that Esther is the queen, she's secretly Jewish—no one knows that she's Jewish—and then, through an accident, Haman winds up really hating Mordecai the Jew—for trivial reasons, like nothing interesting—But because of that, he decides that he's actually going to massacre all of the Jews rather than just take his anger out on Mordecai himself. And so there's the sort of personal animosity between Haman and Mordecai, and then there's this genocidal plot hanging over the Jews for much of the story. Mordecai tries to get Esther to intervene and eventually she does, she afterall is the queen, so she goes to the king and throws herself in front of the king and tries to save the Jews. It's a little bit convoluted how she goes about it, but in the end, at a banquet, she has this great reveal where she says, "My life and the life of my entire people is in danger because of one man." And the king says, "Who is the man who would dare hurt my queen?" And she says, "It's that guy, Haman, your great adviser."
Haman is pretty quickly executed, that doesn't actually solve the genocide problem—The Jews are still slated to be killed a few months later—But then, like, sort of to no one's surprise at that point, the Jews wind up defending themselves and actually killing anyone who tried to kill them. And that's basically where the story ends with everyone on the Jewish side of things, and on the sort of good Persian side—which is the king and most of the Persians—living happily ever after and Haman and his family, and other bad guys, dead.
Pete
So a good time was had by all.
Aaron
Well, most. [Laughs]
Pete
Except for Haman. Right? So...
Aaron
Yeah, yeah. I mean, come on.
Pete
Well, Aaron, tell us that—also, you know, another issue we like to think about here at the Bible for Normal People is just the setting of some of these books—And I mean, I imagine if there's some disagreement in debate, let us know that too—But when was the book written? And under what circumstances? What have scholars sort of come up with there?
Aaron
Right. So, I mean, you know, you and your audience, you know scholars, so of course, there's debate. Yeah, so scholars tend to get hung up on the question.—Well, I said it was set in the Persian capital, and it refers to the real Persian king Xerxes, who, you know, we know a lot about from the Greek side, and he was, you know, he's a real person who did a lot of important things—including invading Greece. But scholars tend to get hung up on the question of whether it was actually written in what's called, from the biblical perspective, the Persian period, or a little bit later in the Hellenistic period. With the big dividing line being is it before or after Alexander the Great comes through and conquers the entire region?
Pete
Which was when?
Aaron
Late 330s, as he comes farther and farther to the east. So, that's- People debate about this. I'm not sure how much really depends on it. What's clear is that the author takes for granted that we really know about the Persian capital, like he describes the palace in some architectural detail, you get a picture of this really ostentatious feasts that they're having, the banquets that they're having, the throne rooms with multiple layers of security before you can get to it. So there's lots of lots of realistic detail in there. At the same time, people have pointed out that the Greeks love to make fun of the Persians for their ostentatious-ness, or over the top, the veneration of the king kind of thing. Whereas the Greeks were much more egalitarian. And like, you know, maybe there's someone who's leading but that might rotate, there's no one who has a divine right of king and therefore a big throne kind of thing. So there's... you can debate whether it's—I should say that Xerxes rules from 485 to 465 BC, and Alexander is about 150 years later, so it's probably somewhere in there, that would be my guess. But if you know, someone said, "No, no, it's 30 years after that," I'm not sure that much depends on it. There is a lot of realism and the other thing is, it's clearly not from the same time as the story. It sort of refers back to the king, like that great king, back then who ruled over such a large empire. So, it's written from a lighter time period, but how far later it's hard to say exactly. It was within a century or so. Of course, it doesn't mean that it refers to events that really happened—I don't know if you'll come back to that later on. But…
Pete
Well, yeah, I mean, let's get into that in a bit. Because I think that's a really important piece for people to sort of understand the lay of the land, you know, of...
Jared
Well, if I can, maybe, to ask a question that maybe navigates around to that question, is the question—You know, we talked about when, and maybe where it was written, but what about why it was written? And I think it's important to ask that question, because I think a lot of people who grew up in certain religious traditions, that's almost a question that doesn't even dawn on them to ask because the answer—again, for me growing up in my tradition, it's like, "Well, because it actually happened and this is, we're recording historical data. That's why it was written down. Why wouldn't you write down history and what exactly happened? And, you know, God has preserved this historical record for us, so that we can understand God's history." That kind of thing. So to even ask, "why was it written?" I think assumes some things. So I don't know if we can ask the why question without maybe dipping our toes into the historical question, but maybe you can help us navigate that.
