Fact or Fiction?

I just finished teaching Esther in two of our live classes, and one of our LBS students asked: “Is Esther an historical work or is it fiction?” This is a very good question . . . with a rather complicated answer.

Most scholars agree that the book of Esther was originally written in Hebrew sometime during the 3rd or 4th century B.C. Additional material was added to the story sometime during the 2nd century B.C. in Greek, which includes several prayers to God, as well as numerous smaller changes to the Hebrew text. The additional material was probably added to give the Hebrew text a more pious spin: in the Hebrew text, Esther saves the Jews from destruction through her heroic actions; the Greek additions credit Esther’s piety and God’s intervention.

Esther is set during the reign of the Persian king Khashayarsha (Ahasuerus in Hebrew; Xerxes in Greek. The NIV renders the name Xerxes, throughout the story). This is probably Xerxes I, who reigns from 486-465 B.C. The Greek historian, Herodotus, notes that Xerxes sought his harem after his defeat during the Greco-Persian Wars, a series of conflicts between the Persian Empire and the Greek/Macedonian city-states that started in 499 B.C. and continued through 449 B.C.

In the story, Xerxes gives a huge banquet to garner support for his current military venture, inviting all the important men from throughout the Persian Empire. During the banquet he summons his queen, Vashti, to present herself before the men “to display her royal beauty” (Esther 1: 11). She refuses, and she is subsequently dismissed as queen.

After Xerxes’ disastrous defeat by the Greeks, he is in a blue funk. His advisors suggest holding a beauty contest throughout the Empire to choose the most desirable woman in the land to replace Vashti as queen. Esther—a Jew—wins the contest.

Meanwhile, Xerxes appoints Haman the Agagite as “prime minister.” In a personal vendetta against Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, Haman convinces the king to order the destruction of all the Jews in the Persian Empire on a single day.

Esther learns of the plot and through her intervention with the king, saves her people, turning the tables on Haman, who is impaled on a pole for his planned holocaust of the Jews. Xerxes then gives Esther Haman’s estate, and he elevates Mordecai to position of “prime minister,” replacing Haman.

The story accomplishes three goals. First, it explains the origins of the Jewish feast of Purim, which remembers the “casting of lots” (purim) to choose the day on which all Jews would die—until the tables are turned by Esther. Second, it explains why God orders King Saul to exterminate totally the Amalekites—and their king, Agag. (1 Samuel 15). In that story, Saul spares Agag and “everything that was good” (1 Samuel 15: 9)—that is, everything of value for plunder. Some 500 years later a descendent of king Agag, Haman the Agagite, plots the destruction of the Jews, demonstrating that God’s seemingly harsh command to Saul had a reason behind it. And third, the story of Esther demonstrates that God watches over and protects the Jews even when it appears that he has vanished from the scene.

I would classify the book of Esther as “historical fiction,” a story set in the court of Xerxes in 483 B.C. and written with a moral and didactic purpose. Clearly, Xerxes reigned as king over Persia; he did garner support for a disastrous war against the Greeks; and he did have a queen and a large harem. But that’s about as far as we can go with history. Sources mention nothing about Vashti, Esther, Mordachi, Haman or a planned killing of all the Jews in the Persian Empire, much less of Esther saving the Jews. That’s not to say the story couldn’t have happened. But even if it did, it has certainly been wildly embellished: in the Hebrew, and later in the Greek additions.

This doesn’t, of course, diminish the importance of Esther as Scripture. I’ve emphasized throughout my teaching that our approach to the Bible is literary. These are great stories! But many of the stories in the Bible ought not be viewed as history, in the modern sense of the term. The genre of “historical fiction” sets a story in the past, with an historical verisimilitude and real historical figures as characters. But what transpires in “historical fiction” is often what might have been or should have been, as seen through the writer’s imagination and shaped according to his moral and didactic purposes.

There are countless examples of this in literature from all periods. Consider Homer’s The Iliad. The first great epic poem, The Iliad is set in the final year of the 10-year Trojan War, and it tells the story of the clash between King Agamemnon and Achilles. Troy is most certainly a real place (we visit the archaeological site of Troy on our “Footsteps of Paul” tour each year in Turkey), and most critics agree that the Trojan War’s conclusion takes place c. 1184 B.C. The Iliad is not written, however, until sometime in the 800s B.C., 300-400 years later. The major characters—Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, Priam, Hector, Paris and Helen—were most probably real people, but the details of the story, the characters’ motives, their dialogue and the moral and didactic lessons taught, are purely the poet’s invention.

This doesn’t lessen the value of The Iliad. Quite the contrary. It heightens its value, ennobling its verse and elevating it to the status of art. The ancient Greeks understood this and used The Iliad and its companion piece, The Odyssey, as didactic literature to teach its society’s values and ethics. In The Iliad and The Odyssey we learn the importance of honor, respect, courage, heroism, self-sacrifice, homecoming and hospitality. Although neither The Iliad nor The Odyssey claim to be the “word of God” as the Bible does, both served to teach the cultural and social values central to their society, much as the Bible has done for the past 2,000 years.