Esther , born
Hadassah, was a Jewish prophet and queen of the Persian Empire in the
Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
, the queen of
AhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three different rulers...
(traditionally identified with
Xerxes IXerxes the Great, also known as Xerxes I of Persia, was a Zoroastrian Persian Shahanshah of the Achaemenid Empire.Xerxes was the son of Darius the Great and his wife Atossa...
), and heroine of the Biblical
Book of EstherThe Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim...
which is named after her. The name Esther comes from the Persian word "star".
As a result of Esther's intervention and influence, Jews lived in the Persian Empire for 2400 years thereafter. Esther's husband
AhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three different rulers...
followed in the footsteps of
Cyrus the GreatCyrus the Great , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was the first Zoroastrian Persian Shāhanshāh...
, in showing mercy to the Jews of Persia:
Cyrus had decreedCyrus the Great figures in the Hebrew Bible as the patron and deliverer of the Jews. He is mentioned twenty-three times by name and alluded to several times more....
an end to the
Babylonian captivityAlthough the term Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile typically refers to the deportation and exile of the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, in fact the exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC...
of the Jews upon his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC.
King Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes) held a 180-day feast in
SusaSusa ; Syriac: ; was an ancient city of the Elamite, Persian and Parthian empires of Iran, located about 250 km east of the Tigris River....
(Shushan) to display the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty.
Esther , born
Hadassah, was a Jewish prophet and queen of the Persian Empire in the
Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
, the queen of
AhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three different rulers...
(traditionally identified with
Xerxes IXerxes the Great, also known as Xerxes I of Persia, was a Zoroastrian Persian Shahanshah of the Achaemenid Empire.Xerxes was the son of Darius the Great and his wife Atossa...
), and heroine of the Biblical
Book of EstherThe Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim...
which is named after her. The name Esther comes from the Persian word "star".
As a result of Esther's intervention and influence, Jews lived in the Persian Empire for 2400 years thereafter. Esther's husband
AhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three different rulers...
followed in the footsteps of
Cyrus the GreatCyrus the Great , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was the first Zoroastrian Persian Shāhanshāh...
, in showing mercy to the Jews of Persia:
Cyrus had decreedCyrus the Great figures in the Hebrew Bible as the patron and deliverer of the Jews. He is mentioned twenty-three times by name and alluded to several times more....
an end to the
Babylonian captivityAlthough the term Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile typically refers to the deportation and exile of the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, in fact the exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC...
of the Jews upon his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC.
Biblical story
King Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes) held a 180-day feast in
SusaSusa ; Syriac: ; was an ancient city of the Elamite, Persian and Parthian empires of Iran, located about 250 km east of the Tigris River....
(Shushan) to display the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty. King Ahasuerus ordered his queen,
VashtiVashti is mentioned in the Book of Esther, a book included in the Hebrew Bible .-In the Book of Esther:In Esther, Vashti is the wife of king Ahasuerus who is replaced by Esther...
, to appear before him and his guests wearing her crown, to display her beauty. But when the attendants delivered the king's command to Queen
VashtiVashti is mentioned in the Book of Esther, a book included in the Hebrew Bible .-In the Book of Esther:In Esther, Vashti is the wife of king Ahasuerus who is replaced by Esther...
, she refused to come. Furious at her refusal to obey, the king asked his wise men what should be done. The Book of Esther does not say what happened to her - various sources suggest banishment or death.One of them said that all the women in the empire would hear that "The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not." Then the women of the empire would despise their husbands. And this would cause many problems in the kingdom. Therefore it would be bad to depose her.
To find a new suitable queen for King Ahasuerus, it was decreed that all beautiful young women be gathered to the palace from every province of his kingdom. Each woman underwent twelve months of purification treatments and pregnancy watch in his harem, after which she would go to the king. When the woman's turn came, she was given anything she wanted to take with her from the harem to the king's palace. She would then go to the king in the evening, and in the morning return to the harem as his
concubineConcubinage is the state of a woman in an ongoing, usually matrimonially-oriented relationship with a man who cannot be married to her, often because of a difference in social status.-Concubinage:...
. She would not return to the king unless he was pleased enough with her to summon her again.
Four years after Queen Vashti was banished, King Ahasuerus chose the Jewish Esther for his wife and queen because he was captivated by her beauty and intelligence.
