Can we search for Purim in history?
(ב) וְכׇל־מַעֲשֵׂ֤ה תׇקְפּוֹ֙ וּגְב֣וּרָת֔וֹ וּפָרָשַׁת֙ גְּדֻלַּ֣ת מׇרְדֳּכַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֥ר גִּדְּל֖וֹ הַמֶּ֑לֶךְ הֲלוֹא־הֵ֣ם כְּתוּבִ֗ים עַל־סֵ֙פֶר֙ דִּבְרֵ֣י הַיָּמִ֔ים לְמַלְכֵ֖י מָדַ֥י וּפָרָֽס׃
(2) All his mighty and powerful acts, and a full account of the greatness to which the king advanced Mordecai, are recorded in the Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia.
Characters: Who was אחשורוש ?
List of Persian Kings (Achaemenid Dynasty):
Cyrus the Great (Start of Achaemenid Empire), 559-530 BCE
Kambiz II, 530 – 522 BCE
Smerdis (the Magian), 522 BCE
Darius I the Great, 522 – 486 BCE
Xerxes I (Khashyar), 486 – 465 BCE
Artaxerxes I, 465 – 425 BCE
Xerxes II, 425 – 424 BCE (45 days)
Darius II, 423 – 404 BCE
Artaxerxes II, 404 – 359 BCE
Artaxerxes III, 359 – 339 BCE
Arses, 338 – 336 BCE
Darius III, 336 – 330 BCE
*according to secular chronology.
(א) וַיָּ֩שֶׂם֩ הַמֶּ֨לֶךְ (אחשרש) [אֲחַשְׁוֵר֧וֹשׁ] ׀ מַ֛ס עַל־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְאִיֵּ֥י הַיָּֽם׃
(1) King Ahasuerus imposed tribute on the mainland and the islands.
Identifying Achashverosh and Esther in Secular Sources
By Mitchell First | March 17, 2016
...it was only in the 19th century that we were able to solve our problem, as a result of the deciphering of cuneiform inscriptions from the ancient Persian palaces. It was discovered that the name of the king that the Greeks had been referring to as “Xerxes” was in fact: “Khshayarsha” (written in Old Persian cuneiform). The name was not properly transliterated in Greek because Greek did not have a letter to represent the shin sound. “Khshayarsha” is very close to the Hebrew “Achashverosh.” In their consonantal structure, the two names are identical. Both center on the consonantal sounds “ch,” “sh,” “r,” and “sh.” The Hebrew just added an initial alephand two vavs. (Interestingly, the Megillah spells Achashverosh several times with only one vav, and one time spells the name with no vav)...
Who was אסתר ?
(15) When the turn came for Esther daughter of Abihail—the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his own daughter—to go to the king, she did not ask for anything but what Hegai, the king’s eunuch, guardian of the women, advised. Yet Esther won the admiration of all who saw her.
Herodotus 7.61.2
AMESTRIS, Achaemenid queen, daughter of Otanes- a great military commander, (Ctesias, fragment 13, par. 24 [in Jacoby, Fragmente] gives Onophas)...she was married to Xerxes I (Herodotus 7.61.2) and was the mother of Artaxerxes I, Amytis, and others.
Identifying Achashverosh and Esther in Secular Sources
By Mitchell First | March 17, 2016
...close examination of the name “Amestris” supports its identification with Esther. The “is” at the end was just a suffix added to turn the foreign name into proper Greek grammatical form (just as “es” was added at the end of “Xerxes”). When comparing the remaining consonants, the name of the wife of Xerxes is recorded in the Greek historians as based around the consonants M, S, T, and R, and the name as recorded in the Megillah is based around the consonants S, T, and R. Out of the numerous possible consonants in these languages, three consonants are the same and in the same order! Probability suggests that this is not coincidence and that the two are the same person. Probably her Persian name was composed of the consonants M, S, T, and R, and the M was not preserved in the Hebrew...
The Problem of Dating:
Modern scholarship assumes that the Persian Empire spanned approximately 206 years and the Second Mikdash stood for 585 years.
