Alright, now that our time is consecrated in prayer, let's begin this new Bible study. It's entitled Esther, the Intercessory Queen. And why she's called the Intercessory Queen is going to be very clear. It's going to be a good story if you don't know already, but I'm not going to spoil the ending for you.
It's going to be three lessons long. So the chapter in verse is a little bit confusing. There's 16 chapters, but they're scattered all around the book and it makes it very, very complicated. I'm going to explain why that is the case in just a little bit.
So hang tight. But I'm going to divide the book basically into two halves. So if you look at your syllabus and your suggested reading sheets, you can see it all divided the lesson titles are divided there. So you can see the first lesson is just introducing the book of Esther, general introduction to the book of Esther.
And I find that it's very important to spend, as you can tell from other Bible studies, it's very important to spend one lesson going through these introductory topics to have a reference point to build a foundation upon which the rest of the book makes sense. So it's important to spend time on going through what some people might think about all or just kind of very straightforward, obviously, a title or the language or authorship dating, the historical literary context, the structure, literary genre, the main themes, that kind of stuff. I think it's important to go through that. So that's what we're going to do in this first lesson.
Part one is introducing these various topics on the book. And in part two, I'm going to spend a little bit of time, I don't know, 20, 15 minutes or so, giving a broad picture overview on Esther and the Deuter canonical books. Because while Esther is in the Hebrew and Protestant Bibles, it's not fully completely in their books because they're missing certain parts. So while Tobit and Judith and Maccabees and Baruch and these other Deuter canonicals are completely missing, Esther, as well as Daniel, is unique because those Protestants and Jews have those books in their Bibles, but they're missing certain sections.
And so that kind of makes, for an interesting conversation, it makes Esther and Daniel unique in that. So I'm going to do 10 minutes, 15 minutes or so, reviewing some of this content on the Deuter canonical books and what was going on, at least I'm going to limit the conversation to the first century context for Christ and the apostles and what they considered scripture and how Esther would have been included in that. So that's what we're going to do. Part one, we're going to look at the introductory topics for 45 minutes or so, and then part two for another 15 or so, we'll look at Esther and the Deuter canonical.
All right, excellent. So without any further ado, let's jump into Roman numeral one right here and begin with the title. Now the title is pretty straightforward, but I want to always encourage you to look beyond it, spend some time reflecting on what, how names mean certain things. There's always deeper themes.
You scratch a little farther and you're going to find some nuggets there and some of these obvious points. So let's look at the title. Now, obviously the book is named after the woman Esther. She is this maiden, she's the young, beautiful, faithful, devout Jewish woman.
She's in exile and her name is Esther and he really Greek Esther means star. Now there's more to this name Esther than me. So the eye, most commentaries will point out, let me read Roman, not Roman, excuse me, but number one, and it says we're not sure whether Esther is to be connected with a Persian star, which means which is star, of course, or with the goddess Ishtar because all three have STR sequence. Her name, the word star and the goddess Ishtar have the same root sequence, STR.
But there's also a similarity in the sound between her name and the Hebrew verb STR, which means to conceal or to hide. And that's really interesting here. So there's a lot more to this STR root word. Now if it means star, that's really beautiful because it kind of touches upon a big theme of the fact that Esther is the star of her people, not like a rock star or a superstar, although she is that, I think you could argue.
But she's the savior of her people in this regard, because she intercedes with King Xerxes to stop a plot of extermination and genocide. So she is the star for her people Israel, Judah. And that's also really beautiful because it's typological pointing forward to Mary. One of Mary's titles is Star of the Sea.
So we're going to see some connections there that I think are awesome. So you see there's a little bit more behind the word star and into the story, it touches upon those key themes. And I like that. Now, if it's connected to the fact that it's a Persian, the Persian goddess Ishtar, that's interesting.
In fact, I'll talk about this more next time, but Mordecai, that's going to be Esther's adopted fathers. Mordecai is really her much older cousin. So in any case, Mordecai is named after a god as well. So the fact that it's interesting that these individuals in exile, these Jews in exile have pagan names, but they also have their Hebrew names.
We don't know if Mordecai had a Hebrew name or not, but we do know that about Esther. So her name is Esther from the pagan etymology, but her Hebrew birth name is Hadassah, which means Myrtle, or like Myrtle Flower. And I really like that a lot because you just think of this beautiful, young, righteous, virtuous, faithful Jewish girl is like a flower. She's just a beautiful, beautiful person.