Shortly afterward,
MordecaiMordecai or Mordechai - the son of Jair, of the tribe of Benjamin, is one of the main personalities in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible.-His life and deeds:...
, Esther's cousin, overheard a plot to assassinate the king. He promptly told Esther of it, and she warned her husband of the threat. An investigation was made and the conspirators were swiftly arrested and executed. An account of the matter was then written in the official archives before the king.
Soon after this, the king granted
HamanHaman can be a surname which is a corruption of the German Hamann. It is also a biblical surname as described below. It also refers to:*Haman , appears in the Book of Esther and is the main antagonist in the Jewish holiday of Purim....
the Agagite, one of the most prominent princes of the realm, supreme authority over the kingdom. All the people were to bow down to Haman when he rode his horse through the streets. All complied except for Mordecai, a Jew, who would bow to no one but his God. This enraged Haman, who, with his wife and advisers, plotted against the Jews, making a plan to kill and extirpate all
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s throughout the Persian empire, selecting the date for this genocidal act by the drawing of lots . He gained the king's approval. He offered ten thousand silver talents to the king for approval of this plan, but the king refused to take them .
Mordecai tore his robes and put ash on his head (signs of mourning or grieving/anguish) on hearing this news. Esther sent clean clothes to him, but he refused them, explaining that deliverance for the Jews would come from some other place (presumably God, as the Jews were God's chosen people), but that Esther would be killed if she did not do what she could to stop this genocide - by talking to the king. Esther was not permitted to see the king unless he had asked for her, otherwise she could be put to death. Esther was terrified of this (she had not been called to the king in 30 days), so she and her maid-servants and her people the Jews of Persia fasted earnestly for three days before she built up the courage to enter the king's presence. He held out his scepter to her, showing that he accepted her visit. Esther requested a banquet with the king and Haman. During the banquet, she requested another banquet with the king and Haman the following day.
After the banquet Haman ordered a gallows constructed, high, on which to hang Mordecai. Meanwhile, the king was having trouble sleeping, and had some histories read to him. He was reminded that Mordecai had saved him from an assassination attempt, and had received no reward in return. Early the next morning, Haman came to the king to ask permssion to hang Mordecai, but before he could, the king asked him "What should be done for the man whom the king delights to honour?" Haman thought the king meant himself, so he said that the man should wear a royal robe and be led on one of the king's horses through the city streets proclaiming before him, "This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour!" The king thought this well, then asked Haman to lead Mordecai through the streets in this way, to honour him for previously telling the king of a plot against him. After doing this, Haman rushed home, full of grief. His wife said to him, "You will surely come to ruin!"
That night, during the banquet, Esther told the king of Haman's plan to massacre all Jews in the Persian Empire, and acknowledged her own Jewish ethnicity. The king was enraged and ordered Haman to be hanged on the gallows he had built for Mordecai. The king then appointed Mordecai as his prime minister, and gave the Jews the right to defend themselves against any enemy.
A peculiarity of Persian law that also occurs in the
Book of DanielThe Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
is that royal edicts of this sort could not be reversed, even by the king – by siding with the Jews instead of their persecutors, the king presumably dissuaded any pogroms. The king also issued a second edict allowing the Jews to arm themselves, and kill not only their enemies but also their wives and children, as well as betake of the plunder . This precipitated a series of reprisals by the Jews against their enemies. This fight began on the 13th of
AdarAdar is the sixth month of the civil year and the twelfth month of the religious year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a winter month of 29 days...
, the date the Jews were originally slated to be exterminated. Esther and the Jews went on to kill only their would-be executioners, and not their wives and children, this altogether meaning three hundred killed in Susa alone, fifteen in the rest of the empire. The Jews also took no plunder .
Jews established an annual feast, the feast of
PurimPurim is a festival that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman's plot to annihilate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther...
, in memory of their deliverance. According to traditional Jewish dating this took place about fifty-two years after the start of the Babylonian Exile.
