Mark Gagnon

Though, frankly, that isn't necessarily surprising.

A lot of Persian royal inscriptions don't typically discuss the king's personal life and, you know, his romance in that kind of way.

Herodotus, the Greek historian, named Xerxes' queen as Amestris, not Esther or Vashti, though some scholars have tried to connect Amestris to Herodotus.

You know, some of these other names like Esther or Vashti through some linguistic studies.

But again, it's not really conclusive.

There are also historical controversies.

So, for example, the book of Esther describes Ahasuerus issuing a decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves and kill their enemies throughout the empire.

This would have been a massive empire wide event that would have left some trace in Persian or Greek records.

But there's nothing.

The story has literary features like these dramatic reversals and symbolic names and like almost like a plot structure you would expect from like a book or like a novel or something that have led many scholars to consider Esther as a historical novella, a story set in a real world but is shaped into a festival origin tale for this holiday of Purim.

rather than like an actual event.

Again, this is contested and debated by historians.

Now, given the supposed scale of the events and, you know, this empire-wide decree and mass killings and this last minute reversal and going right up to the edge and then saving the day at the last second, and the silence of both Persian and Greek sources about any of this is one of the strongest arguments for, you know, basically going against the telling of Xerxes in the book of Esther.

Now, the scholarly consensus, if there is such a thing, is something like this.

The book of Esther is set in, you know, against a broadly accurate backdrop of a Persian court under Xerxes.

And Hazarus is almost certainly representative of Xerxes.

But the specific events of the story, the plot against the Jews and Esther's intervention, the killings might be some type of literary elaboration rather than a strict narrative.

documented historical retelling.

The book may preserve genuine memories of what it was like being Jewish in the Persian Empire in 6 BC or whatever, but just wrapped in a narrative framework designed to explain and celebrate the festival of Purim.

What's not debated is the cultural impact.