And I think that's lovely. Okay. So those are the two names for Esther and Hadassah, we always refer to her by her pagan name Esther. So the mean star, I think that's significant.
If it's connected with the, we'll talk about the whole Persian god and goddess thing next time, next lesson. All right. So there's the title. There's some fun things to think about.
Now, for the language and manuscript tradition, this is very, very interesting because it's going to help to explain why Esther is organized in a very complicated way. Like if you've read the book before, you know what I'm talking about, this is new to you, you're going to see very quickly, it's confusing because the book starts off with chapter 11, verse two. And then you've got chapter 11 and 12, the next number one and two. And it goes back and forth from the single digits to the double digits and you're like, what is going on here?
So what I'm going to explain to you right now will help to understand the confusing reading because if you didn't know this, you're thinking, am I taking crazy pills? Did I have too much wine? Like why? Is there a massive mistake in the editorial process here?
Is it one of big old typos? Someone just wasn't paying attention? And there's a method to the madness here. All right.
So I'm going to say, this book was written in Hebrew, I think everyone agrees on that point. It was written in Hebrew, but then translated much later on a couple of two, three hundred years later into Greek with various quote unquote editions. All right. So if you can imagine a very simple process, written in Hebrew time goes on, they translated into Greek and then they add more content to it.
All right. That additional content Catholics will argue is also inspired scripture. We'll get to that as we move through this lesson here. Now it is possible there is the thought there that in the ancient world along before the Maccabean period when this was written, let's just say, I'll get to the dating a little bit.
But they did have those quote unquote Greek editions. Greek editions were actually translating Hebrew originals that we just lost. That is possible, but there's not a huge argument for that. So for simplicity sake, we're just going to keep it like this as originally written in Hebrew, a couple hundred years later translated into Greek for particular purposes and it had other editions to the story, which we do accept as scripture and inspired.
That's going to be the due to a canonical portion. Those editions are going to be in italics in most Bibles. All right. So here's a quote for you to explain this to what exactly happens is from your Catholic interview, your testament.
You're going to find this explained in your ancient Catholic study Bible, your Catholic Bible dictionary, all the resources that I'm encouraging you to get to get. So here's what it says quote, Esther is extended to remarkably different versions. The Hebrew version and the Greek version. The Greek version of Esther, which was contained in a Septuagint.
I'll talk about the Septuagint later. This is the Greek Old Testament, which is contained in Septuagint and accepted as canonical by the early church, contains six chapters and 107 verses that are not present in the Hebrew version of Esther preserved in the Jewish tradition, which is only 10 chapters long. So when translating to Latin Vulgate, Saint Jerome rendered a shorter Hebrew text as chapters one through 10, available to him directly into Latin to produce his Liebeer Esther, his book of Esther. Then he also translated the additional material from the longer Greek text, but rather than placing that long material in the appropriate places in the narrative, Jerome appended it to a six extra chapters at the end of his translation in the Hebrew.
As a result, the text and chapter numbers of Esther remain in a confusing state in Catholic Bibles to this day, end quote. And that's certainly true. So I hope this quote is making sense. So again, you've got the Hebrew version, which was the original version, in the longer Greek version, much later on down the line when it was translated and given these additional verses.
There's actually six chapters and 107 verses of additional material. So what happens is down the line, Saint Jerome will translate this right in the fourth century and he takes the Hebrew, translates that into Latin. And in the Greek part, he translated that and then just stuck it at the end of the book. So it's out of order.
So these are various prayers and hymns and letters as we're going to see as we go to this book. He just put them at the end as an appendix. So when this comes into the English Bibles, it makes it confusing. So I'll just mention three as an example.
So the classic English translation is the Duet Reams, which everybody should have a copy of that on their libraries. Beautiful. It's like the Catholic version of the King James Bible. It's really beautiful.
And it is a direct translation from the Latin, the Latin Vulgate. So the book of Esther and the Duet Reams has exactly what Saint Jerome did. So you've got the first 10 chapters, which is the Hebrew copy of Esther. And then at the very, very end, you're going to have those Greek chapters.
And by the way, I would say one of the commentaries that I recommend is the classic commentary by Haydock. Haydock's commentary is a translation, excuse me, a commentary on the Duet Reams. Okay. So if you look at that commentary, it's going to give a commentary on the 10 chapters.
