Esther’s on the rag: a change will do Jews good

God’s little gift is on the rag,
Poster girl posing in a fashion mag,
Canine, feline, Jekyll and Hyde?
Wear your fake fur on the inside.

Queen of south beach, aging blues,
Dinners at six, wear your cement shoes,
I thought you were singing your heart out to me,
Your lips were syncing and now I see.

A change, a change’ll do you good
I think a change, a a change’ll do you good

— Sheryl Crow

Addition D, which follows Addition C, is an account of Esther’s appearance before the king. It is longer and more dramatic than the account in the Masoretic Text….

We have discussed above how the Masoretic Text of Esther sought to fashion itself, in part, on the model of earlier biblical writings, now we see that principle carried further, for different effect, in the Septuagint. But “assimilation to a scriptural norm” does not account for all the differences between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint….

The Septuagint reflects Hellenistic times in another way–in its literary style and tone. On occasion, it seems to move in the direction of the style of the later Greek novels, with emotional and psychological dimensions that are absent in the Masoretic Text. This is most obvious in Addition D, when Esther goes to the king uninvited….

This is the stuff of Greek romances (and modern ones, too), and it is in utter contrast to the sparseness of the Masoretic Text at this point in the story. So, we may conclude that the Septuagint is, on one hand, more biblical than the Masoretic Text, but on the other hand it is more Hellenistic, both in respect to Jewish identity and practice and in respect to Hellenistic storytelling.

— Adele Berlin

We readers of English should be able to hear how Sheryl Crow’s lyrics (above) stress a coming and needed change. Well, Greek readers of the lines of Additions C and D in the Septuagint’s Esther ought to get something similar. In fact, the Esther who prays a private prayer to God says something Greek readers hear in public, something that’s nearly identical to the one line, “God’s little gift is on the rag.” Change is coming; it is good. Does that make you chuckle? In this post we’ll look at that. What might we make of it? Well, Adele Berlin is already a great help (as you also can read above).

Nonetheless, Berlin could be clearer: after all, she’s asserted that the Greek Esther texts are “on one hand, more biblical … but on the other hand … more Hellenistic.”

Is she describing a binary contrast? Does “more” suggest that the LXX is absolutely other than the MT in any pure sense? And, with respect to the LXX alone, does Berlin’s phrase “but on the other hand” imply two opposite characteristics of the Greek, two rival qualities?

Is either the Greek text more biblical, more Jewish sounding (in only the theological sense that Bruce M. Metzger and Herbert G. May would have it, as “partly to make the story more vivid but chiefly to supply a religious element that is lacking in the [Hebrew] canonical book of Esther”)? Or, is the Greek text in the opposing sense, more Hellenistic (in only the sense that Theophrastus has, in his earlier post, read it: as merely “influenced by the Hellenistic desire to write Biblical pastiche or emulate foreign character development approaches”)? Maybe this is what Berlin means. Or maybe, worse, she would allow us to conjoin these two extremely different and absolutely senses so that the Greek Esther texts are a weird mash-up of late Lysimachusian diasporic Alexandrian sophomoric maudlin melodrama.

Is there another possibility? Fortunately, there is. Berlin is saying both “that the early fluidity of the Hebrew [Esther] text …belong[s] to the history of early Jewish biblical interpretation” and also that “the variety of ways that the story was retold, in Hebrew or other languages, belong[s] to the history of early Jewish biblical interpretation.” And, furthermore, Berlin goes on to call the LXX “a window onto how Greek-speaking Jews of the early pre-Christian centuries read and understood the story of Esther”; and she is also calling the LXX Greek Additions to Esther, even and especially, Additions C and D, both biblical and Hellenistic.

If the LXX is “more” biblical and “more” Hellenistic than the MT, then Berlin does not necessarily imply that the MT Esther is neither Jewish nor comical and farcical. What Berlin is saying, and what’s most exciting about the book of Esther in Greek, is that it has “the added complication of diverging rather more from the Masoretic Text than do [the LXX] translations of other biblical books.” The complication, the complexity, the change is a good thing.

Berlin points her readers to Addition D. Even in her summary of the Hellene version, there’s the Hebraic farce that any good Rabbi “making prurient comments, which add to the negative characterization of the ‘villains’ (and to the lewd enjoyment of the story).” (In fact, the Greek may even beat the Rabbi to the punch line if he’s making comments like: “Vashti’s party for the women was in the king’s bedroom; she was ordered to appear naked before the king; and she was to be executed naked; Haman’s daughter dumped the contents of a chamber pot on her father’s head.” We’ll get to the Greek in a moment). Berlin’s summary goes like this:

Esther goes to the king uninvited. She entered, adorned with majesty, leaning on the arms of her two maids. Her heart was frozen with fear, and the bedazzling sight of the king, in full array, covered with gold and precious stones, was terrifying. Then:
Lifting his face, flushed with splendor, he looked at her in fierce anger. The queen faltered, and turned pale and faint, and collapsed on the head of the maid who went in front of her. Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. He comforted her with soothing words.

