Bible Review

For details, see Moore, “Archaeology and the Book of Esther,” Biblical Archaeologist (BA) 38 (1975). For superb photographs of Achaemenid art and architecture in general and of Xerxes’s day in particular, see Roman Ghirshman, The Arts of Ancient Iran from Its Origins to the Time of Alexander, transl. Stuart Gilbert and James Emmons, in The Arts Mankind Series, ed., André Malraux and Georges Salles (New York: Golden Press, 1964).

E.g., Esther 1:6, 5:1, 7:7–8.

Moore, Esther: Introduction, pp. xxxv–xli.

For additional examples, see Michael Fishbane, “Inner Biblical Exegesis: Types and Strategies of Interpretation in Ancient Israel” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); and Fishbane Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

In his famous essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (Selected Essays, new ed. [New. York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950]), T. S. Eliot has reflected on this dynamic with respect to the English literary tradition.

Skinner, Critical and Exegetical, p. 286. When Hagar was pregnant with Abram’s child she no longer was under Sarai’s complete control, but, nevertheless, Abram puts Hagar back in her mistress’s hands.

John Skinner, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1969), p. 285. In early Mesopotamian and Egyptian law, wives had slaves who were their own property; the slave could not be the husband’s concubine without the mistress’s permission.

Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (London: SCM Press, 1972), pp. 234–235.