And then all of a sudden you've got chapters 11 through 16, which are parts of the story, but they're out of sync. Okay. So that's one example that we have in the English Bibles, the Duet Reams, the Fallisible Gate. So chapters 1 through 10 and 11 through 16 are those Greek editions that are out of sync.
Now the revised standard version, Catholic edition, second Catholic edition, what they do is they follow the Septuagint. So they have the additional chapters 11 through 16 that are placed in the proper part of the story. So what that means is that it looks out of juncture, out of sync. So it begins with the chapters 11 and 12 and then 1 and 2 and 3, then 13, then 4, then 14.
It just feels really weird. But that's only because that Bible places those additional sections in the proper place in the story. Okay. Now the New American Bible, which is a great standard, right?
In order to avoid the confusion of going 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 13, 4, 14 and all that confusing stuff, what they do is they take those additional sections, they place them in the proper place of the story, but they just change it to letters A through F. So it's going to go A, B, 1, 2, 3, C, 4, D, instead of hopefully that makes sense. If you have a New American Bible in front of you, it's going to make a lot of sense. Okay.
So there is a method of the madness, a rhyme and a reason to all this stuff. And this is the reason why. It's because of what Jerome did in his translation with the Vulgates. So either your translation follows the Latin Vulgate, like the Duet Reams, or your translation follows the Greeks up to a gent, and therefore you've got the story in order, but then the chapters are out of sync.
I hope that makes sense to you, okay? And that will make sense if you just read the story, then it'll all kind of come into focus. Okay. So there's the languages and the manuscript tradition and why it's so darn funky.
All right. Now, authorship. Now, the internal evidence of the book maintains that it is Mordecai himself. And that is Esther, chapter 9, verse 20 and chapter 12, verse 4.
It says in chapter 9, verse 20, that Mordecai recorded these things, instant letters to all the Jews who were in all the providence of King, hazardous, both near and far. So he recorded all these things and instant letters about them to the rest of the Jews. Okay. And then chapter 12, verse 4 says something similar, the king made a permanent record of these things and Mordecai wrote and accounts of them.
Now Mordecai is the great protagonist. He's the great hero of the story right alongside Esther. So he's the great Jewish superhero kind of in the story, and he has this whole thing happen to him, including his dream at the very beginning of the story. We'll talk about that next lesson.
He writes everything down and had the interpretation of the dream, and that is the explanation of it all. So the internal evidence as well as Christian tradition and Jewish tradition, if that matter, maintain that is Mordecai. Is he the only author? No, not at all, but he's the primary, original author?
Yes. Especially if he wrote the Hebrew version, and then way down the line down the centuries, some other person as we're going to see in chapter 11, some other dude writes, translates it and adds the editions. Clearly you got a couple of different authors there. Now there is your Catholic Bible dictionary.
We'll say there's another Jewish tradition that claims Ezra is an author, and that makes a lot of sense when I explain to you the kind of historical chronology. Ezra technically takes place right after the story. So it is possible that he preserved this tradition. Maybe he's a secondary or tertiary author.
We're not exactly sure, but that's very, very fascinating. Okay. So internal evidence as well as external witness to the Bible would say that it's Mordecai, maybe Ezra, and then we'll see chapter 11 just a little bit. All right.
So then if that's the case, how about the dating? All right. So if Mordecai is the primary author, then he certainly wrote this after all the events took place. So the Hebrew version, the original Hebrew version probably was written in the mid to late 400s after King Hasaras.
His name is also Xerxes, lived and died, and all these things took place. It's going to be in the mid to late 400s because I'll share with you later on Xerxes, live or I should say he reign from 485 to 465. So it's got to be after 465. Okay.
So that's what I mean by the late 400s. And it's got it's going to certainly be very per the authorship is steeped in the Persian culture, language traditions, and not the Greek. If you studied Judith with me, I explain to you how Judith is very unique because it has references and words and idioms and cultural concepts of both Persian culture and Greek culture in the same book, which is really, really interesting. And that means the authorship and dating took place over a long period of time, right?
You've got the development of the book of Judith over time, making references to Persian stuff, then of course to Greek stuff. That's not the case with the book of Esther. So for example, let me read this quote for you. It says, the complete absence of any Greek loan words, clear signs of acquaintance with Greek culture, or hints of awareness of the saluted persecution and Maccabean revolt.
