A
Comic View of Esther
The
JPS Bible Commentary: Esther, by Adele Berlin. Philadelphia
During the public reading of the Scroll of Esther in
synagogues on Purim, the readers (like myself) may feel that we are reenacting
the events of the story. When the Jews
are in danger – we almost cry. When the
Jews are saved – we feel relieved. But
dramatizing the scroll is usually very difficult in the carnivalesque
atmosphere of Purim: most of the congregants are busy making noise when Haman’s
name is mentioned, even at the most dramatic points in the story! Although most Jewish commentators have read
Esther as a book about a very serious event, popular tradition has always seen
it as terribly funny.
Adele Berlin’s new commentary on Esther gives
scholarly support to this tradition.
True, she is definitely not the first to notice comic elements in the
Scroll. Many modern readers have
categorized Esther as satire, comedy meant as critique, directed against
the Persian court. Berlin, however,
views it as farce and as burlesque, and I believe she is the first
to write a commentary along these lines.
Farce and burlesque are forms of comedy for its own sake. As farce, the Scroll uses exaggerated
character-types and absurd situations.
As burlesque, it uses vulgar language for important matters, and
dignified language for the ordinary.
Esther is a book written about Purim, but also for Purim, with
both book and holiday celebrating Jewish survival in the Diaspora:
“Certainly the celebration of Purim is carnival-like,
with its drinking, costumes, Purim plays and Purim carnivals. The Megillah itself sets the
parameters for the celebration…” (p. xxi)
This view of Esther solves a number of exegetical
problems in the Scroll, some of which we will mention here. First, the royal decree in chapter 1,
removing Vashti from the throne, but also prescribing male dominance in
households throughout the empire:
“The danger that Memucan sees in Vashti’s refusal is
preposterous. How will it provoke a
rebellion by all the wives in the empire against their husbands?” (p.
17)
Second, the Scroll – as opposed to other books in
the Bible – does not see any problem in violence, intermarriage, or eating
non-kosher food. Third, it is
impossible to believe that everyone knew Esther was related to Mordecai the
Jew, but that her own Jewish identity could be kept hidden. Fourth, Haman’s ability to convince
Ahasuerus to annihilate the Jews without even mentioning their name seems
absurd, as do the irrevocability of royal decrees and the large number of
enemies killed by the Jews in battle (75,800).
Fifth, we must consider the absence of God’s name in Esther, a book that
in many aspects is modeled after other Biblical texts.
When viewing the book as a farce, however, these absurdities,
exaggerations and moral/religious problems become irrelevant. The problems faced by characters in a farce,
as well as their ways of solving them, are absurd, exaggerated and over-violent
by generic convention. Thus
there is no reason why Vashti’s refusal to show herself at the banquet would
provoke a women’s rebellion:
“The burlesque of the great Persian empire, drowning
in luxury, wine, courtiers, and incompetent management, reaches one of its high
points here, with a touch of male sexual anxiety added for good measure.” (p.
17)
The book has
no opinion whatsoever on intermarriage or kosher food. (Mock) violence has a place of its own in
carnival, as it “symbolize[s] both the aura of make-believe and the permissible
reversing of the rules of society.” (p. xlviii)
Haman could not have convinced the king to
annihilate the Jews. Royal decrees were indeed revocable. The Jews could not
have killed so many enemies in such a short time. There is no way Esther could have kept her Jewishness hidden. But in this type of story, these things are irrelevant.
The absence of God’s name is also due to the book’s
genre:
“…the absence of religious language in the Masoretic
Text is completely appropriate, if not absolutely necessary, given that it is a
farce associated with a carnivalesque occasion.” (p. xlix)
However, Berlin’s view on the comedy issue also has
its drawbacks. Seeing in Esther comedy
for its own sake – or for the holiday’s sake – is, in my opinion, taking a step
too far. Parts of the book – especially
chapter 4 – do not easily lend themselves to a comic reading. Also, such a reading would force us to cast
aside as meaningless much of previous scholarship, which has proposed
convincing serious answers to many exegetical problems in the
Scroll. Among these is the issue of
violence. Many readers, like myself,
see the Jews’ actions in chapters 8-9 as self-defense, rather than as the
senseless mass murder of defenseless women and children. Finally, a farcical reading suggests that
there is no historical value, or even a “historical kernel” to the story, a
view rejected by many scholars as improbable, even if they see Esther as
generally ahistorical.