Esther appears in the Bible as a woman of deep faith, courage and patriotism, ultimately willing to risk her life for her adoptive father, Mordecai, and the Jewish people. Scripture portrays her as a woman raised up as an instrument in the hand of God to avert the destruction of the Jewish people, and to afford them protection and forward their wealth and peace in their captivity. It is notable, though, that there is no direct mention of God by any name at any time in the Biblical
Book of Esther.. The Story of Esther is said to come from an older goddess Elamite myth of Ishtar/Ashtarte (Esther) and her consort Marduk (Mordecai), who sacrificed the god Hammon, or Amon (Haman).. However, others believe that this actually happened. God's protection is especially evident when Haman wanted to hang Mordecai.
For a discussion of the historicity of Esther, see
Book of EstherThe Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim...
.
Modern retelling
- In 1689, Jean Baptiste Racine wrote Esther
Esther is the name of a play in three acts written in 1689 by the French dramatist, Jean Racine. It premiered on January 26, 1689, performed by the pupils of St. Cyr, an educational institute for young girls of noble birth.-Later reception:...
, a tragedyTragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that, paradoxically, offers its audience pleasure...
, at the request of Louis XIV's wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de MaintenonFrançoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon was the morganatic second wife of King Louis XIV of France. She was known after her first marriage as Madame Scarron, and subsequently as Madame de Maintenon. Her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted.-Origins:Françoise...
.
- In 1718, Handel
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
wrote the oratorio EstherEsther is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel and is generally acknowledged to be the first English oratorio. Handel set a libretto by John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope after the Old Testament drama by Jean Racine. It is a short Esther (HWV 50) is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel and is...
based on Racine's play.
- The play entitled Esther (1960), written by Welsh dramatist Saunders Lewis
Saunders Lewis was a Welsh poet, dramatist, historian, literary critic, and political activist. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist and a founder of the Welsh National Party . Lewis is usually acknowledged to have been among the most prominent figures of twentieth-century Welsh-language literature...
, is a retelling of the story in WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
.
- A movie about the story, Esther and the King
Esther and the King is a 1960 U.S.A. / Italian film direction, written, and produced by Raoul Walsh. It is a religious epic. It was produced at 20th Century Fox/ Raoul Walsh Productions, and was released by 20th Century Fox...
- One of the parts of Amos Gitai
-Biography:Amos Gitai was born in 1950 in Haifa. His father, Munio Gitai, was an architect of the pre-war Bauhaus movement in Germany. Amos studied architecture in Haifa and at the University of California Berkeley. He was called up to serve in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As part of a helicopter...
's Exile series, called Esther is an updated version of the story.
- 1962 musical
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
entitled Swan EstherSwan Esther is a musical based on the bible story of Esther.It was written in 1962 by J. Edward Oliver and Nick Munns .A professional production was staged by the Young Vic in January 1984 and it has also been performed by a number of amateur companies, most recently by Swanley Light Opera Group ,...
was written by J. Edward Oliver and Nick Munns and has been performed by the Young Vic and some amateur groups.
- A 1978 miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a production which tells a story in a pre-planned limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
entitled The Greatest Heroes of the Bible starred Victoria PrincipalVictoria Principal is an American actress, best known for her role as Pamela Barnes Ewing on the CBS nighttime drama Dallas from 1978 to 1987.-Early life:...
as Esther, Robert MandanRobert Mandan is an American actor.Among numerous television roles, including that of David Allen, the writer husband of Liz Fraser on From These Roots; he is most famous for his portrayal of businessman Sam Reynolds on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow from 1965 to 1970, and his subsequent...
as Xerxes, and Michael AnsaraMichael Ansara is a stage, screen and voice actor, best known for his portrayal of Cochise in the American television series Broken Arrow, and as Commander Kang on three different Star Trek TV series.-Early life and career:...
as Haman.
- Episode 25 of the 1981 anime
is animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation". Anime originated about 1917.Anime, like manga , has a large audience in Japan and high recognition throughout the world...
series SuperbookSuperbook, also known as , is an anime television series produced by Tatsunoko Productions in Japan in conjunction with the Christian Broadcasting Network in the United States....
involves this story.
- A 1999 TV movie that follows the biblical account very closely, Esther. Starred Louise Lombard
Louise Lombard is an English actress.-Biography:Lombard's parents left Dublin in the mid-1950s. Lombard was born Louise Maria Perkins in London, England, the fifth child of seven siblings to a family of Irish extraction....
in the title role and F. Murray AbrahamFahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s, after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Amadeus, and has since appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films, television, and mainly on stage.- Early life :Abraham was born in...
as Mordecai.
