Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

name of the Jews.
Why Esther has so far not been found at Qumran has been debated. Since this genre of literature has
now been found at Qumran, there most probably was an ideological antagonism to it. Previously one
might not have thought so. This objection can best be understood in terms of the militant xenophobia
and apocalyptic nationalism of the Community, as well as its condemnation of precisely the kind of
'fornication' Esther indulges in. That Esther could marry and enter the harem of a foreign potentate,
even in order to save her people, as the book posits, would have been anathema to a Community or
movement such as this.
On the other hand, if Esther is to be considered highly mythologized, and if the anti-Herodian animus
of the group responsible for many of these writings is confirmed, then a book like Esther would, no
doubt, have been looked upon as 'a stalking horse' for Herodian pretensions. Herodian princesses like
the infamous Berenice and Drusilla (not to mention their aunt Herodias in the previous generation)
were making precisely the same kind of marital and extra-marital arrangements with people no less
despised than Nero's freedman Felix and the destroyer of Jerusalem and emperor to be Titus.
Presumably they, too, were making the same excuse, 'to save their people'.
Therefore Esther would have been seen as particularly repugnant in a way that these tales - containing
no hint of illicit activity or sexual impropriety - were not. For their part, the Maccabee books present
'the day of Mordechai' as preceded by a feast day they call 'the day of Nicanor'. On this day, which
they present like Hannukah as having been ratified by popular vote, the head of a particularly despised
foreign enemy of the Jews was hung from the citadel of Jerusalem (2 Macc. 15:35, a particularly
zealous proponent of this kind of activity).