II. rrtnon/'r//;/.— Among the Jews this book has al- ways been held in the highest esteem. There is some
ground for believing that the feast of Purim was hy some of the more ancient Jews opposed as an unli- censed novelty (Talm. Hieros. Meffillotk, fol. 70; Light- foot, Hor. Jfeb. ad Jt)h. x, 22) ; but there is no trace of any doubt being thrown by them on the canonicity of the book. By the more modern Jews rt has been elevated to a place beside the law, and above the oth- er hagiographa, and even the prophets (Pfeiffei', Thes. Hermcn. p. 597 sq. ; Carpzov, Introd. p. 3G6 sq.). In- deed, it is a sajang of Maimonides that in the days of the Messiah the prophetic and hagiographical books will pass away, except the book of Esther, which will remain with the Pentateuch. This book is read through In' the Jews in their synagogues at the feast of Purim, when it was, and is still in some synagogues, the cus- , torn at the mention of Haman's name to hiss, and stamp, and clench the fist, and cry, Let his name be blotted out ; may the name of the wicked rot. It is said, also, that the names of Haman's ten sons are read in one breath, to signify that they all expired at the same instant of time. Even in writing the names of Haman's sons in the 7th, 8th, and 9th verses of Esth. ix, the Jewish scribes have contrived to express their abhorrence of the race of Haman ; for these ten names are written in three perpendicular columns of 3, 3, 4, as if they were hanging upon three parallel cords, three upon each cord, one above another, to represent the hanging of Haman's sons (Stehelin's Ruhbinicat Literature, ii, 349). The Targum of Esth. ix, in Wal- ton's Polyglot, inserts a very minute account of the exact position occupied hy Haman and his sons on the gallows, the height from the ground, and the interval between each ; according to which they all hung in one line, Haman at the top, and his ten sons at inter- vals of half a culjit under him. It is added that Ze- resh and Haman's seventj' surviving sons fled, and begged their bread from door to door, in evident allu- sion to Psa. cix, 9, 10. Some of the ancient Jewish teachers were somewhat staggered at the peculiarity of this book, that the name of God does not once occur in it ; but others accounted for it by saying that it was a transcript, under divine inspiration, from the Chron- icles of the Medes and Persians, and that, being meant to be read hy heathen, the sacred name was wisely omitted. Baxter (S'linfs Rest, pt. iv, chap, iii) speaks of the Jews using to cast to the ground the book of Esther because the name of God was not in it. (See Pareau's Principles of Interpretation, and Hettinger's Thes. Phil. p. 488.) But Wolf {Bihl. Ilebr. part ii, p. 90) denies this, and sa3's that if any such custom pre- vailed among the Oriental Jews, to whom it is as- cril)ed by Sandys, it must have been rather to express their hatred of Haman. Certain it is that this book was always reckoned in the Jewish canon, and is named or implied in almost every enumeration of the books composing it, from Josephus downwards.
It has been questioned whether Josephus considered the book of Esther as written before or after the close of the canon. Du Pin maintains that, as Josephus as- serts [see Deutero-canonicai.] that the sacred books were all written between the time of Moses and the reign ((ipy//) of Artaxerxes, and {Ant. xi) places the history of Esther in that reign, he consequently in- cludes it among those books which he says were of in- ferior authority, as written under and since the reign of that prince {Complete Hist, of the Canon, p. 6). Eich- horn, on the other hand, favors tlie opinion that Jose- phus meant to include the reign of that prince within the proplictical period, and concludes that this histori- an considered the book of Esther as the latest of the canoTiical writings.
In the Christian Church the book of Esther has not been so generally received. Jerome mentions it by name in the Prolog. Gal., in his Epistle to Paulinus, and in the preface to Esther; as docs Augustine, I)e Cirit. Dei, and De Dnclr. Christ., and Origen, as cited by Eusebius {Hist. Eccles. vi, 25), and many others.
ESTHER, BOOK OF
309
ESTHER, BOOK OF
Wliilst apparently accepted without question by the chiirclK's of the West in the early centuries, tlie testi- mony of the Eastern Church concerninsj; it is more fluctuating. It is omitted in the catalogue of ]Melito, an omission which is shared with Nehemiah, and which some would account for by supposing that both these books were included by him under Ezra, a supposition that may be admitted in reference to Nehemiah, but is less probable in reference to Esther. Origen inserts it, though not among the historical books, but after Job, which is supposed to indicate some doubt regard- ing it on his part. In the catalogues of the Council of Laodicea, of the apostolical canons, of Cj'rDl of Je- rusalem, and of Epiphanius, it stands among the ca- nonical books ; by Gregory of Nazianzus it is omit- ted ; in the Synopsis Saip. Sac. it is mentioned as said b}' some of the ancients to be accepted by the Hebrews as canonical ; and by Athanasius it is ranked among the oi'nyu'Crj(T/cn/^/£)'«, not among the canonical books. These differences undoubtedly indicate that this book did not occupy the same unquestioned place in gener- al confidence as the other canonical books of the 0. T. ; but the force of this, as evidence, is greatly weak- ened by the fact that it was not on historical or critical grounds, but rather on grounds of a dogmatical na- ture, and of subjective feeling, that it was thus treat- ed. On the same grounds, at a later period, it was subjected to doubt, even in the Latin Church (Junilius, De partihus Leg. Dlv. c. 3). At the time of the Refor- mation, Luther, on the same grounds, pronounced the book more worthy to be placed " exti'a canonem" than "in canone" (Z)<» servo arhitrio; comp. his Tischreden, iv, 403, Berlin ed. 1848), but in this he stood alone in the Protestant churches of his day ; nor was it till a comparatively recent period that his opinion found any advocates. The first who set himself systematically to impugn the claims of the book was Semler, and him Oeder, Corrodi, Augusti, Bertholdt, De Wette, and Uleck have followed. Eichhorn with some qualifica- tions, Jahn and Havernick unreservedly, have defend- ed its claims.