By contrast, traditional Tannaic sources, such as Seder Olam Rabba written by Rabbi Yossi ben Halafte, present a dramatically different portrait of the Persian era. According to this the Persian empire spanned 52 years and the Second Mikdash stood for just 420 years.
Jewish History in Conflict
Mitchell First
It is important to point out that the underlying discrepancy
with regard to the Persian period is actually composed of two separate
discrepancies. The first discrepancy relates to the identity of the Persian
king who reigned between Koresh (=Cyrus), the king who first allowed
the Jews to return to the land of Israel, and Daryavesh (=Darius), the king
in whose reign the Second Temple was built. The SO chronology views
the king who reigned between them to be the Ahashverosh of the book
of Esther, while the conventional chronology views the main king o
who reigned between them to be Cambyses.
The second discrepancy relates
to the number of Persian kings who reigned after the building of the
Second Temple. The SO chronology views the Daryavesh in whose reign
the Second Temple was built to have been the last Persian king to reign
over the land of Israel and assumes that Greek rule over the land of Israel
commenced at the end of his reign. The conventional chronology views
the Daryavesh in whose reign the Second Temple was built (=Darius I) to
have been followed by many additional Persian kings betore the com-
mencement of Greek rule over the land of Israel.
The discrepancy as explained by Rabbi Menahem Liebtag:
According to Seder Olam (and hence the majority opinion in
Chazal), Achashverosh was the Persian King immediately after
Koresh, but before Daryavesh, and thus the story of the Megilla
takes place after 'shivat tzion', but before the second bet ha-mikdash is actually built.
According to this opinion, the events of the Megilla had a
tremendous affect on the situation in Yerushalayim. Only two years
after the story of Megilla, King Darius, son of Esther gives the Jews
permission to return and build the Second Temple. Construction
began during the second year of Darius (= Daryavesh).
The events of the Megilla also appear to have catalyzed a
major aliya movement. According to Chazal, Ezra's aliya from Bavel
took place only a few years afterward, during the seventh year of his
reign of Daryavesh (who Chazal identify with Artachshasta / see
Ezra 7:1-9).
According to most historians (and a minority opinion in Chazal /
see Tirgum ha-shiv'im & Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer chapter 49),
Achashverosh was the Persian king who succeeded Darius (486 -
465 BCE), and thus the story of the Megilla takes place some forty
years after the second Temple was built, and thus after Chagai &
Zecharya's plea to return and fulfill the potential of Bayit Sheni. [Its
construction began in 521 BCE / in the second year of Darius the
Great; hence the story in the Megilla takes place in 474 BCE.]
How do we resolve/ reconcile/ reject this apparent contradiction?
Approach 1: Reject secular chronology for Chazal
1.
Jewish History in Conflict
Mitchell First
"HaRav Saadiah Gaon believes that the view of the Christians is the result of their
having purposely increased the length of the Persian period. He postulates that they purposely increased the length of the Persian period so that Daniel's prophecy about an anointed one who will be cut off toward the
end of the 70 weeks of years would fall chronologically around the time
of Jesus. He then criticizes the Christians for having the audacity to
claim that the Jews purposely eliminated these same years (so that
the above prophecy would not fall chronologically around the time
of Jesus Yoshke)"
2.
Chazon Ish, Letters 1:206
“The years of the Second Temple are certain on the basis of the rabbis… one must distance himself from thoughts that stray from this view. Praiseworthy is one who does not read external works” (Chazon Ish, Letters 1:206).
Approach 2: Reject Chazal's chronology for the secular history
וְעוֹד: מִי דָּמֵי? הָתָם כּוֹרֶשׁ, הָכָא דָּרְיָוֶשׁ! תָּנָא: הוּא כּוֹרֶשׁ, הוּא דָּרְיָוֶשׁ, הוּא אַרְתַּחְשַׁסְתְּא. כּוֹרֶשׁ — שֶׁמֶּלֶךְ כָּשֵׁר הָיָה, אַרְתַּחְשַׁסְתְּא — עַל שֵׁם מַלְכוּתוֹ, וּמָה שְׁמוֹ — דָּרְיָוֶשׁ שְׁמוֹ.