- In 2000
The year 2000 in film involved some significant events.-Top-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the United States and Canada in 2000...
, VeggieTalesVeggieTales is a series of English language children's computer animated films featuring anthropomorphic vegetables. Developed by Big Idea, the films convey moral themes based on Christianity, often compatible with Judaism, spliced with satirical references to pop culture and current events...
, a company that uses CGIComputer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
vegetables to teach children lessons from the BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
in a comical way, released Esther… The Girl Who Became Queen.
- In May 2005 the musical Luv Esther was first shown. It is written by Ray Goudie.
- A 2006
The year 2006 in film saw many new films released worldwide, including several major mainstream sequels, prequels, and remakes as well as original films.-Top grossing films:...
movieFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
about Esther and Ahasuerus, entitled One Night with the KingOne Night with the King is a film that was released in 2006 in the United States.The film follows the plot of the novel Esther by Nathaniel Weinreb, including direct quotes and events from the book, although the film is officially based on the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King by Tommy Tenney...
, stars Tiffany DupontTiffany Dupont is an American actress, known for playing the lead character, Hadassah, a Jewish girl, who will become the Biblical Esther, Queen of Persia, in the Hollywood film One Night with the King...
and Luke GossLuke Damon Goss is an English singer and actor. Since 1994, he has been married to backing singer Shirley Lewis, , and has one stepdaughter, Carli. In January 2007, he and wife Shirley moved permanently to Los Angeles, but still maintain a residence in London...
. It was based on the novel Hadassah: One Night with the KingHadassah: One Night with the King is a 2004 novel by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen based upon a retelling of the Biblical Book of Esther. However, "One Night with the King" follows almost identically the novel "Esther" by Nathaniel Weinreb in plot, including direct quotes and events in the...
by Tommy TenneyTommy Tenney is an American preacher, best known for his message of "God Chasing".In his book The God Chasers , Tenney relates experiences of being "in the presence of God", including one occasion when a pulpit was purportedly divinely split in two...
and Mark Andrew Olsen.
- In the 2006 Melbourne Fringe Festival
The Melbourne Fringe Festival is an annual independent arts festival held in Melbourne, Australia. The festival runs for three weeks from late September to early October, usually overlapping with the beginning of the mainstream Melbourne International Arts Festival...
, The Backyard Bard toured a Biblical StorytellingBiblical storytelling is a discipline in which the storyteller takes a passage from the Bible, studies and reflects on that passage, and then tells it in a way so that the hearers may best connect with the story as well. This is often done by learning the words of the story by heart and acting out...
production of 'Esther', featuring four women storytellers telling the story word-for-word from the Biblical account.
- In the anime Trinity Blood
is a series of Japanese light novels written by Sunao Yoshida with illustrations by Thores Shibamoto and originally serialized in The Sneaker. Set 900 years after an apocalyptic war between humans and vampires, the series focuses on the on-going cold war between the Vatican, the human government,...
Esther is the main character, a nun with a star on her side. She is prophesied to be "the morning star" who will lead the people to peace.
- In the 2008 HBO television movie Recount
Recount is an 2008 made-for-TV movie about the 2000 Presidential election in the United States. This film is a political drama written by Danny Strong, directed by Jay Roach, and produced by Kevin Spacey ....
, Florida Secretary of State Katherine HarrisKatherine Harris is an American Republican politician, former Secretary of State of Florida, and former member of the United States House of Representatives. Harris won the 2002 election to represent Florida's 13th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. She held that post...
(portrayed by Laura DernLaura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
) compares herself to Queen Esther, of whom she says "was willing to sacrifice herself to save the lovely Jewish people."
- Esther is one of the five heroines of the Order of the Eastern Star
The Order of the Eastern Star is the largest fraternal organization in the world that both men and women can join. It was established in 1850 by Rob Morris, a lawyer and educator from , who had been an official with the Freemasons. It is based on teachings from the Bible, but is open to people of...
.
- Esther (opera)
Esther is an American opera in 3 acts composed by Hugo Weisgall, with a libretto by Charles Kondek. Esther was premiered by the New York City Opera in October 1993...
was composed by Hugo WeisgallHugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...
.
Origin and meaning of her name
According to the , Esther was originally named Hadassah.
