Why Is Esther Written in Hebrew?
Abstract
The Book of Esther is usually considered a diaspora text. If it is, then why was it written in Hebrew? Aramaic was the language of the Persian administration, and also the language of the diaspora. It is unlikely many people would have even understood Hebrew in the diaspora. This paper argues that Esther is actually a product of a Jerusalem scribal community, and the diaspora is merely borrowing literary tropes from Aramaic scribal learning.
Citation
Schniedewind, William. "Why Is Esther Written in Hebrew?," The Bible in Its Ancient Iranian Context (March 13, 2025).
About the Speaker
William Schniedewind
University of California, Los Angeles
William Schniedewind is Professor of Biblical Studies at UCLA, and the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. He received his PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, and he has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hebrew University and a Research Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He also served for many years as the Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is the author of seven books, including How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge University Press, 2004), A Social History of Hebrew (Yale University Press, 2013), The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes (Princeton University Press, 2024).