W. Scott Watson, "The Authenticity and Genuineness of the Book of Esther,"

v. THE AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS OF THE BOOK OF ESTHER. HE Book of Esther presents itself to us as a true narrative of T a momentous episode in the histor.y of the children of Israel. The scene is laid in Shush an the palaee during the reign of a king who is designated in the English version as Ahasuerus-" this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces." Which of the royal names found in the pages of the Greek and Latin authors Ahasuerus corresponded to was long a most perplex. ing question that received various answers from commentators. The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has furnished the true solution. We now know that in it'~j1Wn~ we have the Hebrew form of what in Old Persian was Khshayarsha.* This is the:word that appears as Xerxes in the other histories with which the scholars of Europe and America were familiar before the long-silent records of Eastern rocks and mounds began a.gain to speak. t The king intended is evidently the son of Darins, who reigned from 485 to 465 B.O. : Xerxes II was assassinated after sitting on the throne not more than two months.:j: The Jews, to whom, according to St. Paul, were intrusted the oracles of God, considered Esther as part of the sacred Scriptures. Although it is not qnoted in the New Testament-in which respect it is not unique-the evidence is cOllclusive that it formed * The prefixed ~ may be compared with that of 1:l·.lil"it:iTl~ "satrapies," derived from the Persian lch.9hatrapavan. t Another foreign representation of the name is t7'WWni this oeonr" in tie Aramaic portion of tbe bilingual tombstone found at Sakkara in 1877. The bieroglyphical forms may be seen in Lepsius' Konigsbuch der alten .ilegypter, Taf. XLIX. :\: Artakhsliatra, the native form of the name of King Artaxerxes, cannot be represented in Hebrew by the letters in the text, but is almmt exactly the ~i1Dt:lTln.,~ of Ezra and N ehemiab. The mistake,> tbat bave been made in the attempts to identify Abasuerus are instructive. The Septuagint alld Josepbu8 call bim Artaxerxes, showing that as early as the time when the Greek translation of Esther wag made the true equivalent of the Persian name wa, unknown to the Israelites in Palestine and Egypt. It is evident that what we bave before us could not have originated where such ignorance was prevailing. THE AUTHENTICll'Y 011' THE BOOK 011' ESTHER. 63 part of the common He brew canon endorsed by Ohrist and His apostles. It was among the books recognizeu by Josephus. The passage in the works of that author, in which he gives an account of the writings received as of divine authority by his fel1ow countrymtm, is well known: "For we have not thousands of books discordant and conflicting, but only twenty-two, containing the record of all time, which have justly been believed to be divine.* And of these, five are the books of Moses, which embrace the laws and the tradition of the creation of man, reaching to the death of Moses. This period is little short of three thou~and years. And from the death of J\ioses down to the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who succeeded Xerxes,' the prophets who came after Moses related the things done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and practical directions for men. From the time of Artaxerxes to our own time, each event has been recorded, hut tl,e records have not heen deemed worthy of the same credit as those of earlier date, because the exact succession of the prophets was not continued. But what faith we have placed in our own writings is seen from our conduct; for though so long a time has now passed, no one has dared either to add anything to them or to take anything from them, or to alter anything. But it grows up with Jews from their very birth, to regard them as decrees of God, and to abide by them, and if need be gladly to die for them. "t This distinctly states that none of the historical works composed after the time of Artaxerxes was ac~ounted part of the Scripture. Josephus, a man of priestly descent and scholarly tastes who had given special attention to religious questions, must be accepted as a competent witness to testify to what was the current opinion in the best-informed circles of his day on the matter here spoken of. How could such a production as the one we are examining, if it were a mere romance, ever have attained to canonical authority'/ It favors no priestly or other special class in the community whose members may be imagined as foisting a lie on the populace from motives of personal aggrandizement. When it was first numbered with the writings looked upon as emanating from prophets in their official capacity, i.e., as spokesmen of Jehovah, the proof in favor or its right to the place must have appeared conclusive. "God is not a man, that He should lie" had long stood in the Mosaic law rolls. The presence of several books in the Septuagint that were never admitted into the Hebrew Bible demonstrates that the religious heads of the people were not t00 prone .to stamp with the seal cl canonicity all candidates for that high honor. We have a lasting monument to the historical truthfulness of the Book or Esther in an annual celebration. We can say at the * These were the same as the books that now form the Old Testament of Jews and Protestants. t Contra Apion, I. 8. ., 64 THE PRINOlllTON THEOL0 GIOAL REYlEW. present time, 3S conld Josephus of old, that all the Jews in the wor1d now observe the days of Purim because of the orders issued by Mordecai.* This is the on1y explanation of the origin of the festival that has ever been given by the people who keep it; they have spoken with a consistent voice in all parts of the earth and throughout the centuries. t The anniversary exists and a story purporting to account for it exists, but how came the two to be jOlned to each other so strong1y that nothing bas separated them during more than two millenniums? If the former were before the ]atter, how diu tbe true explanation disappear without leaving the slightest trace and the present so completely take its p1ace? If the tale were first current, how was the initiation of the observa tion brought about? The book itself states that the memorial was established immediately after the occurrence of the events which it is to keep fresh in mind. This would have been a stumbling block in the way ot adding the festiv3,l at any subsequent dat~, for at once the disagreement between the actual faiJt and the alle gation of the previous observance would be apparent. Thus the denial of the authenticity of the Book of Esther would lead us into inextricable difficulties. Admit its historical character and all is easy-we have an adequate cause assigned for the visible effects. There was a good reason for the first rejoicing; the command of the Persian vizier and the thankfulness felt by those who had experienced the deliverance wou1d support the custom until it became a fixed part of the life of the people. The simplicity of our narrative speaks strongly in favor of its genuinely historical character. There is nothing fabulous or absurd in it. Without admitting in the slightest that the super natural is an objectionable element in a writing for which inspira tion is claimed, it may be noted that here we have no recourse to it. Providence is, indeed, plainly visible, but it is only such as many a child ot God can see in his own life-we have before us perhaps the most exquisite and masterl'y delineation to be fOllnd of the ordinary way of the Lord's carrying out His plans in the wor1d. As this was a popular story, nnmerous additions were made to it, but they contain incon~rllous elements from which the original text is entirely free. Mordecai, for instance, is recorded as having discovered a conspiracy against the monarch (ii. 21- 23), but it is not said, as in one of the Targums, that he was able * Antiq., XI. VI. 13. The anniversary is even called by that worthy's name, " Mordecai's day," in 2 Mace. XY. 36. t The attempts made within the last forty years by a few German scholars to find in this feast a metamorphosed heathen festival are mutually destructive because of the discrepant results suppoaed to be reached and are without the slighest support in Hebrew tradition. THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE BOOK OF ESTHER. 65 to do so because he possessed a knowledge of all the languages of the seventy nations into which the population of the earth was traditiona1ly divided. How simple are the words in vi. 1: " On that night the king's sleep fled," compared with the expansions the story of that night subsequently received! Would any· ancient romancer, untrammeled by the necessity of adhering to truth, be able to so restrain himself from taking advantage of the many opportunities offered for embe1lishing his tale? It has been said that there are improbabilities and impossibili ties in the narrative; but most of the particulars given in support of the assertion are puerile or evince a lack of familiarity with Eastern life.

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