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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Markoff who wrote (21566)	11/4/1998 10:18:00 AM
From: Sam Ferguson	Respond to of 39621

It is wiser not to take scriptures at all.

To: Alan Markoff who wrote (21566)	11/4/1998 11:41:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

RE: Pursuit of accusations Nancy, I think you are a very forgiving and generous person, but credulous. I doubt if a disinterested person could read that story critically and conclude that Mordecai was a good man or Esther a moral woman. In my opinion, Esther was no worse than she had to be, although vengeful and bloodthirsty. I think Mordecai was egotistical, rash and ambitious. I have nothing good to say about Haman (who was much improved by death) or Xerxes (who was a dupe, unnecessarily lustful, and supercilious.) I do not intend to accuse anyone of anything. I try, as in all things, to respect truth. I impute no motives, but I seek what motives could prompt the behavior of the heroes. These people are dead, if they ever lived, I have my doubts of all but Xerxes, and for him I have the evidence of the Greeks. I don't recall anyone in the Bible referring to this tale at all. Neither God's Name, prayer, or intervention are mentioned. They are, as far as I can see, in a completely secular fictional story in a book which is filled with all kinds of peculiar tales drawn from many peoples over thousands of years. The diversity of origins of the Old Testament indicate strongly that Israel was a synthetic people and Esther may be a syncretic tale. There is nothing about the tale that suggests it is historical or revealed or has anything to do with the Jews at all. There is nothing miraculous or even wonderful about the story, while most of the Bible is filled with miraculous or impossible doings. This story could have been told about a heroine of any captive tribe, but I suspect that in adapting it to a Jewish collection it was easy to add the Jewish identifiers and assimilate the story to the Jewish canon, but the author did a bad job. Esther (= Star) is simply another form of Astarte or Ashteroth (Queen of Heaven, and an abomination to the Jews); Mordecai in Hebrew means "consecrated to Marduk (or Merodach)" (chief god of Babylon and an abomination). Those are some kind of strange names for even mildly observant Jews. A possibility is that Esther and Mordecai were Babylonian hostages held in Susa. This would help explain why Mordecai does not thank God for the salvation of the Jews, but takes the credit for himself as a gentile might. All of the Jewish references may well be accretions of Jewish details added to a Babylonian tale (like Noah and the flood). Just as Puritans liked to refer to themselves as Israel, so the later Babylonian Jews, having learned the story of oppression of Babylonians in Susa from Babylonians, simply transferred it to themselves (or the Jewish author did). If this seems too fantastic to you, consider the problem introduced by the Daniel story where the chronology is very confused and fantastic, but God is praised and intervenes frequently. Daniel appears to be adapted from the Joseph story in Genesis with a Babylonian scenario. Daniel keeps himself ritually clean, but not Esther. Daniel for his services to Darius gains a decree that requires all in the empire to fear and reverence the God of Daniel (JHVH). Since the laws of the Medes and the Persians changeth not, this law must have been in force when Xerxes (II) started the Esther tale. If Mordecai worshipped the same God as did Daniel, he could not have been required to bow to Haman by Persian law. The evidence is convincing to me that Mordecai and Esther were not Jews, but Babylonians, and their story was filched for the amusement of many generations of Jewish children after they returned to Judea. I don't suppose the Babylonians missed it. I prefer to believe this because I think it may be true. I don't think Esther and Mordecai behave like Jews. Daniel and Esther cannot both be true. I don't think a pious Jew faced with this contradiction could believe that the secular story of Esther is true. Regards.