Aaron
Yeah. Well, I think that's actually a great point. And I do think that, even assuming, you know, like, "Oh, this is exactly what happened," which we can come back to. I don't think that's actually enough to explain why something was written. I mean, the Bible itself often says, like, "Oh, there's more stuff that happened but I'm not gonna tell you about it." It's not taken for granted that because something happened, therefore it has to be written down. We can talk about the details of Esther in a bit because here it's particularly not clear that reading Esther will help understand God's plan for the world, because God's never mentioned here. But even in a story where God is mentioned, most of the biblical narratives, I don't think the biblical authors took it for granted that because something happened, it ought to be written. I mean, we modern people have this historical impulse, like, you know, I'm always shocked if there isn't a biography or a shelf of biographies about some important person. Like if something happened, like there should be books about it. But that doesn't seem to be true in the Bible. You know, they're very selective in what they tell—or at least what was preserved. So, I do think that—that, you know, the way you frame the question is really helpful, because I think no matter what, we have to ask that question. In this case, yeah, maybe I should have said a little bit more about the time period, not so much about when exactly the book was written, but the setting. So the people who lived in Judah—Judea—were exiled back in 586 BC, so, by the time Xerxes comes to the throne, in Susa, Jews had been exiled for 100 years, or a little bit more than 100 years. They were exiled by the Babylonians, the Babylonians sort of collapsed and were taken over by the Persians. So, now, Jews live in exile, in Persia.
Pete
Can I ask you a question, Aaron? At this point, how many Jews have returned? I mean, some—Many stayed.
Aaron
Right, exactly. Right.
Pete
But some came back.
Aaron
A temple, already, was built in between, before the story of Esther, before Xerxes. So we have pretty specific dates and stories in various biblical books. So the temple has been standing in Jerusalem for about 30 years by the time Xerxes becomes the king. But we're told in the Bible that the community in Jerusalem, when the Second Temple was built, was small and poor, and really struggling just to survive in a tough neighborhood without any real, functioning government or economy.
Pete
Yeah.
Aaron
So, the vast majority of Jews are still in, call it of exile or diaspora, but at this point, it's by choice. They've opted not to go back, no one's telling them they can't go to Jerusalem or to Judah. But they've opted to stay, and you know, we got a picture from the book of Esther, they've become pretty comfortable there. I mean, Mordecai has a really good Babylonian Persian name. So, does Esther, like, they seem to be pretty much at home, off in exile and diaspora. So the Jews, I would say that the more that life became comfortable in diaspora—which it clearly did—the better life was for the Jews in pragmatic terms, right? Like their way of life, it's just comfortable, like, they're not struggling, they're not slaves, they're not being uprooted and moved around all the time. So that's a good thing. But theologically, I think that itself is actually a problem for a lot of Jews, at the time. That's one of the things that Esther is trying to think about, because it was never supposed to be this way, right? Like the prophets had told Israel, "Well, God's gonna punish you and destroy Jerusalem, and then bring you back." And they're not back. And you might say, like, "But you could go back," but they'd say, like, "No, but, it's not that we're supposed to go back, God's supposed to bring us back." So they're sitting there in exile, like, trying to figure out like, what does it mean to live as a Jew in exile? You know, with all the normal things about biblical religion, like, you know, "We don't have a temple, we don't have a king, we don't have a center of religion," like all these things that, you know, the Bible sort of depends on, don't exist here. And so what is the Jewish life like in exile? And I think, I think the book of Esther is, in a large part, meant to try to open those questions and say something about life in exile.
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Pete
We've mentioned a couple times already, maybe we can talk about the historical issues in the book. And I mean, just one question toward that topic of historicity, there is—I'm sensing from what you're saying—there's a realism, perhaps, to animosity on the part of Persians towards Jews. Right? So we have Haman, who—I mean, one can expect that to happen, perhaps. So, might there be something in the memory of the people that, you know, they're talking about some very difficult periods of time that they had living under Persian authority?