And further, a second objection: Are Rav Yosef’s objection and Rabbi Abbahu’s resolution comparable? There, Rabbi Abbahu speaks of Cyrus, whereas here, the verses speak of Darius, and it was never said about Darius that he was a virtuous king. The Gemara explains: This is not difficult, as the Sages taught in a baraita: All three names are referring to the same person: He is Cyrus; he is Darius; and he is also Artaxerxes. He was called Cyrus [Koresh] because he was a virtuous [kasher] king; he was called Artaxerxes after his kingdom, i.e., this was his royal title; and what was his real name? Darius was his name.
R. Zerachia Ha-levi, Ba’al Ha-maor
This is what emerges from the midrash and analyses of our rabbis. However, the correct interpretation according to the literal rendering is that… Cyrus, Artaxerxes and Darius were different kings. (Commentary to Rif, Rosh Hashana 1a)
2.
Jewish History in Conflict
Mitchell First
"Rabbi Berel Wein adopts the conventional chronology and admits that
the Jewish way of counting is in error by 166 years. He mentions the
suggestion of Schwab and comments that not everybody agrees with him.
Wein states that he himself has no answer to the problem and that we will
have to wait for Elijah to explain what happened."
Approach 3: Chazal and secular chronologies contradict. But that is okay.
1.
"Comparative Jewish Chronology" Rav Shimon Schwab
The Torah-true historian is now confronted with a truly vexing problem. Ancient history of the Babylonian and Persian Empires presents us with completely different data. These figures are the result of painstaking research by hundreds of scholars and are borne out by profound erudition and by ever-increasing "authoritative" evidence…The gravity of the dilemma posed by such enormous discrepancies must not be underestimated. The unsuspecting students of history are faced with a puzzle that appears insoluble. How could it have been that our forebears had no knowledge of a historic period, otherwise widely known and amply documented, which lasted over a span of at least 165 years and which was less than 600 years before the days of the Sages who recorded our traditional chronology in Seder Olam?
There seems to be left, as yet unexplored, only one avenue of approach to the vexing problem confronting us. It seems possible that our Sages, for some unknown reason, "covered up" a certain historic period and purposely eliminated and suppressed all records and other material pertaining thereto. If so, what might have been their compelling reason for so unusual a procedure? Nothing short of a Divine command could have prompted our Chazal, those saintly "men of truth," to leave out completely from our annals a period of at least 165 years and to correct all data and historic tables in such a fashion…
In the course of our inquiry, we do indeed find a Divine command conveyed by an angel to Daniel to "seal the word and close the book" at the end of a long prophecy which begins in Chapter 11:1 and ends at Chapter 12:4 in Sefer Daniel
Had it not been for the fact that important parts of those prophecies had been left out or were purposely obscured, the clues for the Messianic date found in Daniel might have yielded the desired results. This was rendered impossible through the hiding of certain data and chronological material.
2.
The Kings of Persia and the Missing Years
Rav Tzvi Sinensky on Rav Yakov Medan's article in Megadim 14
There are yet others who analyze the issue yet leave the question open. While many scholars take this tack, perhaps most interesting is the analysis of R. Yaakov Medan, who rejects the suggestions that the rabbis really accepted the conventional account, instead arguing cogently that the statements in Seder Olam are intended as historical fact and are part and parcel of a wider rabbinic worldview. While not deciding between the competing chronologies, R. Medan does make two noteworthy arguments in attempting to account for the rabbis’ rejection of the conventional count. First, following R. Saadia Gaon, R. Medan claims that the rabbis might have believed that the conventional chronology was invented in support of the Christian interpretation of the Bible. Second, it is possible that the rabbis viewed the additional 150 years as implying a break in the unbroken chain from Sinai to the rabbinic period.
