perfectidius

Okay, so my little sister was watching the veggie tale version of this story, and I haven't read it since I was a Christian, at which time I didn't think much of it. So I decided to review it in the KJV. I am surprised at my own shock, but how did this story make it into the bible?

“Esther the seductress.” What a sick story. A certain Jew, Mordecki, interested in making his way into the royal court, weasels to get his adopted daughter to marry the king, in order to gain political control; Mordecki tells her to hide her Jewish ancestry—for the sake of the story to work, so a cheap plot device, or for some cunning on the part of Mordecki? This Jew doesn’t bow to Haman, breaking the king’s law, apparently because Mordecki doesn’t respect Haman (for surely, the act of bowing is not the problem, since Ether bows to the king in a few senses throughout the story). Haman, we are supposed to believe, decides to genocide the Jewish people because of this lack of bow. At best a parable, since the tale has no plausibility.
But again, we see the same old Jewish themes: Jews getting political influence while cherry picking which laws of the land they will follow. A growing resentment agains the Jewish people. (Why? This is never explained in the story.)

Anyways, Esther seduces the king, and sways him to let the Jews kill tens of thousands of the “Jew’s enemies”—that is, without a fight, they are simply mowed down by loyal decree, that is, the kings own subjects, by the Jew’s own bloody hands: “ after which the Jews “rested from killing the butchering the thousands of men” as God rests after his work, and celebrate a great feast in honor of the deed.

The actual story is even worse. Haman sees that Esther has requested his death. When he begs for his life and falls before her, she calls rape. Then Mordecki is given charge over Hamans’ house. Esther falls to weeping, in order to win the king’s favor, and the king lets them write what will happen next (a double meaning here). Mordecki promptly writes a letter, “on behalf of all the Jews” that throughout this king’s kingdom, to kill anybody who would assault them, that is, “to destroy, to slay, to causte to perish them, and both their little children and women, and to take the spoil of them for prey….and the Jews heard this and had light and gladness and joy and honour…and many people of the land became Jews.” The kill hundreds of their enemies, without a fight, just mowed down, children and all, and then, seeing and hearing this, Esther requests that this day of destruction could be extended another day—to collect another 75,000 murders.

The sordid affair ends with Mordeci gaining royal power and seeking wealth for his people and peace to them.

This story does not respect the King at all. Throughout the story he is presented as a bafoon who can be swayed to genocide the Jews one moment, and then to genocide the Jew’s enemies the next, to divorce the wife he couldn’t keep, and then to marry whatever pretty girl catches his eyes, not seeing the strings attached to her. The narrotor regards the king as a complete chump, to be carefully managed and manipulated.

-Jay-

Esther is Bilical porn at it's finest.

Is it Veggie Tales that turns the story of Esther's hook-up with the king from a sex contest to a beauty pageant?

regards,

NinJay

perfectidius

You know, I didn't catch that. IT was a sex contest. It said something like, the virgins were there to compete in "pleasing" the king. I guess I didn't see this as an orgy....?

Daniel

-Jay-

Yep. For example:
"Go in (un)to" is a euphemism for sex. Basically, in the story, the virgins started in one harem, and once they went through the ritual preparation, they'd go in, one by one, and spend the night with the king. Afterwards, they'd go to the second harem, and wait for the king to recall them if he needed to reevaluate them.

Esther is also interesting in that there are six chapters that probably didn't exist in the original Hebrew but were added later. These chapters (A, B, C, D, E, F, in the NETS link, above) serve to add the religious framing around the story - when they're removed, so are the references to God - Esther is an overwhelmingly secular story.

regards,

NinJay

perfectidius

Well Ninjay, I think that the Bible would be better without this book (porn references excepted) because aside from the violent and disturbing message, the plot is obvious and poorly wrought.

Thanks for the link. I would like to read the version they gave, but it was unprintable.

Daniel

-Jay-

Yeah, that's a problem. You can download the files and read them locally, which is handy, but the inability to print them is the one big strike I can find against NETS.

MortalWombat

Anything you can see on your screen you can print if you know some tricks.

Open it in your PDF viewer, rotate it 90 degrees and enlarge it until it's in its largest possible magnification to be able to read the whole page at once on your screen. Then use Alt+Print Screen and then paste into MS Paint or other image editing software. Crop out the extra stuff like the window and menu bar and then save as a .png (.jpg is too lossy). Print in landscape. Do this for every page. It's only 18 pages (so 18 image files). It's pretty readable on paper this way.

SkepticBoyLee

I have nothing to say other than "this is facinating".

Thanks for posting this guys.

HaRaAYaH

Well I pulled out my handy dandy book of Esther and low and behold, there is no mention of God, at least not in the original Hebrew. Since the Jews fixed the Cannon on that book any additions are therefore not valid. If you read the Book of Esther and all you got was the sex, well that would be your problem. The story carries many messages and where the reading falls in the calendar is also part of the message.

-Jay-

Agreed.


OK. Hang on. I'm not arguing that there aren't other meanings to be gleaned from the story. I'm pointing out specifically that certain prevalent Christian interpretations of Esther (e.g. the Veggie Tales one) distort the story quite a bit. I'm also arguing, by implication, that many Christian (particularly conservative Christian) readers of Esther may be unaware of what they're actually reading.

Youre points are valid, and we can certainly expound upon them here, but they're a little beyond the scope of what I was trying to get across.

Thanks for bringing them to the table, though.

regards,

NinJay