Aaron
Yeah, it's a great question. And I think certainly, through the lens of later readers, this seems like so natural, because we know at various times of pretty deep rooted anti-semitism in various areas of the world. So, you know, looking back in history, like, "Oh, well, of course, you know, there's anti-semitism in the Persian court as well." We don't know of any, from any other sources, real animosity towards the Jews in particular on the part of the Persians. You know, the Persians... Hey, look, on the one hand, they're a militaristic, imperial power, you know, they're not nice in any normal way. [Laughs]
Pete
[Laughing]
Aaron
But on the other hand, they have a real "live and let live" attitude towards the minorities in their midst. In some of the kings, this is like a real philosophical pluralism, like, they really respect every group that they've inherited in their empire, and we don't really know that they've singled out the Jews. Even in the book of Esther, we get the sense that there are Persians, like Haman, who turn on the Jews, but there are lots of other Persians who are on the Jews' side. And actually, you know, we get this line that when Haman's decree goes out to kill all the Jews, the entire city of Susa is sort of befuddled and confused by that, because...
Pete
[Hums]
Aaron
You get the impression like they've been living alongside each other for a couple of generations already. And they're like, "Why? Why Jews? Like what's wrong with Jews?" It's hard to say whether that's really reflecting something. Of course, it's totally possible that there was some episode where something went terribly wrong, and, you know, Persians absolutely turned on the Jews pretty violently, but we don't know of it from elsewhere. And it is possible that this is sort of a Jewish sense of... A sense that, you know, "We are different, and therefore, we wonder whether everyone else hates us because we're different." Even if that hatred is not really there all the time. It's hard to unpack that in the terms of-
Pete
I mean, also, I mean, it's very, you know, it's entirely plausible. And it's probably the truth, that this is a fictional drama, an account—well, it's really not even a drama, but—it's a fictional account that gives voice to a real issue. Sort of like the book of Jonah, you know, it's a fictional account that gives voice to some issue that is of value to a particular community.
Aaron
I assume that's right. I mean, there's levels here that we could pick apart and worry about, but besides not having evidence for the story of Esther from elsewhere, which we wouldn't necessarily expect to have. Of course, Xerxes's a real person. But Herodotus, the Greek historian, is contemporary with Xerxes. He actually travels to Persia during Xerxes' reign, and happens to tell us about Xerxes' wife, Amestris, whom he's married to when he comes to the throne and who outlives him. So, in the story of Esther, who in the book, becomes queen halfway through Xerxes' reign and then doesn't fit in. Herodotus also tells us some other details about how the Persian kings married, which doesn't work with the Book of Esther. So, it's hard to say like, oh, it couldn't possibly have happened. But it doesn't seem to be, doesn't seem to match what we do know.
And then I think, again—I think this is sort of implicit here, in the way you phrased the question, which was really insightful—because there's nothing about fiction that makes it inferior to nonfiction. Fiction is sometimes the best books in the world, which actually can address questions in more profound ways than something that's constrained by facts. So, if the Jews are really worried by some pretty deep issues about like, "What does it mean to be a Jew in the diaspora at this point?" It could be that just mundane facts on the ground, they're not sufficient to actually think through that. Whereas a really probing fictional work can raise those issues in a much more profound and searching way. It's also, I should say, like, it's not impossible there is some story behind this where like, there was some animosity, some episode that gave rise to the story. But I think as we have it, it's basically a work of literature.
Pete
So, okay, so while we're on this, let's just continue then, and give us a sense of, you know, historical problems in the book. And again, not just like, say, "Haha what a dumb book, it's historically inaccurate." But that gives us also a sense of sort of the feel of the book, the genre of the book. So what would you point to—to help people see the historical difficulties with the book?
Aaron
So, the truth is, other than the story itself, the book is very realistic.
Pete
[Hums]
Aaron
I'd say even more realistic than the vast majority of biblical stories, because I mentioned this before, but it's really sort of central to thinking about Esther, there's no- there's nothing supernatural in this book. You know, you get to Daniel who's more or less—like, both the book and the character more or less contemporary with Esther, and Daniel gets, you know, thrown into a lion's den, but don't worry the angel's there to close the lion's mouth. Or, you know, his friends get tossed into a fiery furnace that's raised up to seven times the heat, but like, don't worry the angel's there to like somehow magically get them cooled off in the middle of this fire. But Esther is actually entirely believable in the sense that nothing miraculous happens. The whole story is on a mortal plane, there are real characters—some of whom are sketched. It's a very short story in the end of the day, but, but some of the characters is sketched—Like you really get a sense for like Haman’s personality, you get a sense for some of Esther's identity conflicts in a way that, I think, is both very gripping and essential to the story, like she's struggling with who does she want to be and where her loyalties lie. And these things are done in a very effective way. And the, it's not obviously fully plausible that in a battle 75,000 people die on one side and zero people die on the other side, but that, at least, doesn't involve anyone you know, stopping the sun in the sky or, you know, stars falling out of sky to fight against enemies or anything.
I mean, it is like, they picked up the swords and they fought and they won. So, there's nothing in the story that sort of like boggles your imagination. And the truth is until modern times—and I mean, like relatively recent modern times—everyone took it for granted that the story was historically accurate, because there's nothing in the story that makes it inherently impossible to take as accurate. It's only once we learn more about Persia, and we're like, "Oh, wait, this is a real person, like, Xerxes is busy invading Greece. How can you be throwing 180-day parties?" Or, you know, we know his wife, so, you know, how could he be marrying this other person? Then we just sort of run into facts that make it likely that the story is like, a really good historical fiction, rather than nonfiction. But the story itself doesn't sort of sit up and knock you on the head and say, like, "Come on, you can't take me seriously."
Pete
Right.
[Laughs]
Aaron
Like, there are other books that just, you know—besides the miracles, which is obviously a matter of faith to take or not take on face value—but there are books outside of the Hebrew Bible. So, books like in the Apocrypha, like Judith, which start with historical nonsense, like “Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Assyria, and a town called Tertullia”. And you're like, "Wait, none of this is right. Like none of these facts are lining up." So it's almost as if the book is telling you from the beginning, like, "Look, this is not history, right? Like, we're reading something different here." There's nothing in Esther that does that to you. You know, it sets it very clearly in the third year of a real king, in a real palace, and a real capital. So, it's really only because we happen to know a lot about the ancient world, that we assume the story is fictional.
Pete
Okay, so, you've written about how the book of Esther challenges current Jewish beliefs, which is fascinating. Could you talk about what that means? And so what? Who cares? Why challenge current Jewish beliefs?
Aaron
Yes, so this actually goes back to Jared's question from earlier. Because, you know, the question of "why is a book written?" It looks very different when we read a book as biblical. Which, of course, you know, these books reach us, and they're in the Bible. So, it means they're bound in certain covers, and they, you know, are preceded and succeeded by certain books, and you're like, "Well, I know how to read this book. It's a biblical book, it's speaking to me across the generations." But—this is gonna sound sort of obvious, it was worth saying anyway—the author of Esther didn't know that he was writing a biblical book.
Pete
Right.
Aaron
He didn't know that there was gonna be this thing that was gonna be bound in like leather covers, or like stuck in every hotel room, that would be the Bible, and therefore, didn't take it for granted that this book was just going to like sort of fit into one grand message to people thousands of years later. So I think that's important to say, even though it's obvious, because it opens the door to think like, "Oh, hold on, what's on his agenda? And he's not just writing chapter 17 in a long multi-part series here, he actually has something possibly distinctive and unique to say." And the book of Esther is so different from most of what we get in the Bible that, I think, that has to be intentional. And this, actually, took me a long time to sort of come to think of it in this way—But Esther is, as I sort of mentioned a couple of times already, that there's no mention of God. And this is, on the one hand, a really obvious observation about the book of Esther. On another hand, probably the most important thing to say about the book of Esther, because that's so crazy for a book in the Bible not to talk about God. So it's part-
Pete
Agreed.
Aaron
[Laughs] Right? I'm glad. To partly that's a question of like, "How could a book that doesn't talk about God find its way into the Bible?" Which I think is a really important question. But it also goes back to the author, because this has to be a conscious move. I mean, it's not like today where like, "Oh, I don't wanna say anything about God in my books, because then people won't take me seriously." No, on the contrary, everyone takes God for granted. I mean, you can debate, you know, there was a lot of theological debates in ancient Israel, but like, that there was God is not a serious question in ancient Israel. So the choice to not tell the story with any mention of God has to be, like, a really deliberate move on the author's part. But then sort of like a whole bunch of observations that kept piling up that made me realize that the book is really doing something pretty dramatic.
