Ahe.suerua' establishing o. now an-angement of the tribute, and of ]\,forrlec:ii'~ gro9.tness o.ml favour, both with tho king and with his own nl\tion, the BfJok closes (eh. x. ). § 2. DATE OF ITS COMPOSITION. In ordar to determine (approximately) the date of the composition ot 'Esther,' it is necessary, in the fust place, to decide which of the Persian kings is intended by Ahasuerua. That no king prior to Darius Hystaspis c<1n be meant seems to follow-I. From the limits assigned to the empire in eh. i. 1, since Darius fust extended the Persian dominion over a portion of India; and, 2. From the residence of the court being Susa, which Darius first made the capital. It has been supposed, chiefly from eh. x. 1 (" And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the islands of the sea"), that Darius himself is intended. But neither the name nor the character agree; nor was Darius in his third year in a position to give a feast to all the power of Media and Persia at Susa, since he was struggling for his crown, Media was in revolt, and he was himself at Babylon (' Records of the Past,' vol. vii. pp. 95-98). .A.rtaxerxes Longimanus has also been suggested, partly because the name is given as ".Artaxerxes " in the Septuagint, and partly because such was the opinion of Josephus. But here, again, both the name and character are adverse; nor could Haman, in Artaxerxes' twelfth year, have any need of informing him that there was such a people as the Jews with peculiar laws (Esther iii. 8), when .A.rtaxerxes had shown hunself well acquainted with the Jews and with their law in his seventh (Ezra vii. 12-26). A later monarch than Longimanus haB not been suggested, and would be incompatible with the genealogy of Mordecai (Esther ii. 5, 6) ; so that the mere process of eliminating impossible kings conducts us to Xerxes, the son of Darius, and father of Longi- manus, as the personage really meant. And here we find, in the fust place, that the names are identical, the Hebrew Akhashverosh corresponding letter for letter with the Persian Khshayarsha, which the Greeks turned into Xerxes. Secondly, the resemblance of character is most· striking, and is admitted on all hands. Thirdly, the notes of time exactly accord with the chronology of Xerxes' reign. "In the third year of Xerxes' reign was held an assembly at Susa to arrange the Grecian war(Herod., vii. 7). In the third yearof Ahasuerus was held a great feast and assembly at Shushan the palace (Esther i. 3). In the seventh year of his reign Xerxes returned defeated from Greece, and consoled himsolf by the pleasures of the harem (Herod., ix. 108). In the seventh year of his reign' fair young virgins were sought' for Ahasuerus (Esther ii. 2-15)." * We may therefore confidently regard the Ahasuerus of Esther as the well- known invader of Greece and scourger of the Helles,pont, who has come down to us in profane history as "Xerxes." • Bp. Ootton in Dr. Smith's 'Dictionary 'lf the Bible, vol. i. p. 34. INTRODUCTION TO
With respect to the time of the composition of Esther, it is, in the first place, clear that when the author writes the reign of Ahasuerus is over. The opening passage distinctly proves this. Now Xerxes died in n.o. 466, and the question therefore is, How long after this date was the Book of Esther written 1 The open- ing passage is thought by some to imply that the reign of Ahasuerus was remote, and a recent commentator suggests B.o. 200 as the probable time of writing,• but he admits that a century earlier is quite possible. Other critics suggest as early a date as B.C. 450-440, and the arguments which they adduce are weighty. The language of the Book closely resembles that of Chronicles,'Ezra, and Nehemiah, which were all written about that time. The minute and particular ·accounts of many matters which would be known primarily only to Esther and Mordecai, and would certainly not have been written in the " book of the chronicles,"-a.s Mordecai's genealogy ( eh. ii. 5), Esther's messages to Mordecai and Mordecai's to her through Hate.eh (eh. iv. 5-16), the circumstances of the two banquets given by Esther to Ahasuerus and Haman (eh. v. 6-8; vii. 2-8), &c.,-make it probable that the writer was contemporary with the events nar- rated, and derived his information from Mordecai or Esther, or both. Further, the individuals who have been mentioned as the writers of the Book-Mordecai himself a.nd the high priest J oiakim-lived about this time. .Altogether, it seems most probable that the work was composed about the middle of the fifth century B.O., or a little later, when Xerxes had been dead about twenty years.
§ 3. AUTHOR. Aben-Esra, among Jewish, and Clement of Alexandria, among Christian com- mentators, assign the Book of Esther to Mordecai. The Rabbi Azarias says that 1t was written by the high priest J oiakim. Augustine and Isidore make Ezra the author. In the Talmud it is said that the work was composed by "the men of the great synagogue." These conflicting statements neutralise each other, and make it clear that the Jewish Church had no uniform, or even pre- dominant, tradition upon the point. It is against Ezra's authorship that the style is very different from his; against Mordecai's, that the first person is ·never used, and that Mordecai is spoken of in terms of such high praise. J oiakim can scarcely be supposed sufficiently familiar with Persian customs and localities to have ventured upon the task, much less to have produced a work showing such perfect acquaintance with the machinery of the Persian court, its customs, etiquette, and the like. What is meant by attributing the composition to "the men of the great synagogue" it is hard to say; but certainly it would be difficult to adduce a work more distinctly stamped with the inilividualiiy of a single author than the Book of Esther. The result would seem to be that the author is really unknown. He must have been a Jew; he must have been
• Be,·tl,1:a u. Ste li i6 ' Introduction to EBther,' § 4, in the 'E:iegetiBches Ilumlbuch zum Alt.en TeBtamen.t,' \'oi. i,·. part ii. p. 288, THE BOOK OF ESTHER. I