Hadassah means "myrtle" in
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
and the name
Esther is most likely related to the
MedianThe Medes were an ancient Iranian people who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran. This area is known as Media...
word for myrtle,
astra, and the
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
word
setareh meaning
starA star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma that is held together by gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun...
— the myrtle blossom resembles a twinkling star. The
TargumA targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
provides a Midrashic explanation: that she was as beautiful as the
Evening StarEvening Star is the name given to the the planet Venus when it appears in the West after sunset. It may also refer to:-Things:* BR 92220 Evening Star, the last steam locomotive to be built by British Railways...
(or
Morning StarMorning star or Morning Star is the name given to the planet Venus when it appears in the East before sunrise. It may also refer to:-Mythology:* Eosphorus, the "dawn-bearer" in Greek mythology...
), which is
astara in
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
. In the Talmud, Tractate Yoma (29a), Esther is compared to the "morning star", and is considered the subject of Psalm 22 because its introduction is a "song for the morning star."
Esther can also be understood to mean "hidden" in Hebrew, and her name is interpreted thus in another
MidrashMidrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
, where it is said that Esther hid her nationality and lineage as
MordecaiMordecai or Mordechai - the son of Jair, of the tribe of Benjamin, is one of the main personalities in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible.-His life and deeds:...
had advised. Because the methods and aims of
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
are believed to be similarly hidden, "The Book of Esther" in Hebrew can be understood as "The Book of Hiddenness," representing God's hiddenness in the story.
Despite resembling Indo-European words for star, the Semitic "Ishtar" is unrelated, the root beginning with a
pharyngealA pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :* Pharyngeal plosives are thought to be impossible...
ayin' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty first letter in the new Persian alphabet...
and the
sh sound derived from an earlier
th sound. "Ishtar" was worshipped throughout the Middle East as a goddess. Some critics of the historicity of the
Book of EstherThe Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim...
seized on this as evidence to support a view that the story of Esther derived from a myth about Ishtar. However, in Hebrew the goddess was referred to by the Hebrew cognate of her name - Ashtoreth. "Esther" cannot be derived directly from the latter. The
Book of DanielThe Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
provides accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods and "
MordecaiMordecai or Mordechai - the son of Jair, of the tribe of Benjamin, is one of the main personalities in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible.-His life and deeds:...
" is understood to mean servant of
MardukMarduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to slowly...
, a Babylonian god. "Esther" may have been a Hebrew rendition of a form of "Ishtar" in which the "sh" sound had become an "s" sound.
WilsonRobert Dick Wilson was an American linguist and Presbyterian scholar who devoted his life to an attempt to prove the reliability of the Hebrew Bible...
, who identified Ahasuerus with Xerxes I and Esther with
AmestrisAmestris or Amastris was the wife of Xerxes I of Persia, mother of king Artaxerxes I of Persia. Her reputation is very bad among ancient Greek historians....
, suggested that both "Amestris" and "Esther" derived from Akkadian
Ammi-Ishtar or
Ummi-Ishtar . Hoschander alternatively suggested
Ishtar-udda-sha ("Ishtar is her light") as the origin with the possibility of
-udda-sha being connected with the similarly sounding Hebrew name Hadassah.
Esther in Christianity
Esther is commemorated as a matriarch in the
Calendar of SaintsThe Lutheran Calendar of Saints is a listing which details the primary annual festivals and events that are celebrated liturgically by the Lutheran Church. The calendars of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod are from the 1978 Lutheran Book of...
of the
Lutheran Church - Missouri SynodThe Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod , founded in 1847 in Chicago, is the eighth largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and the second-largest Lutheran body in the U.S. after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It is a traditional, Confessional Lutheran denomination with German...
on May 24.
Esther in Judaism
Esther is considered a
prophetIn religion, a prophet is a person who has been contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans...
in Judaism.
Esther in Persian culture
Given the great historical link between Persian and Jewish history, modern day
Persian Jews{ethnic group|group=Persian Jews|image =...
are referred to as "Esther's Children". A building known as The Mausoleum of Esther and Mordechai is located in
HamedanHamedān or Hamadān is the capital city of Hamadan Province of Iran. It had an estimated population of 550,284 in 2005....
,
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
.
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=34.7986777&lon=48.5134095&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2&show=/8906213/
External links