Tracing Old Iranian Syntax: An Achaemenid Sociolect in the Book of Esther
Abstract
The agential construction (passive construction with expressed agents) is a unique syntactic feature that makes its way from Old Iranian into Achaemenid-official Aramaic. The Aramaic attestations of the agential construction reflect an elite sociolect, an Achaemenid court speech, doubtless in imitation of Old Persian syntax. This same syntactic feature appears three times in the Masoretic Text of the Book of Esther. I suggest that the use of the agential construction in Esther reflects a conscious attempt to replicate a genuine Achaemenid sociolect and cultivate a distinctly Persian atmosphere in this Late Biblical Hebrew narrative.
Citation
Friedland, Ethan. “Tracing Old Iranian Syntax: An Achaemenid Sociolect in the Book of Esther," The Bible in Its Ancient Iranian Context (March 14, 2025).
About the Speaker
Ethan Friedland
University of California, Los Angeles
Ethan is a fourth-year PhD student in Iranian Studies with the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department at UCLA. He is primarily interested in the development of Iranian religious traditions, and intends to write a dissertation on the origins and eventual disavowal of a Zoroastrian conception of proselytization. He is interested in how developing Zoroastrian conceptions of proselytization and universalism intersected with, subverted, and/or served the Sasanian attempt at a world empire, and how imperial states can co-opt universalist traditions to their own interests.