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The Myth : So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom.

Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage.

Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?

And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.

Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon.

So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified. (Esther 7:1-10)

The Reality : The story of Esther originally had nothing to do with the Jews in Persia. It was primarily about an ancient feud between the Babylonians and the Elamites. Purim was a Babylonian festival brought back to Judaea after the Babylonian Captivity.

The Book of Esther has the distinction of being the only book in the Bible that doesn’t include the name of God. Its adoption into the biblical canon was a matter of great controversy and debate among both Jews and Christians. On its surface, it purports to be the story of how the Jewish people came to celebrate the holiday of Purim. In fact, it is a mixture of tales about ancient feuds.

The story takes place in Persia, during the reign of King Ahashuerus (i.e., Xerxes, 486 B.C.-465 B.C.). It has a number of historical inconsistencies. For example, it says that Mordecai came to Persia during the Babylonian deportation in 587 B.C. (Esther 2:6), and it is implied that Esther came with him. That would make them too old to have been in the court of Ahashuerus.

To briefly summarize the story, Ahashuerus’s queen, Vashti, refused one of her husband’s commands in the presence of other guests. This created a great scandal and the king ordered a search for a new bride lest women in Persia got it in their heads that they have the right to ignore their husband’s wishes. The search resulted in the selection of Esther, whose Jewish identity she kept secret. Esther’s guardian was her uncle Mordecai. The chief villain in the story was Haman, a high court official.

Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman and the minister became angry. Through a set of plot twists and turns, Haman suffered several humiliations at the hands of Mordecai and vowed revenge. He concocted a scheme to trick the king into authorizing the destruction of the Jewish people and the hanging of Mordecai.

Esther, at great personal risk, revealed the truth about herself and her impending doom. Persian decrees were irrevocable, but the king authorized the Jews to defend themselves against any attacks and destroy the families of the attackers. The hostile forces diminished in strength and the Jews slaughtered tens of thousands of their enemy. Haman was hanged on the scaffold built for Mordecai.

The story of Esther derives from multiple sources, in one of which the heroine had the name Hadassah instead of Esther. The biblical redactor emphasized that the two different names belong to the same woman (see Esther 2:7).

At its core, the story involves a mythological battle between Mesopotamian gods. The names Mordecai and Esther correspond to the two chief deities of Babylonian, Marduk and Ishtar. The villain’s name, Haman, corresponds to the chief deity of Elam, Humman, or Khumban, and the name Vashti corresponds to an Elamite goddess known as Mushti or Shushmushti.

For many centuries, Babylon and Elam were furious rivals. The Persians brought them both under its own rule. The story of Esther takes place in the city of Susa, the winter residence of the Persian king and the former capitol of Elam.

At about 1159 B.C., an Elamite king named Kutir-Nahhunte raided the Babylonian territories and seized the statue of Marduk from the city of E-sagila, bringing it back to Elam. Although Hittites and Assyrians had performed a similar act on earlier occasions, this particular event especially upset the Babylonians. One text says the sin was “far greater than that of his forefathers, his guilt exceeded even theirs.” A few decades later, the Babylonians managed to recapture the statue.

The conflict between Mordecai and Haman reflects this ancient humiliation and subsequent rehabilitation. Haman, representing the chief Elamite deity, tried to seize Mordecai, representing the chief Babylonian deity. The plot failed and Haman was hanged, signifying Babylonian’s victory over the Elamite god.

Intertwined within the story of Marduk and Humman is a second literary motif based on the battle between King Saul and King Agag of the Amalekites, one of Israel’s traditional enemies. In that battle, Saul had been directed at God’s word to destroy every single Amalekite. Instead, he spared the life of their king, Agag. This act, in the Judaean view, marked the end of Saul’s legitimacy as king over Israel and initiated the events that led to the fall of Saul’s House. Samuel, who “repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king,” had Agag brought before him and hacked the king into bits.

Esther identifies Mordecai as a Benjaminite, of the same tribe as Saul, and the two men share a similar genealogy. Saul was the son of Kish, and the first person named in Mordecai’s brief list of ancestors is also named Kish. Haman is described as an “Agagite, the Jews’ enemy.”

As a literary motif, we have a conflict between a son of Kish and an Agagite. Saul spared Agag after he defeated the enemy but Mordecai, through Esther, ignored the Agagite’s plea for mercy and had him immediately executed. He did not repeat the original sin. This time, the Benjaminite acted in accord with the LORD. He ruthlessly destroyed the enemy.

Since the story of Esther is a fiction, it cannot serve as an explanation for the origin of the Purim festival. The name Purim comes from the Persian word for “lot,” and in the story, Haman casts lots to determine on what days the Jews should be killed. The holiday has no religious connotations and was probably a pagan holiday adopted by the Jews, who learned of it in Babylon, enjoyed the celebration, and brought it back to Judaea.