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E.g., Melito of Sardis (fl. c. 167), Athanasius (295–373), Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390), Theodore of Mopsuestia (350?–428), Junilius (fl. 542), Leontius (484–543) and Nicephorus (758?–829).

Samuel Sandmel, The Enjoyment of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 44.

Shalom Ben-Chorin, Kritik des Estherbuches: Eine theologische Streitschrift (Jerusalem: Salingre, 1938), p. 5.

Sanhedrin 100a.

Megilla 7a.

See also Harry M. Orlinsky, “Canonization of the Bible and the Exclusion of the Apocrypha,” in his Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation (New York: KTAV, 1974), pp. 257–286; also Orlinsky’s remarks in private correspondence with me in my Studies in the Book of Esther, p. lxxvi, note 11.

Zeitlin, “The Books of Esther and Judith,” p. 24

Solomon Zeitlin, “The Books of Esther and Judith: A Parallel,” in Morton S. Enslin, The Book of Judith, Jewish Apocryphal Literature, VII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), pp. 1–37.

“Peripety” is the sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation in a literary work. On peripety in Esther, see Michael V. Fox, “The Structure of the Book of Esther,” in the I. Seligmann Festschrift, ed. Alexander Rofe (in press); see also Berg, The Book of Esther, pp. 103–13.

Robert Gordis, “Studies in the Esther Narrative,” JBL 95 (1976), 43–58, esp. 49–53.