So, there's a number of features of the description of the royal palace in Susa, which are really reminiscent—like very closely reminiscent, even in the words that are used—of the temple in Jerusalem and other descriptions in the Hebrew Bible. Like, that's interesting, you know. Is this a suggestion, for example, that the temple used to be really important, but now, it's not so much anymore, and it's been replaced in significance by the palace in Susa? That would be a pretty daring thing to say, maybe no one would want to come out and say that, but you can sort of drop hints about it. The heroes, Mordecai and Esther, are from the tribe of Benjamin—which is not the tribe that's supposed to give us the great leaders of the Jewish people anymore. Right? That, of course, is supposed to be from the tribe of Judah and the lineage of David. Which other books pick up on, you know, other books in the same time period pick up on Judah's significance but this book’s like "No, no, it's actually related to Saul." "Like, Saul. I haven't heard about Saul in like 600 years." [Laughs]
Pete
[Laughs]
Aaron
But okay, you know. Saul is sort of like the anti-David, and like, you know, that's the model of a hero here. There's no apology for the fact that Esther is sort of bluntly intermarried. It's like, "Yeah, she marries a king. That's okay." So, at the beginning, like okay, "Well, you know, it's a secret. So she had no way, no choice, that's fine." But by the end of the story, she's come clean that she's Jewish, and there's no attempt to say like, "Okay, well now that I'm…" You know, "Oh, honey, Your Majesty. Now that you know, I'm Jewish, we're gonna have to have a kosher kitchen." It's like, there's no Jewish law in the book. There's no-one's keeping the Sabbath. No one's praying, like...
Pete
So very not like Daniel.
Aaron
Exactly. It was like a perfect contrast. Because Daniel is at the same time, basically the same place, and he's like, "Oh. I have to pray at my window three times a day in the direction of Jerusalem." So Esther never prays—certainly not three times a day—there's no mention of Jerusalem. You know, we said earlier that the temple in Jerusalem is already standing. But you would never know that from the book of Esther. The book of Esther, like, ignores the fact that there are Jews back in Jerusalem, like, the only place that matters in the book of Esther is Susa, that's where everything happens. That's where the fate of the Jews rests. Like, you know, they're gonna live or die depends on, like, whether Haman or Esther wins the battle for the king's heart. But the fact that there's a temple in Jerusalem that's offering sacrifices? Irrelevant to Jewish history. Which is a crazy thing to say—and like, again, you know, it's hard to be sure that the author would say that in such bold terms, but I do think that the author is is trying to say, like, "Look, life in exile is not the same as you know, the book of Samuel, or stories of David, and the kings and so on. Like, it's just not true that the center of the universe is Jerusalem anymore. Maybe that was true. But you know what, right now Jerusalem is actually part of the Persian Empire and so the important things that affect even the future of Jerusalem are actually taking place in Susa."
Yeah, so I think, you know, politically, I think, it thinks a lot harder about diaspora and not just as a sort of fate to bemoan, but as a reality that you need to think about. Like, if you're going to be a diaspora Jew, you can't just spend your life lamenting the fact that you're not in Jerusalem. You can, but you might die. [Laughs] Because that's not how life works here. And here, you need to be politically astute, you need to be wandering the halls of power, you need to be like, have your ear to the ground to find out who's with you, who's against you. Because that's how life works in diaspora. So, this is the new reality. It's not a question of whether you like it or not just, it's just the way life works.
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Jared
So given that reality—you know, and you talked about the fact that the author wouldn't have recognized at the time that this is going to be in this grand message as sort of this, put next to other books, and then be read in this univocal way where there's this grand message. So I would assume the fact that it has been put in this library of books we call the Bible has changed how it's been interpreted over the years. What are ways then that Jewish interpretation or Jewish tradition history, or maybe even Christian interpretation has handled Esther in a way? Because I would imagine there's people who have been uncomfortable with all the things that you just said about how Esther seems to be portraying life in the diaspora.
