Thursday, September 17, 2020

S. Paul Re’Emi on the Origin of the Feast of Purim

 

 

THE CULTIC PROBLEM

 

Concerning the origins of the Feast of Purim, there are a number of hypotheses, but no general agreement. Four facts are clear: (1) The word pur is not a Hebrew word, nor is it Persian; it is Akkadian, meaning “a lot” or “destiny.” (2) The casting of lots does not play, in this story, a role sufficient to explain the meaning of the feast. It is possible that casting lots was a custom among the Babylonian Jews, thus giving a popular etymological explanation of the Persian name. (3) The Purim feast contains some features connected with the New Year celebrations in Persia, such as, for instance, the presenting of gifts, sham gifts, and the casting of lots. (4) Herodotus informs us of a Persian feast called “Magophonia” (i.e., “the killing of Magi”) which was celebrated in memory of Smerdes, a usurper under Darius I. This report may have suggested a reason for the feast in the book of Esther.

 

It is also possible that the Jews in Persia or in Babylonia had accepted certain customs connected with the Persian New Year. A Persian name, though of Akkadian origin, could thus have been taken over from some legendary material of old. We cannot prove that there was some connection between the persecutions of the Jews and the celebration of the Persian New Year, but it is not impossible. Such feasts could excite religious fanaticism and incite their participants to attack the “infidels,” that is, those who held a different faith.

 

The religious significance of the feast is, perhaps, not great. The Hebrew version avoids even the use of the name of God. Yet it should be stressed that the author considered its happenings as guided by the providence of God. Mordecai waited for help from God only in case Esther should refuse her help (4:13). Thus the name “Jew” is used here more in an ethnic sense than in a religious one (8:17). The principal feature of the book is national rather than religious, though the two conceptions were for the author inseparable.

 

The tractate Megillah (the Hebrew name for “scroll”) in the Mishnah deals with the cultic side of the Feast of Purim. This account is composed of different strata; Rabbi Meir’s collection of material is based on that of his teacher, Rabbi Akiba (ca. A.D. 135). It states that “if the Megillah has been read in the first Adar and the year has subsequently been prolonged [by the intercalation of a second Adar; the Jews used the lunar year, and so at intervals had to correct it with their solar year], it is rad again in the second Adar” (Megillah 6b).

 

Between the periods when the Feast of Purim was celebrated in Persia, following the decrees of Mordecai and Esther, and its acceptance by rabbinic sources there is a wide gap. Yet an anonymous Baraitha (“comment”) on the Talmud shows that Purim was already celebrated in the last decades of the temple; for it prescribes that the priests should interrupt their service in the temple, and the Levites their singing, and the representatives of the people their attendance at public sacrifices, in order to go and listen to the reading of the Megillah. (S. Paul Re’Emi, “The Faithfulness of God: A Commentary on the Book of Esther,” in Richard J. Coggins and S. Paul Re'Emi, Nahum, Obadiah, Esther: Israel Among the Nations [International Theological Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985], 110-12)

 

 

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