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Of all the books of the Hebrew Bible, only Esther is not represented in the collection of scrolls unearthed in the Judean Desert caves overlooking the Dead Sea. Among the 202 biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, not one scrap of Esther has been discovered.
Of course, the absence of such a small scroll might be attributed to nothing more than chance. However, certain evidence that has recently come to light reveals that the absence of Esther was no accident.
Among the scrolls left in the caves by the Dead Sea Scroll community is a group of documents known as the Qumran calendar texts. These documents chart festivals and holy days observed by the Jewish community that produced the scrolls. Their calendar consisted of 364 days, exactly 52 weeks, compared to the 354-day calendar of mainstream Judaism, and it included the biblical holidays of Passover, Shavuout (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles). But curiously, the Jewish festival of Purim, which has its beginnings in the story of Esther, is missing.
Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jews exiled in Persia from destruction by a royal minister. According to the Book of Esther, the Persian minister Haman had masterminded a plan to “destroy, massacre and exterminate all the Jews, young and old, children and women, on a single day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month—that is, the month of Adar—and to plunder their possessions” (Esther 4:13). Haman selected the date by drawing lots (Hebrew, purim).
But by gaining her husband’s ear, Esther, the young Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus, foiled Haman’s plan and reversed the annihilation. “And so,” the Book of Esther recounts, “on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month…on the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power” (Esther 9:1). And “[the Jews] rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merry making” (Esther 9:17). For hundreds of years, Esther’s success has been celebrated by Jews during the festival of Purim, on the 14th of Adar (which usually falls in March).
But not at Qumran. The Dead Sea Scroll community apparently did not observe Purim, did not even mark it on their calendars.
So the question becomes, why was Esther—and the festival held in her honor—rejected at Qumran?
There are several possible reasons: First, the fact that the festival of Purim was a late addition to Jewish tradition and was therefore not mentioned in the Five Books of Moses might have led to the book’s rejection by the Dead Sea Scroll community. Second, the mere fact that the story concerns the marriage of Esther—a Jew—to a Persian king was likely to be repugnant to the group’s conservative sensibilities. Third, the book may have been rejected because it is the only biblical book that makes no mention whatsoever of God. Finally, the emphasis on retaliation evident in the final chapters of Esther (chapters 7–9) is contrary to the teachings of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These chapters recount how the Jews “mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt” (Esther 9:2) and then “disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes” (Esther 9:16). The message is contrary to that found, for example, in the scroll commonly known as the Community Rule, which appears to be a charter for the sectarian community: “To no man shall I return evil for evil, I shall pursue a man only for good; for with God resides the judgment of all the living, and He shall pay each man his recompense” (1QS 10.17–18).
Any one of these factors might explain why the Book of Esther is nowhere to be ound among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Adapted from the forthcoming The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (HarperSanFrancisco), ©1999 by the authors.
Of all the books of the Hebrew Bible, only Esther is not represented in the collection of scrolls unearthed in the Judean Desert caves overlooking the Dead Sea.a Among the 202 biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, not one scrap of Esther has been discovered.