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's right. It's hard to know exactly when and where it started. But I think that's exactly right, that already some of the early readers are like, "What kind of book is this?" [Laughing] "We can't tell this story to our kids. You know, if I tell the story of Queen Esther to my daughter, you know, she's gonna think it's okay to marry a Gentile and like, you know, then the Jewish people are gonna fall apart and not gonna survive." And you know, not to mention that, you know, there's no God in Jerusalem and, and so on. I think that's definitely true. So, it's hard to know where it starts, but we get—but one of the things that's really fascinating about Esther is that there are at least two, probably a little bit more but, but at least two really different versions of the book in the Bible. And it's going to totally depend on which Bible you open. So, now it's a little bit complicated, because everyone wants to be like, ecumenical and pluralistic and stuff, but it sort of messes up the neat dichotomies that we used to have in religious divisions, but it used to be—still true in some places—but it used to be that if you opened a Catholic Bible, the book of Esther would start in a very different way than if you opened a Protestant or Jewish Bible. And a Catholic Bible starts the Book of Esther with Mordecai having a dream. And this this is totally not in the book in the Jewish and Protestant versions. It was in essentially—I mean, like, like most things that are the Catholic scripture, but not in Protestant Scripture—Basically, it was in Christian scripture until Luther sort of noticed that it wasn't in the Jewish version and was like, "Well, this doesn't belong. You know, this is obviously something that the church has put in, we have to take it out."
So, the version of the book of Esther that Jews and Protestants have, just doesn't have a dream of Mordecai. The Catholic version has Mordecai having a dream, he says he sees two dragons who are fighting, and the fight is really severe and it threatens to overturn the entire world until a little spring comes out from the earth and becomes a river and rushes through them and brings peace. That's the very beginning of the book. And again, it's still in the Catholic version, the very end of the book has Mordecai saying—after the whole drama with Haman and so on—he says, "Ah, now I understand Haman and I, we were the two dragons. Our animosity threatened to overturn the whole world." It's not a perfect match to the story, but that's what he says. But Esther is the spring that became a river and brought peace to the world. And this is a really interesting dream, because, first of all, just the fact that he has a dream already puts this period you mentioned earlier, Daniel. So, Daniel's the great dream interpreter, or maybe even going further back, Joseph is the dreamer who can also interpret dreams. So, now you're like, "Oh, Mordecai, I get it. You're like a biblical hero, like Daniel, like Joseph, like, God sends you dreams that sort of hints at what's happening. And then you uncover like the meaning of the dream that was a sort of prophetic message about what was going to happen."
But that's the kind of Mordecai that we don't get in the Protestant, Jewish version of the text at all. There's nothing prophetic about Mordecai in the other version of the text, he has no insight into the world like beyond what anyone else has. He's just a regular person who's like working hard to try to stay alive and make his way through a messy reality. So, at some point, there was a version of the book that was developed that included Mordecai the dreamer, who was more of a biblicizing hero. There's also in the same versions, in the Catholic version, there are some additional scenes in the middle of the book, one of which is actually—people have probably seen these—like dozens of late medieval Renaissance art of Esther fainting in front of the king, and find like all of the great artists painted this scene. That scene’s not in the book, in the Jewish/Protestant version of the book. She never faints, but in the Catholic version she does faint, that's an additional scene. And in the Catholic version, that's immediately after she has this extraordinary prayer to God apologizing for being intermarried, protesting that she is innocent, she only does it because she has to. But really, she hates being queen, she loves God, she just wants to be faithful to her Jewish community. And this sort of apology is just not there at all in the Hebrew version—that's also the Protestant version.
So, you know, it's always an interesting question, like, what, was it added in? Or was it taken out? Obviously, you know, one or the other, because we have these two versions. I think in this case, it's pretty clear that it was added in. And the reason is exactly—Jared, what you said—because some readers were like, "This book is crazy. Like, we just can't have a book like this. So at least let's have Mordecai be clearly a prophet. And at least if Esther is going to be intermarried and eating, you know, non-kosher food and drinking wine from the king’s table, at least let her apologize for it."
Pete
Feel a little guilty about it.
Aaron
Yeah, exactly. Right [Laughs].
Pete
Well, you use this term, Aaron. Let's continue with this, because it might help people listening—you have this wonderful term about "the move toward biblicizing Esther."
