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Thread: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

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    Default The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    What?   How in the world could a Hebrew lady have become a Queen in the ancient lands of Persia, and especially one who was a known Biblical personage?

     There are a few things that are often misunderstood about this story, so bear with me while I clear some of them up.  Esther is described in Old Testament Book of Esther as the Jewish queen of a Persian king named Ahasuerus.

      In the Book of Esther, Vashti is given as the first wife of King Ahasuerus. While the king holds a magnificent banquet for his princes, nobles and servants, she holds a separate banquet for the women. On the seventh day of the banquet, when the king's heart was "merry with wine", the king orders his seven chamberlains to summon Vashti to come before him and his guests wearing her royal crown, in order to display her beauty. Vashti refuses to come, and the king becomes angry. He asks his advisers how Vashti should be punished for her disobedience. His adviser Memucan tells him that Vashti has wronged not only the king, but also all of the husbands of Persia, whose wives may be encouraged by Vashti's actions to disobey. Memucan encourages Ahasuerus to dismiss Vashti and find another queen.

     The first thing to clear up is the king's name, Ahasuerus.
     This is the Hebrew form of the name. In Babylonian it was Ahšiyaršu, and in
     the Akkadian language it was Hi-ši-'-ar-šá.  And all of these refer to the ruler we know
     today as Xerxes I.

     And when they call him a "Persian", which is now the area known as Iran, he was actually from the tribes in the Zagros Mountains of southern Iran, and an Elamite.

     Xerxes I requests that Vashti come before him and his guests wearing her royal crown, and that's exactly what he meant - wearing only her royal crown and nothing more. Vashti was not her given name by the way - Vashti simply means (in Old Persian), "excellent woman, best of women".   So he was asking his trophy wife to show off her attributes to the visiting men.

    She is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist interpretations of the Purim story in the Hebrew texts.  Her given name was Amestris, and in the Old Persian language this means "strong woman".  She died c. 424 BC, and most scholars agree that she was a Persian queen, and the wife of Xerxes I of Persia. In other words, the strong woman refused while the "best of women" might have done as he ordered.


     In the narrative, Xerses I seeks a new wife after his queen refuses to obey him, and Esther is chosen for her beauty.  And she was probably chosen for her compliance as well.   As a Hebrew, she would have grown up in that culture, where they were taught from an early age that:

    Genesis 3: 16  "To the woman he said,  ...   Your desire may be contrary to your husband, but he shall  rule over you.”

    History is fairly exciting from time to time, if you research it sufficiently to uncover the rest of the story, as they say.

    It's a known historical fact, supported by much textual evidence, that the Sumerians, prior to their being conquered by the Akkadians and later the Gutians and Amorites (pre-Hebrew people) respected the rights of women.  Their laws reflected this, as well as their religious practices.    Only after the Akkadians - Gutians - Amorites took over the original lands of Sumer did their entirely female goddesses have their identities changed into male gods, and the laws of the land corrected to create a second-class citizen in respect to the women.

    We sometimes assume that the strict chauvinistic ideas of the Islamic people that currently occupy the lands of former Sumeria, the Levant  and the Middle East are the result of changes introduced by Muhammad, but obviously this is not the case.  The Semitic groups introduced those changes beginning with Sargon of Accad, the famous Syrian conqueror, in the time circa 2300s BC.

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    More, more! You sure can make it come to life Jim. Finish the story, please😁

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    Quote Posted by pabranno (here)
    More, more! You sure can make it come to life Jim. Finish the story, please😁
    Thanks very much. It's comments like this that inspire me to continue with others. One thing that I can mention is what I am currently working on - and it is appropriate to the story.

    One of the things that I find most astounding is that not only did our scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mold and shape the truth to fit a history that they wished us to learn, but it continues even to this very day.

    I'm a sometime author or editor on wakipedia. I say sometime because whenever I make an edit, to an obvious error, and even provide evidence to prove it, they remove my edits the same day. Only two of them are still up after a year.

    I tried to explain that one of the most famous "gods" that they speak of is actually a women - his name begins with NIN which means lady, mistress. But they simply won't have it. They say that "the origin of this name is unknown". Ha ha.

