Without Persia, What Is Purim? Hybridity and the Festival of Esther

Abstract

The festival of Purim, as described in Esther 9–10, is quite different from other festivals of the Hebrew Bible. Purim has no relation to the Temple in Jerusalem nor does it include hope for a return to the land. Instead, the festival is thoroughly diasporic, centered in Susa and promoted throughout the Achaemenid Empire via Persian postal service. Furthermore, Purim is decreed by Esther and Mordecai's striking use of Persian law, and, notably, not by divine revelation. Although the Book of Esther speaks of the potential for dangerous violence against Jewish communities living in the Persian diaspora, it simultaneously speaks of the possibilities of full and authentic expressions of Jewishness in that same diaspora. Esther's Purim narrative requires the Achaemenid Empire and presumes its imperial bureaucracy, breadth, and legal structures for the festival's promulgation. Descriptions of Persian law or the Persian postal system are not merely reflective of Jewish assimilation or a “life-style for diaspora"; rather, they are actively taken up and subordinated toward Esther's expressions of Jewish identity, traditions, and practices. My paper seeks not to apologize or correct the so-called "discrepancies" or "peculiarities" of Esther or Purim but to investigate Purim as a model of hybridity and Jewish diaspora experience in the Achaemenid and early Hellenistic periods.