This is what happened during the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush … Esther 1:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 3, 2014): Esther 1

Whenever we read a modern translation of the Bible – even the King James Version – we are accepting a set of assumptions that someone has made for us. There is no one word to one word translation available, so translators work with concepts instead. And often as they work with these concepts, the resultant translation is the translator’s best guess as to what the words or concepts mean. Often the guesses are very educated and we are pretty confident of what the words mean, but never-the-less, they remain just guesses.

And Esther opens up with one such guess. We are told that the events of the story that we are about to be told happened during the reign of Xerxes (NIV). The attempt is to anchor the story of Esther to a particular moment in history. But the original Hebrew text doesn’t actually mention Xerxes. The name mentioned in the Hebrew text is Ahasuerus. We are pretty sure that Ahasuerus and Xerxes, or more specifically Xerxes the Great, are the same king. It is our best guess, one that we are fairly confident about, but we are not entirely sure.

But if Ahasuerus and Xerxes the Great are the same king, then the story of Esther is anchored to a time when the Persian Empire dominated what we sometimes describe as the known world – essentially the middle east and the land that surrounds it. That would make the story of Esther a story that happened in the first half of the fifth century (Xerxes reigned as King for about a twenty year period from 486 – 465 B.C.E).

The position of Esther in the Bible has long been under attack. Strictly speaking, Esther seems to be more of a book about Jewish history than a book about Jewish spirituality. The Book of Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention the name of God. Yet, in spite of this, the story of Esther and Xerxes has become a much loved story in both Judaism and Christianity. And in an interesting parallel between Jewish and Persian culture, Persian Jews are often referred to as Esther’s Children – paying homage to the story of Esther.

No matter what we believe about the story, it is a story that has influenced our world – and because of that it is a story that we need to know well.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Esther 2