Thank you Ray for all the detail I found that story really interesting it shows? that Esther was calm and used? her brain and achieved more rather than violence.?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
-------- Original message --------
From: "Ray via groups.io" <ray.sarlin@...>
Date: 20/8/20 9:16 pm (GMT+10:00)
Subject: Re: [b4uc] Second Session on Esther #Esther
On Thursday, 20 August 2020, 01:30:22 pm AEST, Mandy <mandyflynn01@...> wrote:
Hi there Ray and fellow students as always thank you Ray for a thought provoking class, you said? some scholars wondered why this book was included in the? Bible as there is no reference to God. Does this mean that all the books
of the Bible were written independently and someone???? decided to join all these books in one book being the Bible.If so there could be other interesting books not included. Take care everyone Mandy?
Hi Mandy and everybody,
There are two questions here, a short one and a great big one.? I’ll answer the short question first with a lengthy answer and then address the long one with a short
answer.
WHY DID/DO SOME RELIGIOUS PEOPLE (NOT SCHOLARS) DISLIKE “ESTHER”?
- I specifically referred to Roman Catholics as well as Reformers like Martin Lither and John Calvin.? This list is by no means inclusive.? For example, Martin Luther called Esther “less
worthy of being held canonical” than any other writing of the Old Testament (尝耻迟丑别谤’蝉
Bondage of the Will), and he put it on a list with?II?Maccabees for books that “Judaize too much and contain much pagan naughtiness.” (尝耻迟丑别谤’蝉
Table Talk).
Jerome (AD 342-420) discounted great portions of the book.? John Calvin simply omitted it from his bible commentaries.? No New Testament author quotes from it.
They had many reasons to hate the book for the reasons mentioned in class (doesn’t mention God, etc.); because it is too Jewish (anathema to those who believe that the Church has
replaced Israel); because it's too earthy or too human; and on and on.? I dare say that if one is anti-Semitic, this would be a hard book to stomach.
But all
these “feelings” are meaningless, because Esther is not a Christian book, it’s part of the Old Testament (Tenakh) Hebrew canon.? No Christian religion, denomination or sect determined which books to include or exclude as part of the OT canon.?
That was done by the Jews.
- As an aside, there are two versions of Esther, a Greek one and a Hebrew one.? For the first 400 years (until Jerome), Christians preferred the Greek version used by the Orthodox Church.? It
has extra sections which actually include the missing “God stuff”: lengthy prayers by Mordecai and Esther, express statements about God,
“These things have come from
God,” he [Mordecai] says. “The Lord has saved his people; the Lord has delivered us from all these evils; God has done great signs and wonders, which have not occurred among the nations” (10.1,9).
Esther’s prayer starts, “O my Lord, thou art our king; help me, who am alone and have no helper but thee.…”? She put on sackcloth and dung and prayed
for three straight days.
Early Christian Church Fathers including Clement
of Rome, Athanasius of Alexandria, Ambrose of Milan, and Aphrahat the Persian appreciated the longer book of Esther.
But Jerome in his Vulgate went the other way, choosing the “hidden” Hebrew language book that our English bibles have today.
But you can find the full book in the New English Translation of the Septuagint and also in the Revised Standard Version’s full version.
- To sum up, The Old Testament Canon had basically been settled by Jewish Religious Authorities by 270 BC in a Greek translation of the Hebrew originals. The Catholics chose to add the Apocryphal
books but they don’t call them part of the Canon.? What we have in our Old Testaments is what Jesus had as Scriptures in His day.
The Catholics did find a way to mess up Esther for us today when Jerome chose to translate a shorted Hebrew script into Latin rather than
the longer Greek version in use then (and now) by the Orthodox Churches.? The Good News is that this doesn’t matter as far as understanding the book; in fact, it might actually be helpful in encouraging us to look at the version that we have even deeper.?
Both versions, after all, tell the same story.
WERE ALL BOOKS WRITTEN INDEPENDENTLY AND SOMEONE DECIDED TO JOIN THEM? TOGETHER?
- The simple answer is yes.? Who decided?? Christians believe that the Holy Spirit was behind the God-inspired choices.? I’ve addressed the Old Testament above.
- Each New Testament book meets a number of very specific criteria such as (1) universal recognition as divinely inspired, (2) written (or dictated) by an apostle or other significant eye-witness observer of Jesus, (3) widespread acceptance
as being "inspired" and "apostolic", (4) having orthodox teachings, and from here different lists go different ways.? The 27 NT books meet all these and other criteria.? No other book does.? For some time, I have personally chosen to believe that one of the
Apostle John’s roles as the last surviving disciple was to compile that 27 letters that we call the New Testament.? Every single one would have come through his hands in Ephesus.
- To sum up, this is a complex question that has resulted in a great many PhDs in Theology granted to those who offer answers.? Different great religions claim to have been the ones to build the Canon.?
None of this matters, because it has stood for the better part of 2,000 years as is.
Thanks for another great question, Mandy.
Blessings,
Ray
?
?I don't know whether it was an electronics glitch or an algorithm disconnect.
Ray