Josh wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2024 6:25 pm
DarkShallNotPrevail wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2024 6:17 pm
Drat, and here I thought Purim was a safe alternative to celebrate for the kids! Time to appropriate a different holiday, I guess...
I would feel uncomfortable with the traditional part of a Purim celebration where all the Gentiles being killed is celebrated. Doesn’t feel appropriate for an NT Christian.
I understand the Jewish children would make a "Haman Doll", get in a circle and kick it to celebrate "Purim".
Not once is YHVH mentioned in the Book of Esther. The story is about revenge, and a beauty pageant for the queen, both ideas are alien to the rest of the Bible. And there is no historical proof to back it it up.
Esther is a fabrication, or perhaps, a retelling of a much older story from Babylon that has been reformatted.
Here is what Wikipedia said about the Book of Esther:
Historicity
Although the details of the setting are entirely plausible and the story may even have some basis in actual events, there is general agreement among scholars that the book of Esther is a work of fiction.[12] Persian kings did not marry outside of seven Persian noble families, making it unlikely that there was a Jewish queen Esther.[13][5][c] Further, the name Ahasuerus can be translated to Xerxes, as both derive from the Persian Khshayārsha.[14][15] Ahasuerus as described in the Book of Esther is usually identified in modern sources to refer to Xerxes I,[16][17] who ruled between 486 and 465 BCE,[14] as it is to this monarch that the events described in Esther are thought to fit the most closely.[15][18] Xerxes I's queen was Amestris, further highlighting the fictitious nature of the story.[13][5][d]
Some scholars speculate that the story was created to justify the Jewish appropriation of an originally non-Jewish feast.[19] The festival which the book explains is Purim, which is explained as meaning "lot", from the Babylonian word puru. One popular theory says the festival has its origins in a historicized Babylonian myth or ritual in which Mordecai and Esther represent the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar, while others trace the ritual to the Persian New Year, and scholars have surveyed other theories in their works.[20] Some scholars have defended the story as real history,[21] but the attempt to find a historical kernel to the narrative "is likely to be futile".[20]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther#Historicity"He replaced the teachings of Christ with his own opinions, and gave us a religion based on the doctrines of men."
