ESTHER, or HADASSAH (Heb. myrtle; Babylonian, Ishtar), the name of a Jewish maiden, chosen by Xerxes to be his queen. She was one of the heroines of Hebrew history and maintained the rights of her nation at the court of the king of Persia. Esther gave her name to the (Book of Esther,) one of the books of the Bible. According to the account given in the latter, Esther belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. Much controversy has been expended over the character of Esther whom the more radical Biblical critics have been inclined to look upon as a purely mythical personage evolved from the Jewish knowledge of the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, a name which, in later Babylonian, be comes Estra. The Jewish account of the life of Esther states that she was the daughter of Abiliail who died while she was quite young, leaving her to the care of her cousin Mordecai in Susa, then the capital of Persia. When she had grown to be a young woman, Xerxes (Ahasuerus) divorced his queen, Vashti, and made Esther queen in her place. But according to Herodotus Xerxes had only one queen, Amestris, whose character and history in no manner resemble those of Esther. Moreover, it has been pointed out by critics that the Persian sovereigns were bound by a certain court etiquette, and by Persian custom, to select their legal wives from the Persian royal family or from the daughters of foreign royal families in order to maintain the purity of the blood of the Persian sovereign. This was looked upon as of great importance in an ne when the royal family was believed to be the direct blood descendants of the gods. Vashti is said to have been divorced because she re fused to unveil herself publicly at a banquet.
It has been suggested that there is some con nection between this statement and the fact that Ishtar (Estra) was called the naked god dess, and was looked upon as the great mother deity and the ((queen of heaven? As the Per sian Icing was the earthly representative of heaven, his queen was also styled the queen of heaven and thus probably represented the deity of the same title. Hence the more advanced Biblical scholars have concluded that Esther was never the queen of Xerxes; and that she could have been nothing more than the chief favorite of his harem, if she ever had any real existence.
Notwithstanding this attitude of modern critics, the Jews never had any doubt as to the truth of the Biblical account of the life and doings of Esther, who is credited with deliver ing the Jewish people from the exactions and cruelty of Xerxes' vizier and effecting the final overthrow of the latter. This belief is as strong to-day as in the past, and the deliver ance effected by Esther is still celebrated in the Feast of Purim. Consult the Biblical (Book of Esther' ; ISTHAR ; Ptnum; and Es THU, BOOK OP.
Bibliography.— Cheyne, 'Founders of Old Testament Criticism) (London 1893) ; Debaeza, (Historia Esther); de Lagarde, (Purim' (Gottingen 1887); Gunkel, (Schopfung und Chaos) (Giittingen 1895) ; Hughes, (Esther and her People) (London 1846) ; Jampel, 'Das Buch Esther); Nowack, (Archaologie); Sayce, (Introduction to Esther) (London 1885) ; Toy, (New World) (Vol. 5, 1887) ; Tyrwhitt, (Esther and Ahasuerus) (London 1868).