    Anyway, when you read about reptiles or dragons, the evidence is very strong and clear. And I went over it many times, and used many different timelines and pieces of the puzzle - but they all come out the same and can not be made to fit the story we are told.

    And the truth is - that the reptiles, serpents, etc., were actually (and still are actually) the good guys.

    The Thunderbirds, Eagles, etc. are the bad group, at least in respect to humanity.
    There is also a very good chance that the Watchers of Enoch, who are later equated with the Nephilim, and we know that that lineage came down all the way to Jesus, were also the ancestors of Odin and the Norse, Vikings, etc.

    So we have a clear connection between the Watchers and the Sons of Odin.
    After the war in heaven of the sky gods - the Thunderbird Eagle group changed all of the stories to put Enlil as one of the good guys, and the reptiles and serpents as evil, almost like Devils. This was picked up and encouraged by other groups.
    So basically the bad guys won, and we are stuck under the thumbs of the ancestors of the bad group. (Enki and not Enlil has always been a friend of mankind).

    But that will not last forever. Once enough of us have eyes that can see and ears that hear, and we become wise as the serpents (as Jesus asked), we will being to recognize the truth, and some changes will be made. He knew, and He asked us to be like the serpents - that tells us a great deal, right?

    Let me know if you have a specific area that you would like for me to report on - I'm working on books but I use my spare time to clear my head and post topics to help release the stress.
    Last edited by Jim_Duyer; 11th September 2021 at 15:11.

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    Jim thanks so much for offering Ive always been real curious about David… so much is made of him being the ancestor of Jesus. From the books of Samuel, I struggle to find a lot of ‘godly’ qualities. Yet he was ‘a man after Gods own heart’. On a human level, I don’t resonate with his story at all. Yet he seems to be held in esteem just a hair away from Jesus.
    Do you have thoughts on this?
    Much appreciated!

    Pamela

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    He was both tall and strong. We know this because after he slew Goliath he picked up the giant's sword and cut off the head with it. He probably had blond or whitish hair and possibly blue eyes - since he was related to the Hurrian side of the Hebrew mix of Amorite (Syrians) and Hurrians (Caucasus mountain people) on the mother's side of Abraham.
    I will see what else I can dig up out of my closet - but he was probably appreciated by the early Hebrews because of his Hurrian (very intelligent people) side. He would have reminded them of Noah or Abraham because of those looks.
    If you take the Book of Enoch in its original, and examine the lengths of the various "daytimes" he gives, you will find that the area where the Watchers came down (or fell down) to grab their women, was in the area of the north east portion of the Black Sea - this is purely based on physics and his story, since only that area matches the lenghths of the daylight periods. So in other words, the Watchers were Hurrians as well, and thus related to the Hebrews through Noah and Abraham's mom and wife.

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    Thank you Jim. I read Michael Heisers book Reversing Mount Hermon. Very interesting read regarding the Watchers

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    Quote Posted by pabranno (here)
    Thank you Jim. I read Michael Heisers book Reversing Mount Hermon. Very interesting read regarding the Watchers


    Well, I was wrong. [And I don't say that very often - or perhaps not often enough.]
    My long-term memory failed me to some extent regarding David. It was not David that was of Hurrian lineage, but his wife Bathsheba. And she's much more interesting than he ever was.

    It was Bathsheba (whose name Bat She-ba is pure Hurrian) who was the mother of Solomon (with David) and thus she is the ancestor of Jesus through Mary, according to the Book of Matthew. David was always thrown up as the ancestor of Christ because the Messiah had to come from the line of David, but it was Bathsheba who gave Jesus and Mary her Hurrian (tall, intelligent, light of hair and blue or green eyes) blood, which ran back to Noah and Abraham's mom. She was very probably a tall and handsome lady.

    I'm not claiming blond hair and blue eyes for Jesus. He very probably could have had blue eyes or green eyes, which would have drawn the people to him, but his hair could have been dark, or even red like Esau, who was also related to Noah and a son of Abraham, all Hurrians. I'm neither a Nazi nor a racist - it's just a question of DNA and genetics. The chances are fairly good that he had hazel or blue eyes.

    In Matthew 1:6, "the wife of Uriah or Bethsheba" is mentioned as one of the ancestors of Jesus.

