The Samaritan Version of the Esther Story

chapter 20 The Samaritan Version of the Esther Story

Adam Silverstein

The Biblical Book of Esther has attracted the interest of scholars from a number of fields and there are, thus, hundreds if not thousands of books and articles dedicated to nearly every aspect of Esther, written from nearly every perspec- tive imaginable. And yet, there is at least one retelling of the Esther story that appears to have evaded the attention of those working in the various sub-fields of Esther studies. This is a fourteenth century reworking of the Esther story by the Samaritan historian Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Abī al-Ḥasan.1 That this text has evaded the attention of Esther scholars is not difficult to explain: in theory, at least, there should be little reason for such scholars to look for materials relating to Esther in Samaritan sources, for the simple reason that the Samaritans are widely known to exclude the Purim festival from their calendar and the Book of Esther, on which this festival is said to be based, from their canon.2 Despite its low profile, this version of Esther is worthy of schol- arly attention for reasons that shall become clear in what follows.

1 On him see: “Abu l-Fath ibn Abi l-Hasan” in Crown, Pummer and Tal (eds.), Companion to Samaritan Studies, 8; and Levy-Rubin, “Introduction,” (Continuatio of the Samaritan Chronicle). 2 The Samaritans do not celebrate Purim as they only observe those festivals that have Pentateuchal sanction (hence, Purim and Hanukka are excluded). That said, John Mills, writ- ing in the mid-nineteenth century, mentions that the Samaritans with whom he stayed celebrated “Purim,” though they celebrated it in the month of Shebat (rather than Adar) and considered this festival to be a commemoration of the Israelites’ deliverance from Pharaoh’s Egypt, under the leadership of Moses (Mills, Three Months’ Residence at Nablus, 266ff.). Interestingly, al-Yaʿqūbī (Ta‍ʾrīkh, 1:66) notes that the Jews fast on the tenth of Tebet (which he refers to by its Islamic equivalent, “Kānūn al-Ākhar”), in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews from Haman. Bearing in mind that for Muslim authors Haman was one of Pharaoh’s henchmen in Egypt, it is conceivable that Yaʿqūbī is confusing the Samaritan’s Purim in Shebat with the Jewish fast on the tenth of Tebet (which, to Jews, normally com- memorates Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem). The existence of a Samaritan “Purim” has been marshaled in support of wide-ranging arguments about the date at which Samaritans and Jews split into separate religions (for which, see Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, 137–8).

Before proceeding to Abū al-Fatḥ’s text, it is worth pointing out a number of possible links between the Esther story itself and the Samaritan community. One is Stephanie Dalley’s recent theory that the Purim festival (for which Esther is commonly thought to be etiology) has its origins in the Samaritan community of the seventh century bce.3 A less adventurous theory, proposed by Ran Zadok, has it that the Esther story is a record of Samaritan–Jewish rivalry in the fifth century bce.4 The Bible (Ezra 4.6) does in fact indicate that the Samaritans (whatever is meant by this in that context) sought to scupper attempts to rebuild the Jewish Temple during the reign of Ahasuerus, at whose court the Esther story is set. Another possible connection between Esther and the Samaritans comes from J. T. Milik’s attempt to identify some fragments dis- covered at Qumran as being part of an early (pre-Biblical) Aramaic version of Esther.5 Although Milik’s theory has gained few followers, there are various structural similarities between the Qumran text and Esther. These include the facts that both are set at the court of Ahasuerus, both include the names of numerous Persian courtiers, and both involve an intrigue at the court in which the protagonist is a Judean from the tribe of Benjamin, amongst other similarities. The two texts are thus somewhat comparable, and the fact that the antag- onist in the Qumran story is not “Haman, the Agagite” as in Esther but rather a Samaritan (literally: “Cuthaean”) is thus all the more noteworthy. In fact, early rabbinic exegetes explained that the scribe “Shimshai,” who is named as one of the Samaritan petitioners against the Jews’ plan to rebuild the Temple in Ezra 4, was none other than Haman’s son.6 The idea that the Jewish–Samaritan rivalry could be related to the Esther story is worth bearing in mind, precisely because this is the backdrop for Abū al-Fatḥ’s reworking of the Esther story, which now follows.7

3 Dalley, Esther’s Revenge at Susa, 219ff. 4 Zadok, “Historical Background of the Book of Esther,” 18–23. 5 Milik, “Modèles Araméens du Livre d’Esther.” 6 On all this, see Segal, “Esther and the Essenes.” 7 It is perhaps relevant that Ibn Ezra’s explanation for the lack of reference to God in Esther is that it was feared that other nations would simply replace God’s name with the names of their own deities, “as the Samaritans had done in their version of the Bible” (in Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb, 77). This is almost certainly a reference to the Samaritan Pentateuch, but the possibility that Ibn Ezra was aware of a Samaritan Esther along the lines of Abū al-Fatḥ’s version should not be dismissed.