Esther: An Arabian Nights Tale
A two-part post on the ways Esther presents as an Arabian Nights Tale, and on why reading the Bible as literature matters
Happy Friday all.
To start, my apologies for posting late in the day. My normal Substack writing day—Thursdays—was taken with travel, and in all my best efforts, I couldn’t manage to squeeze Substack writing into an earlier time during the week. So, I write to you now from Jackson, Mississippi. It’s a workable view.
On the podcast this week, Rhea and I continued our deep reading of the Arabian Nights Tales. I had no clue what to expect when we decided to wade into these ancient Persian storytelling waters. Would we find things to discuss? Would the stories be too “foreign” for us to make real meaning of? Would we butcher their purpose? Try to make them be something they are not?
I guess I don’t have the answers to all those questions. Some of them are for you to decide. What I can say, is coming to these tales through this fresh translation, after reading Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue, rather than filtered through the Disney lens, has been a true delight. Most of that delight has come by waking in me new curiosities about old familiar stories.
One such story is the Book of Esther, found in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Esther is a curious story for including in the canon of Holy Scripture. Never once is God mentioned. It has a decidedly different tone than the other books. A different flavor and feel. The editors of my Literary Study Bible say it well in their preface:
The book of Esther is a story par excellence. It has virtually all of the ingredients that people through the ages have most loved in a story—a beautiful and courageous heroine, a romantic love thread, a dire threat to the good characters, an ideally villainous villain, suspense, dramatic irony, evocative descriptions of exotic places, sudden reversal of action, poetic justice, and a happy ending.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
It is, as Omar El Akkad wrote in his Forward for Seale’s translation, a classic “what happens next” story. Not only that, but it is all of those things in a very particular way: a Persian way. Esther doesn’t wear its Persian feel like a window dressing. It’s Persian at its core, moving and diffusing its essence throughout the story, the way gardenias infuse their surrounding garden air.
Esther could easily be folded into the Arabian Nights Tales. But it’s not. Instead, it is found in Bible as part of “the inspired Word of God.”
What are we to make of this?
First, what do you make of my claim that it’s in the same vein as the other Arabian Nights tales (maybe it’s the first Arabian Nights tale…??) ?
Second, what is the value of understanding Esther in this way? To go broader still, what is the value of reading and studying any book of the Bible as a work of literature, as carefully as we study it as the Word of God?
Next week I’ll tackle the second question. For now, I want to build the case for Esther being a uniquely Persian story, particularly in the style of the Arabian Nights Tales.
Let’s start with the decadence. This story features 250 appearances of the Hebrew word for “king” and 10 banquets and/or feasts, within its ten short chapters. (Chapter 10 barely counts as it acts an epilogue of sorts, neatly wrapping up loose ends for particular characters, much in the same way the Three Women of Baghdad does for the three sisters at its ending.) It begins with feasting, features feasting as a central part of the plot (Esther’s vehicle for wooing the king to hear her “request” and “desire”), and celebratory feasting at the end. Moreover, the ostensible purpose of Esther is describe how the Jewish Feast of Purim began.
It isn’t only feasting that gives evidence to this decadence forward narrative. There are descriptions of the king’s wealth, elaborate descriptions of his feasting hall and palace, the beauty of the queens and women in his harem, the lavishness of the beauty rituals of the women of the harem, etc. To read these descriptions side-by-side Seale’s translation of the Arabian Nights Tales, is see similarities that make the emphasis and even language of description practically interchangeable.
Not only is Esther a luxury-forward narrative, but it features a king and his royal court driven above all else by wealth and decadence. So much so, that attention to actually ruling and governing one’s country takes the last seat of a very long bus.
King Ahasuerus presents as the classic Arabian Nights king. In fact, he presents as the Arabian Nights king: Shahrayar, the vengeful king Shahrazade is wooing night after night with her stories, hoping to change his heart and save the lives of all the women of her land. In the Arabian Nights, Shahrayar’s first wife betrayed him by sleeping with a servant (a horrible offense, for sure). This offense spirals Shahrayar (more like, him him nursing his offense) to demand all women across the land pay for his first wife’s betrayal.
Enter the Esther story with so many harmonies singing the same tune. King Ahasuerus’s first queen, Vashti, offends him by not coming at his call, so he can show her off like some kind of prize ornament. Unlike Shahrayar’s wife, Vashti did no wrong, Indeed, she acts with dignity in her defiance to be treated like a shiny toy to be waved around by her childish husband. But, of course, the king doesn’t see it this way. Ahasuerus “burns with anger” and has her banished from the kingdom, after listening to his fellow weak-minded court officials:
“The queen’s behavior will be made known to all women, causing them to look at their husbands with contempt.”
Sounds like a lot of male-female relational insecurity, to me (a strong feature threading through the Arabian Nights Tales Rhea and I have read).
Anyway, this is how Hadassah—aka: Esther—becomes queen. Ahasuerus needs a new favorite. Esther rises to the top, and she happens to be Jewish, but she keeps that a secret until she can’t anymore.
Meanwhile, Haman, the king’s right-hand man, is vying for more power, and is also easily offended and likes to nurse his offenses (here is where we see Shahrayar’s character diffusing between Aharuerus and Haman). He becomes enraged (it’s a theme) when Morecai (Esther’s cousin who has raised her) refuses to bow in honor of Haman when Haman comes through the gates—or any time, for that matter. So enraged, Haman decides all Jews must be annihilated. Because Ahasuerus is so minimally invested in actually governing his land, he allows such a degree, made by Haman using the king’s signet ring, to pass. Once the decree is passed, nothing can undo it. Much in the same way Shahrayar “can’t” go back on his rule to marry a woman a day and kill her at dawn, even though he comes to regret his decision as Shahrazade softens his heart with that which he seems to love most: exotic, fantastic, wonderful stories.
Enter now Queen Esther wooing of King Ahasuerus nights in a row with that thing he values the most: decadence and feasting and all his shiny things (to include Esther) on display to celebrate himself. Like Shahrazade, Esther cunningly uses what her king values most to save her people—the Jewish people—from utter destruction at the hands of a vengeful man grown fat nursing his offense and overreaching in his personal ambition.
Does Esther rise to her “such a time as this”? Does evil Haman get what’s coming to him? Is Mordecai vindicated and venerated for his prudence, his personal honor, and for having the courage to “call a spade a spade” (on Haman, yes; but also his cousin, Queen Esther)?
These are the questions that hook us, keeping us “in the story’s lap”, asking over and over: What happens next? This is a strong feature of the Book of Esther, just as it is in the Arabian Nights Tales.
Finally, there’s this interesting way in which Esther’s story acts as a frame story, too. Esther’s ascendancy to No. 1 queen frames the Haman death plot story, the Mordecai ascendancy to Persian king’s right-hand man story, as well as the overarching story of how the Feast of Purim came about.
I think that’s enough for you to chew on for now. The sun is rising high, and Jackson, Mississippi is calling my name, begging me to come out and play. Ms. Eudora Welty’s home, here I come!
Between now and next Friday, I hope you will consider the question put to me by a thoughtful young man who sat next to me on my first flight coming to Jackson (I’ll tell you the story of how this question came about, next week):
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, why would you study the Bible that [literary] way?”
Have a great weekend, y’all.
With Love, Shari