Aaron
[Hums in agreement]
Pete
Right? And that seems to be what you're describing, is an attempt to sort of bring this book in line, you know, with, let's say, core or central theological tenets in early Judaism, or something like that.
Aaron
I think that's well said. That's exactly right. That it's scholars—and I think we have a real gap here between traditional readings and a scholarly approach, and it's not that one's right, one's wrong. It's that they really are asking different kinds of questions. And when I say traditional readings, I mean, you know, going back thousands of years—a couple of thousand years—but just thinking about the book in a different way. So, if you assume that the author, as I said a few minutes ago, that the author's sort of sitting there thinking like, "Hmm, I'm gonna write a book that's going to counter some of the things that other people have said or are saying” or whatever. That's sort of consciously taking this book as idiosyncratic because like, this book is not like other books. It's not going to agree with Daniel. It's even possible—I mean, I you know, I don't know how seriously to say this—but like, it's possible that actually the book of Daniel is what provoked the author to write Esther, and he was like, "Oh, come on. Don't pretend that you're gonna live in exile, pray, ignore the king's laws, and it's all okay because if you get tossed into lions that an angel is gonna save you. Like, that's not true, be realistic, you know you're gonna live in exile, you're gonna have to think harder about what it means to live as a Jew in exile."
So that's a way of thinking about the book that very consciously takes apart the anthology that is now the Bible. It says, "No, I don't assume that the book of Esther is going to speak with the same voice as the book of Daniel, or even the book of Genesis. They don't have to agree on things and I'm going to try to let each voice speak on its own." Whereas a community of faith comes with almost the polar opposite assumptions. It's like, “Look, I got the Bible. I know the Bible is an anthology and I don't pretend that one person sat down and wrote from Genesis through Revelation, or Genesis through Esther, Chronicles, you know, wherever we end the Bible. I don't think that, but I do think that some very important people in my religious life have said that these books together are what you need to live a faithful life. And so, if I assume that, then I can't go in and say, like, ‘Oh, I see here, this debate between Esther and Daniel.’” I shouldn't say you can't. I think you can. But that's not typically the way we do it.
Jared
It's a harder path to get there sometimes.
Aaron
Exactly. You could argue like, "Oh, well, isn't that interesting. The Bible is giving me options, or the Bible is showing me you know, a debate." Like, that would be interesting. And people said that, for example, about like, you know, the Bible starts with two creation stories, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, 3. They could have been written by the same person, but the Bible starts off with two different stories as if to say, like, "Look, the world is a complicated place."
Pete
[Laughs]
Aaron
So, I don't know, maybe say the same thing about Esther and Daniel, you know, maybe the Bible would be trying to say, "Look, I don't know what the right answer is." You know, there's different ways of living in exile. But I think most faith communities assume that there's a single voice. And I think that's exactly right, that interpreters have, therefore—sometimes consciously, but I think mostly unconsciously—just assumed that Esther is meant to be read in light of what we know to be core to the Bible. Like if the Bible takes Jerusalem as central, takes the house of David as like, the past, present and future of Jewish leadership, then Esther can't disagree with that. If God runs history, then the book of Esther isn't free to just, like disagree, and, you know—in that case, the traditional reading has always been that—that's the point. God, sometimes maybe, especially in exile, works behind the scenes. So if you don't see God, that's a surface level problem.
Pete
Right.
Jared
Well, maybe, because we're coming to the end of our time, but I'm curious if we could bring that up to modern day for two reasons. I have two reasons for asking this question. One, is I think our audience maybe doesn't understand and I think it'd be interesting, just to expose them to the practice of Purim now, and sort of what does that look like. But I think it continues this conversation of how do Jewish communities, how do they celebrate or talk about or enact or embody—I don't know how we want to use this term—where we continue this tradition through today, do we see in general, in Jewish communities practicing this more religious—I don't know the right word—where maybe, we're biblicized—That's maybe the right word to carry the theme—Do we see communities today practicing more of this biblicized version of Esther, or is there still this back and forth? Is there a disagreement on how to do that? How would we characterize how this sits with Jewish communities today?