Berlin herself is fully aware of these
problems. First, chapter 4 is an
exception to the rule of farce, or in her own words: “This is a somber chapter…
when the book is least comic” (p. 44)
Second, many serious issues are addressed by Berlin
in her running commentary of the text itself, although they are absent from the
introduction. Thus the importance of
Mordecai’s genealogy and personal history is discussed in the commentary to
2:5-6, as are the logic of Haman’s anger in 3:6, the issue of Jewish identity
in 8:7, and other important concepts in the Scroll.
As to the problem of historicity, Berlin goes to
great lengths to back up her assertion of the book’s fictionality, mainly by
comparing Esther to the Greek historians.
The points of divergence between Esther and Herodotus serve in Berlin’s
eyes as proof of the former’s fictionality, while the points of convergence
– seen by others as proof of at least some historicity in Esther – are shown to
be part of a literary convention for contemporary writers describing the
Persian empire:
“…when we look carefully at the points for and against
historicity, it turns out that the historically authentic material is in the
background and setting, while the main characters and the important elements in
the plot are much farther removed from reality.” (p. xvii)
Here, the theological problem that many readers
would see in the book’s fictionality is addressed as well:
“The distinction between history and story, which is
such an important issue for us, would not have engaged readers in the Persian
period in the same way it does us. To
the ancient reader an imaginative story was just as worthy, or even as holy, as
a historically accurate one, so to declare Esther to be imaginative does not in
any way detract from its value. The
message of the Book of Esther and the significance of Purim remain the same
whether or not the events of the book were actual.” (Ibid.)
The religious importance of the book, in Berlin’s
eyes, is the establishment of a new Jewish holiday, Purim, whose history is
intertwined with that of the Scroll of Esther.
Both book and holiday celebrate the Jews’ ability to survive in the
Diaspora, against all odds.
Although some of these arguments may not sound
convincing to many readers, myself included, Berlin’s comic reading is an
important development in Esther studies, on three accounts. First, she adopts an extreme viewpoint on
the question of comedy in Esther, an argument which previously had only one
extreme opinion, that which rejected the idea altogether. Berlin’s overall comic reading will provide
an alternative hypothesis for dealing with the Scroll in general. This will
enable us to come to more balanced conclusions than previously, when dealing
with various exegetical matters.
Second, her commentary has shown us that not all
questions have answers. Not every genre
of literature pays the same amount of attention to every detail, and there may
be matters considered important in some genres, but irrelevant in others.
Third is the issue of Greek parallels. As Esther was written at approximately the same
time as Herodotus’ Histories and other early Greek historical works,
such a comparison is warranted. Also,
viewing Esther as a comedy warrants comparison to Greek comedies. However, until now, no other scholar has
undertaken a systematic study in this direction. Berlin’s verse-by-verse commentary is filled with Greek parallels
to Esther, from historical texts and comedies, with comments on both the
similarities and the differences between the texts. For example, the Jews’ battle against their enemies in chapter 9
is compared to the killing of the Magi in Herodotus 3:79:
“The death of the Magi… has often been compared to
Esther because it, too, tells of a festival arising from a victory against an
enemy; and like Esther it is violent and bloodthirsty.” (p. 82)
But the differences are even more important than the
similarities for understanding Esther:
“Here, as elsewhere, the biblical account is less
graphic than the Greek, with much less blood and guts… It is not important how the Jews
killed their enemies, only that they did so, that they had been authorized to
do so (by royal decree and by the rightness of their cause), and that they were
amazingly successful in their undertaking.
Another difference between the Greek and the Hebrew accounts is that the
author of Esther is describing Jewish actions for a Jewish audience, while
Herodotus is describing Persian actions for a Greek audience. For the Greeks… the narrator is… reporting
unsympathetically about the practice of a strange tribe. The biblical narrator… approves of the Jews’
acts and is cheering them on and enjoying their success.” (pp. 82-83)
In short, Berlin’s commentary is remarkable for her
view of Esther as farce, and for her systematic use of Greek parallels. Although in farce, not every detail has
meaning, Berlin offers us an excellent close reading, making maximal use of the
language and style of the scroll, with comparisons to both Greek parallels, and
those from the Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha.
Greek versions of Esther are mentioned, and a few
pages of the introduction are devoted to them (xlix-lii), but they are not used
as systematically as in other commentaries, and the Greek additions to Esther
are not treated as part of the story.
This is a specifically Jewish commentary, so the basic text is the MT,
although Berlin does make use of textual criticism.
The commentary to each chapter is preceded by an
introduction, giving the readers an overview of its events and major themes,
while contributing to our ability to read the commentary fluently.
So all in all, Berlin’s commentary is original and
engaging, with plenty of new ideas for the expert, and easy enough to read for
the layperson. Especially with regards
to the issues of comedy and Greek parallels, this should be considered a major
work in Esther studies for years to come.
Reviewed
for JBS by