    By the way, as evidence, since most Biblical scholars would choke (for some unknown reason) if they heard that Jesus was related to a Hurrian, and was not a pure Canaanite:

    Bathseba in the bible is written in the original Hebrew as: BTShBA
    In Hurrian; Bt = daughter of , and Teshub, their storm god was written TShB
    so Bt Teshub or BtTshb becomes BTShBA in Hebrew. Bethsheba in English.

    You hear about the David who sent Uriah into battle so that he could have Bathsheba. And then his history gets white-washed by claiming that it was natural for Kings and others to marry the wives of men fallen in battle, even if he put them in harms way himself.

    And that is what we call, as historians, pure bull****. Because he and Bathsheba had a son while Uriah was still living! Their first child (unnamed in that account), a son conceived adulterously during Uriah's lifetime, had died before Solomon was conceived.

    In fact David had six children by as many wives, so we can see what moral fibre he had.

    But I can't and won't say much that is bad about David - otherwise the Muslims will put a Jihad on me.

    In Islam David is considered to be a prophet and a protected person.
    A hadith [saying] quoted in Tafsir al-Kabir and Majma' al-Bayan expresses that Ali ibn Abi Talib said: "Whoever says that David, has married Uriah's wife as the legends are narrate, I will punish him twice: one for qazf (falsely accusing someone of adultery) and the other for desecrating the prophethood (defamation of prophet David)".

    Another hadith narrated from Shia [Taliban] scholars states that Ali Al-Ridha, during the discussions with the scholars of other religions about prophets' infallibility, asked one of them, "What do you say about David?" he said "David was praying, when a beautiful bird appeared in front of him, and David left his prayer and went after the bird. While David was walking on the roof of his palace, he saw Bathsheba having a bath... so David placed her husband in the front lines of the battlefield, in order to get killed, so that he could marry Bathsheba." Ali Al-Ridha got upset and said: "Inna Lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un", you assign sluggishness in prayer to the prophet of God, and then accuse him of unchastity, and then charge him with the murder of an innocent man!"

    He asked "so what is the story of Uriah?" and Ali Al-Ridha said "At that time, women whose husbands passed away or got killed in the war would never get married again (and this was the source of many evils). David was the first person to break this tradition. So after Uriah was incidentally killed in the war, David married his wife, but people could hardly accept this anomalous marriage (and subsequently legends were made about this marriage.)

    It seems that Solomon attempted to copy David his father, but even better: According to the Bible, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And when you read in the Bible that Solomon was some type of spirit worshiper or devil caller - he probably followed some of the information given to him by his mother about the Hurrian gods, and they really were not that different from the ones that the Hebrews worshiped prior to Yahweh.

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    Wow, Jim. Really good stuff. Thank you for taking the time and effort. And, at the risk of repeating myself, more, more😁
    Last edited by pabranno; 11th September 2021 at 23:52.

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    Default Re: The Time when Esther, of Old Testament fame, became a Queen of Persia.

    As to why David is remembered more fondly than Bathsheba:


    Jessie Harlan Lincoln was perhaps not a young lady that will be remembered by the general public for her outstanding deeds, nor for her especially pious acts. Married three times, and reputedly "irresponsible with her finances", she lived on the proceeds of a Trust set up for her by her wealthy father in 1919 and 1920. The amounts that he deposited totalled some $286,750, which was equivalent to more than $3,000,000 in 2019 dollars.

    Her father had graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and in addition to becoming a wealthy lawyer and Chairman of the Board of the Pullman Palace Car Company, (makers of railway sleeper cars), he served twice as the U.S. Secretary of War, and once as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

    And yet, I can't help but believe that, should her friends refer to her in polite conversation, they might mention her grandfather and his accomplishments over those of her much more prosperous father. Yes, she was the granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln.

    And, when asked to name some of our more impressive presidents, would not most of us reply with something along the lines of: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and um, uh, the last one that I voted for.

    What we have done then is what comes naturally to most humans. We've remembered the ones that made the biggest mark in history, and skipped over some of the lesser lights, even though to those that knew and loved them, these less well-known folks were very possibly much more important than any others.

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