Aaron
That's a great question. I think there's probably like two and a half answers to that. So one, is that if you sort of go to an area in—Well, I’m in England now, so I don't know what it's like here—but in New York, where I spent a few decades, so a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn or Queens, New York, you're gonna find lots of people out on the street on the holiday of Purim—which is always one month before Passover, exactly one month before Passover. So it's sort of easy to figure out where on the calendar is going to be. And the most noticeable things that you'll see is that the holiday of Purim doesn't worry so much about the politics of the book of Esther or anything of that sort. Instead, the themes that are really fixates on are the questions of identity, and everything being upside down and masked. So costumes are a big part of this. It's springtime, so there's also like a carnaval kind of thing going on here, probably. This sense of like cross-dressing, for hundreds of years, has been a big practice on Purim—men dressing up as women, women as men—something which is normally actually frowned upon in Jewish law. But on Purim it's like, "No, no the world backwards, like, you know, everything's just different." And that's certainly a theme in the book of Esther, like, is Esther Jewish? She's dressed up, she's acting as a non-Jew. She's the Queen of Persia, but then she comes out as a Jew. So this sort of hidden identity, revealed identity. That's actually one of the major themes of the celebration, and related to that is actually a lot of drunkenness—which also like maybe kind of carnaval influence but also a sense of the Talmud says that "you have to drink enough until you can't even figure out like who was good and who was bad." Was it Mordecai who's good and Haman who was bad, the other way around? Can't remember. Like everything is just mixed up like the world is complicated and things are not straightforward. I do think now from like a sort of outsider's perspective, that that may be thematically related to questions of exile and diaspora, where like, it's not so easy to be straightforward about questions of politics and identity, like, things are tricky. Are you pretending to be one thing, but actually doing something else? A sort of trickster kind of way of life, rather than a straightforward, declare your identity at the door and just wear it proudly kind of thing. Like that doesn't always work so well.
So, I think a diaspora life leads itself to a sense that, like, sometimes things are just mixed up. It's not black and white, it's like, different shades of gray. But most people, I think, you know, in the celebration, they're not thinking about the politics of the book of Esther. But there have been certainly modern thinkers who were like—some of the early Zionists actually argued to cancel the holiday of Purim. Like, “Purim is a diaspora holiday. A holiday where you celebrate someone having to compromise on their religious practice in order to just to stay alive? That's not the kind of thing we want to be doing. We will fight to establish a homeland and Purim is sort of antithetical to everything that we we believe in,” so they—there are some pamphlets from the early part of the 20th century, just advocating for the abolishment of the holiday altogether, because they did see it as a diaspora holiday.
On the other hand, I think it's, you know, it's like most good literature and like most religious practices, it's multi-valent enough and flexible enough that I think most people just see in it what they want to see in it. You know, you can see it as nationalistic, see it as pluralistic, see it as xenophobic, see it as embracing assimilation, and there's lots of different ways that people take it. It would really be fascinating, I mean—Jared, I think there's sort of a very long way of me saying that, like, I would love to have a survey of what people actually think when they celebrate it. But given all the alcohol, probably most people are not thinking that much anyway. And of course, like practices just aren't typically theorized that much. You know, it's like, "Oh, it's fun." Kids’ festival, costumes, like, it's all... It can be fun without being too intellectualized. But you know, these themes do get debated and aired from time to time and in different ways.
Jared
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming—I feel like that brings us—I don't know, I feel like we went on this journey through several centuries here.
Pete
2500 years, yeah.
Jared
Yeah, great, great points. I've really appreciated the comments on what this has to do with how we think about the Bible, and what it is, and what we can expect from it, and maybe what we shouldn't expect from it. So thanks for weaving in a lot of really big questions, while also just educating us on something I think a lot of our listeners, and for me surely, has learned some new stuff. So—
Pete
And then inspiring people to read the book, I think, you know?
Jared
Mhmm. Yeah.
Aaron
No, it's a great story, and it's really, really short. I mean, you have to read it slowly, because, you know, like most biblical narratives, you know, it doesn't develop things slowly in a lot of detail. So it goes by really quickly. But you know, savor it. It tends to take more than an hour even reading slowly. And it is a great, rich story.
Pete
Well, listen, thank you so much, Aaron. We had a great time talking with you and elucidating Esther for us and appreciate you taking the time, all the way from across the pond as they say to spend some time with us.
Aaron
[Laughing] Yeah, it's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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Jared
Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.
Pete
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Jared
And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show!
Outro
You've just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.
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