It suggests that Hebrew Esther was composed during the Persian period. That is before 333 BC. That's when I was in the great rain or die. Most commentaries and most commentators agree that the author was familiar with Persian culture generally and specifically with court etiquette at the capital of Susa.
So that would fit the bill for Mordecai. I mean, Mordecai was familiar with Persian culture and specifically with court etiquette because he was in the court. So that fits the bill very much with Mordecai. So there's no references to Greek language, cultures, customs idioms in this book like the book of Judith.
So the Hebrew version was probably written in the Persian empire after the events took place. Does that make sense? All right, then we said later on, over the course of time, it became translated into Greek. That's probably going to be in the second century BC.
And we know this actually because the very last verse of the book, chapter 11 verse 1, it's actually interesting because the book starts with chapter 11 verse 2 and ends with chapter 11 verse 1. So again, that's the reason for that is what I explained, the historical developments going all the back of the Septuagint and Aladdin Vulgate. Well, in any case, the back of the book, chapter 11 verse 1, says in the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dausuthius, who was said that he was a priest in a Levite and told him he had sought to Egypt, the preceding letter of Perim, which they said was genuine and had been translated by Lysimachus. The son of Ptolemy, one of the residents of Jerusalem.
That's really interesting. So the book tells us that this character, Lysimachus, was the one who translated it. And at that particular time, it pre-probably added the rest of the content that the Hebrew version did not include. Or maybe perhaps what we now call the Greek editions, Lysimachus had access to Greek originals that's lost to us.
That's a possibility, no one argues that. So it says it's in the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. That's interesting. It seems very specific.
Okay, so now we know when the Greek was given, in the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the problem is there are many King Ptolemy's with wives named Cleopatra. And that's what I gave to you in a footnote, footnote number five. It says, according to the editions, it's chapter 11 verse 1 that we just read. The Greek text was brought to Egypt by Dostotheus, a priest and Levite, in the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra.
The translation was made by Lysimachus, son of Ptolemy, one of the residents of Jerusalem. However, there's five Ptolemy's who had wives named Cleopatra. So the most likely candidates are in the Lysimol, in the reigns of 146 and 116, 16, 16107, 80 to 58. And you can see here in the notes, there are just five different possibilities of a King Ptolemy with his wife Cleopatra, of when this particular dude, Lysimachus, translated it and brought it out of Jerusalem.
So on the one hand, the text gives us some specifics. On the other hand, it's really hard to know because they're not specific enough, which Ptolemy and which Cleopatra is he talking about. So nevertheless, broadly speaking, we can say it's going to be in the second century BC. That's when the book was translated into Greek.
Now one interesting thing when comparing the Hebrew original version and the Greek longer version is that the Hebrew text, the Hebrew version doesn't have any references to God or religion, which is interesting, except for maybe the fact that Esther calls for a three day fast. Fasting is clearly a religious practice. But beyond that, obviously, there's no reference to God at all. So now brought up a lot of conversation and debate in the early centuries amongst Jews and Christians, as this inspired or not, as it doesn't mention God at all.
I mean, the only other book to my mind off the top of my head, this example of this, would be the Song of Solomon, right? There's no reference to God there either. It's just like there's a very passionate, almost erotic book and like, well, it's this inspired and so debated Song of Solomon and Song of Solomon. But this book too, the Hebrew version at least, does not have reference to God.
So like, should it be inspired or not? But what's interesting about this is that the fuller Greek version that's preserved in Catholic Bible is in the Catholic canon. There's all kinds, just like 50 plus different references to God, to prayer, to religious practices of different kinds. This book, much more full and much more complete, because what's implicit and kind of hidden in the Hebrew Bible about God's providence is really made explicit in the fuller Greek version, which is an argument that we should be reading and accepting the fuller Greek version of this Bible.
That's not a slam dunk argument, but it's an argument of fittingness, I think, for sure. The fuller Greek version gives us this beautiful perspective on God's providence and prayer. And in fact, we'll save that for the section on the key themes. All right.
So that explains a little bit more than about the authorship and dating, the language and manuscript tradition for the original Hebrew and the Greek. Very interesting, right? I think that's super interesting. Okay.
So let's look at section D now in the notes. We have the historical and literary context. Hey, this is Dr. Neck.
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