Fundamentally Flawed

Here's an excerpt from a book I'm publishing. I'd like to hear any serious (sans sarcasm) objections.

While the writer of the Book of Esther may have played loose with his dates, his story offers an intriguing subliminal element overlooked by the casual reader.

Mordecai is the namesake of Merodach, the chief Babylonian god. Esther is the namesake for the chief Babylonia goddess, Ishtar. Just as Mordecai and Esther were cousins, Marduk (the Babylonian name of Merodach) and Ishtar were cousins.

When the Babylonian culture overshadowed the Elamite culture, the Babylonian gods replaced the Elamite gods: The Elamite’s chief goddess, Washti, was replaced by the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, and the Elamite’s chief god, Hamman, was replaced by the Babylonian god Marduk. The writer represents this by replacing Queen Vashti with Esther and the evil prime minister, Haman, with Mordecai.

The writer is careful to place the story in the city of Shushan (Susa).

Likely, the story of Esther originated as a Babylonian allegory and was promptly adapted by a Jewish storyteller who slightly altered the names of Ishtar and Marduk to satisfy Jewish readers, retained the names of Vashti and Haman. He then embellished the popular tale with his own cultural twist. If this be the case, Ahasuerus may not be the name sake of Xerxes after all, but a fictitious character created to accommodate the story.

spin

While the deities behind the figures in Esther have been known for many a year (and I'd be sure that any scholarly commentary would point them out), how it contributes to the narrative is still unclear to me, though I haven't looked at the issue for ages. Would the Hebrews have taken over a cultic story of foreign gods or would they have absorbed an old Babylonian story whose theological import was before that time lost? I can't say.

Ahasuerus ties the narrative together, being the husband of both Vashti and Esther, and in whose court all the events take place. This might point to an origin as a deity as well, a father figure of the Ugaritic El type.

Usually when a story is set during the time of some king it was written long after the time of that king, as in the example of Judith which claims to deal with the period of Nebuchadnezzar, but was probably written late in the Greek period.

Perhaps you might find this old link useful if you haven't already seen it. Amongst other things it supplies this gem: Esther's other name, Hadassah, i.e. " the myrtle " ("wreathed") is probably derived, according to Jensen, from the Babylonian hadashtu, "bride", followed by "He, therefore, holds that a Babylonian myth lies behind the Esther story, and that the myth itself is the echo of an historical episode, namely, the liberation of Babylonia from the yoke of the Elamites, which happened about 2300BC."

The text seems to belong to a genre of literature in which the good Jew makes it in the foreign court. This would include both Joseph and Daniel, and I expect it to have been taken into the Jewish tradition rather late (Greek period), despite the fact that the origins of the tale go back millennia.


spin

Toto

Interesting.

There seems to be a criticism of your basic ideas here.

hatsoff

You're going to have to give us more evidence than that, otherwise you'll have objections up the whazoo. Also, I'm curious what you mean when you say that you are publishing your own book. Do you mean to say you're just printing and distributing it, or have you actually found a publisher? And if you have, what company (or university) is handling it? Or are you a publisher, and it's not your book?

John Kesler

Here is an exchange that you might consider: