The Message of Megillat Esther

      In the community of orthodox bible teachers ideas sometimes spread like waves.  Over the last few years I have listened or read from multiple sources about a so called "hidden message" of the Megillah.  The one familiar to most people is that since G-d does not appear overtly in the story, He is working behind the scenes as a protector of Israel and one must look for the hand of G-d in world events because it is not always overtly visible. This is an idea that few people would argue with.  

      A few years ago I read in the posts of two highly regarded Tanakh teachers that the hidden message was that because the Persian Jews didn't do more to help build the second temple that they suffered the decree of their destruction.  This assumes  that the story of the Megillah takes place before the building of the second Beit HaMikdash.  This chronology is based on a verse from Daniel 9:1 which talks about a Darius the Mede son of Ahasuerus.  He is the same Darius mentioned in Daniel 6:1 who conquers the doomed Babylonian empire.  The problem with this is that there is no Darius the Mede known to history.  The Medean kingdom fell to the Persians 10 years before the fall of Babylon.  Why the author of Daniel recorded the history in this way is a bit lengthy and beyond the scope of this post ( see the Anchor Bible commentary on Daniel).  Suffice it to say it would be very difficult to place the story of Esther and Mordechai before the completion of the second temple in the sixth year of Darius the Great.

     This past year I heard a different hidden message of the Megillah.  Namely that the Jews of Persia were too comfortable in Shushan and Persia.  They were in danger of assimilating.  They suffered the ordeal of near annihilation as punishment.  Perhaps the reason Mordechai would not bow to Haman was to stir the Jews out of their comfort- to rock their boat.  The trouble with this point of view in my opinion is that I don't find any evidence for it in the text.  Also, if Mordechai wanted to send an anti assimilation message to the Jews, why does he not have a Hebrew name (Mordechai is a good Babylonian name) in the story as did Daniel and his friends who had both Babylonian and Hebrew names.

     All these hidden messages teach useful moral and theological values.  But I think when we look too hard for the hidden message we miss the obvious.  The explicit and transparent message of the Megillah is there for all to see but it needs reiterating.  It  is plain from chapters 8 and 9 that the story- and it's a great and beloved story-shows the  raison d'etre for the Jews of Persia celebrating a holiday called Purim which has no basis in the Torah.  As a non biblical holiday Purim would need some sort of support if observance of the holiday were to spread.  There is no fragment of Esther found at Qumran.  Perhaps the Qumranites didn't hold Esther to be canonical or perhaps it is just an accident that Esther is the only book of the Bible not found at Qumran.  The Talmud says that there was a question as to the canonicity of Esther as late as the early Amoraic period.  So with the history of the acceptance of Purim somewhat obscure, the end of the Megillah makes a strong case for the observance of a holiday  which spread from Shushan to be accepted later by the entire Jewish world.

Looking for evidence of Rabbinic law in Tanakh

At shabbos lunch a few weeks ago I got into a discussion with my friend about the definition of Torah she'b'al peh (oral law).  I said that there is no mention in Tanakh of any thing pertaining to oral law or things that could be construed as examples of "rabbinic" law - that is- an observance though not in the written Torah but which could be recognized as coming from a body of unwritten law or tradition.  Well, It turns out I spoke too soon.  In doing a quick scan of Tanakh I have found two or three instances of observance not recorded in the Torah. 

     Daniel 1:8 records that Daniel and his friends would not eat the king's food or drink his wine.  A prohibition against wine of a gentile would be part of a nonwritten tradition later codified in the Talmud.  Similarly Daniel 6:11 tells of Daniel praying toward Jerusalem three times a day- certainly a later post Torah development.

     In Nechemiah 10:35 lots are drawn among the cohanim and leviim for the privilege of bringing the sacrifices.  Although this procedure is mentioned in the Gemara it may just be a natural way for the fledgling community to deal with mismatch in the number of cohanim and leviim vs. the number of korbanot.  Similarly a prohibition of selling grain on the New Moon is implied in Amos 8:5.  If this is an example of a nonTorah tradition it would be the only one I find in all of the preexilic Tanakh. More likely there was a semi holiday associated with rosh chodesh during first temple times (see 2Kings 4:23  and 1Samuel 20:18-27).  In any event the prohibition of labor on rosh chodesh never made it in final form into talmudic law.
      Most scholars regard Daniel as postexilic in its final form (around 164 BCE) and certainly Nechemiah is postexilic.  So it seems that whatever evidence of oral law exists in Tanakh appears only in the latest books of the Bible

     Although it is not my purpose to show examples of observance that run contrary to oral law in our present day iteration in this short post, I will mention just a few examples on which I plan to elaborate in a later article.  Nechemiah 13:23 states the prohibition of marrying an Ammonitess or Moabitess.  Ezra 2:65 regarding singing women which is a later Rabbinic prohibition.  Both the books of Ezra and Nechemiah pertray the Leviim as active participants in the Golah community even though the Talmud in Yevamot speaks of Ezra penalizing the Leviim for not accompanying him on the trip from Babylonia.   In  Maccabees 1:38-41 lifting the ban on self defense on the Sabbath both point to a oral tradition which was still fluid in post exilic times.

     If there are instances of oral tradition in Tanakh or in the second temple period apocryphal books that I have missed I would appreciate your input.