6 author of o great ane DOrian (comp. Bertheau-Ryssel, ad foc. ; Kuenen refuses to lay any weight on this passaye, Hist.- Krit. Bint. 1, ii. 209).
wished to honour. In consequence of his own suggestion the vizier was then bidden to conduct his enemy in honour round the city, while his friends saw in this misfortune an omen of his coming overthrow by Mordecai (5'-6). After the disgrace and death of Haman, Mordecai succeeded to his place, receiving the king’s seal, being arrayed in gorgeous attire, and writing letters in the king’s name to grant the Jews permission to defend themselves; while the fame of Mordecai throughout the empire led all the Persian officials to assist the Jews (8. 9%). Finally, Mordecai and Esther wrote two letters to all the Jews, enjoining that the feast of Purim should be everywhere cele- brated on the I4th and 15th days of Adar; and that fastings and lamentation should be connected with the observance of the festival (9”-*2), The Bk. of Esther closes with an account of the fame and dignity of Mordecai, who stood next in rank to the king, and was recognized as the protector of his countrymen (10).
The apocryphal additions to Esther in the Greek version glorify Mordecai still more. In the LXX the book opens with the description of a dream which he had concerning two great dragons, and a great river springing from a little fountain. In the last chapter Mordecai interprets this dream, explaining the river of queen Esther, and the dragons of Haman and himself (Ad. Est 11! 10). We find also a few more particulars regarding the conspiracy of the two eunuchs, and a prayer of ΣΝ in which he declares that his refusal to bow before Haman was Bronipies by zeal for the
lory of God, and not by human pride (138-17), In ater literature the first reference to the Bk. of Esther is in 2 Mac 15%, where the 14th of Adar is called the Day of Mordecai.
As the general question of the historical char- acter of the Bk. of Esther is discussed elsewhere [EsTHER], it will be suflicient to add here one or two comments on the position assigned to Mordecai. There is a certain inconsistency in the representa- tion that Esther’s Jewish descent was unknown (2), whereas Mordecai was recognized as a Jew (34; 5'8), and was in frequent communication with the queen (2¥ 4), and also in the fact that the king Sepall bestow honour upon Mordecai the Jew after the race had been proscribed. On the other hand, it is a plausible view which regards Kish (2°), not as the great-grandfather of Mordecai, but as his remote ancestor, the father of Saul, and holds Haman to be an Amalekite (so Jos. Ant. XI. vi. 5, 12; and Targ.); in this case the descendant of Saul is opposed to the descendant of his ancient enemy Agag. In profane history we hear of no great minister of Xerxes whom we can identify with Mordecai, but it must be admitted that the domestic annals of this reign are scanty. To connect the Jewish vizier with the influential eunuch Matacao, named by Ctesias (so Rawlinson), seems very precarious. During the last years of Xerxes, Artabanus, the commander of tlie body- guard, was the chief minister.*
In Rabbinical literature Mordecai is a favourite character. The late Targum on Esther traces the descent of the ‘righteous’ Mordecai from Shimei, who cursed David, and from Jonathan the son of Saul: he knows the seventy languages, he receives supernatural warning of the danger of the Jews, and a long description is given of the pomp and splendour bestowed upon him after he became the king’s minister. H. A. WHITE.
* For ἃ full account of Jensen's attempt to explain Mordecal (Marduk), Haman (Humman, the national god of the Elamites), and the other principal characters in the Bk. of Esther upon the theory that in that book we have a Judaized form of Baby lonian legend, see Wildeboer, ‘ Esther,’ in Kurzer Hand-Comm 172 Πα; cf. Bxpos. Times, Aug. 1898, p. 498, and art. Puri (Feast ov) in this Dictionary.
£35 MORE
MORE.—In middle English there were two com- paratives, ‘moe’ referring to number, and ‘ more’ referring to size or importance ; and the distinction between them was occasionally observed as late as the publication of AV in 1611. Thus Nu 22" in the first ed. of AV reads, ‘And Balak sent yet againe Princes, moe, and more honourable then they’; and 33% “Τὸ the moe ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the lesse inheritance.’ The Anglo-Saxon word was ma, originally an adv. and connected with Lat. magis, Goth. mais, Germ. mehr. This mdé became in Eng. ‘mo’ with subscript e (whence ‘moe’ and ‘moo’) as bdn became ‘ bone,’ drdn ‘drone,’ and the like (Earle, Philology, § iii.). The spelling is capricious even in Elizabethan writers. Shaks. varies between ‘mo’ and ‘moe’; Tindale’s favourite spelling is ‘moo.’ Ridley, A Brefe Declaration, has ‘mo’ on p. 163 (Moule’s ed.), ‘Therfore I wyll rehearse mo places of him than hertofore I have done of the other’ ; and ‘moo’ on p. 171, ‘it should not nede . . . to bring in for the confyrmation of aT matter anye moo.’ In AV ‘mo’ occurs once 2% 5%, and ‘ moe’ 34 times.