Now, let’s get to the Greek. What changes from the Hebrew? Well, Addition C elaborates how “Mordecai went his way, and did according to all Esther had commanded him” (JPS 4:17). Whether the reader was in Jerusalem reading Hebrew or was in Athens or Alexandria reading Greek, this is funny. A man does and hears a woman’s commandments, each and every one of them. (צותה) (ἐνετείλατο). And Addition C also has this woman praying to God.

The Greek readers listen in on the conversation. She comes across like Odysseus, praying to the goddess Athena, having what was naturally beautiful about him (i.e. καλὸν) disfigured, wearing the filthy rag (ῥάκος ἄλλο κακὸν) in public. (See Odyssey 13.429-438).  In a show equal to Homer’s epic, the LXX translator writes:

She took off her splendid apparel and put on the garments of distress and mourning,
καὶ ἀφελομένη τὰ ἱμάτια τῆς δόξης αὐτῆς ἐνεδύσατο ἱμάτια στενοχωρίας καὶ πένθους

and instead of costly perfumes she covered her head with ashes and dung,
καὶ ἀντὶ τῶν ὑπερηφάνων ἡδυσμάτων σποδοῦ καὶ κοπριῶν ἔπλησεν τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτῆς

and she utterly humbled her body;
καὶ τὸ σῶμα αὐτῆς ἐταπείνωσεν σφόδρα

every part that she loved to adorn she covered with her tangled hair.
καὶ πάντα τόπον κόσμου ἀγαλλιάματος αὐτῆς ἔπλησε στρεπτῶν τριχῶν αὐτῆς

She prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and said:
καὶ ἐδεῖτο κυρίου θεοῦ Ισραηλ καὶ εἶπεν
…
You know my necessity –
σὺ οἶδας τὴν ἀνάγκην μου,

that I abhor the sign of my proud position,
ὅτι βδελύσσομαι τὸ σημεῖον τῆς ὑπερηφανίας μου,

which is upon my head on the days when I appear in public.
ὅ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς μου ἐν ἡμέραις ὀπτασίας μου·

I abhor it like a menstruous rag,
βδελύσσομαι αὐτὸ ὡς ῥάκος καταμηνίων

and I do not wear it on the days when I am at leisure.
καὶ οὐ φορῶ αὐτὸ ἐν ἡμέραις ἡσυχίας μου.

The rag that Esther wears, of course, is different from the filthy one that Odysseus wears and later wraps around his head (See Odyssey 14.349). Esther does not specify what she wears upon her head; she just calls it “the sign of my proud position” which she wears in public. And yet she, to the Lord God of Israel, compares this thing on her head in public to the rag women wear in private. And yet, the readers hear all about this. It’s like a “menstruous” rag, “of catamenia,” καταμηνίων. As all Greek readers know after Aristotle, the subject καταμηνίων is one of Aristotle’s favorites. He writes extensively of the topic in two of his biological treatises, and he sees the issue as of supreme importance in dividing females from males. What might the LXX translator be signaling here? He’s already just let the readers know (again having us eavesdrop on Esther and the Lord) that she hates the bed of the males with foreskins uncut-around, which signals, of course, that they are not Jewish. Here again is a favorite part of anatomy that Aristotle discusses regularly, again to stress the difference between the sexes.

Which leads us Greek readers to Addition D, to the Rabbinic-like farces of the LXX translator. Let’s look at both the Old Greek text (B-Text) and the Alpha-text, as Karen Jobes translates these for the New English Septuagint Translation:

Here again, we have a woman persuading a man. This is comical in Athens, and funny in Jerusalem. She’s changed outfits, taking off what the Lord (and the readers of Addition C) saw, putting off her “garments of service” and putting on those “of glory” with the “full flush of her beauty” for the king. All the sexual overtones change, disappear, finally, at the end. The king’s heart is changed, from his “full flush of anger” – because “God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness.”

This is as fast paced as that scene from Aristophanes’ Frogs (289 – 296, Matthew Dillon’s English rendering); remember the dung? recall the lovely woman? see again the “full flushed fevered face”? notice all of the changes?

Xanthias: O horrible! it takes all kinds of shapes, / Now it’s an ox, and now a mule, and now / A lovely woman.
Dionysus: Where is she? I’ll go meet her.
Xanthias: Wait, now it’s not a woman, but a bitch.
Dionysus: Why, this must be Empusa.
Xanthias: Ah! her whole face burns like fire.
Dionysus: Does she have a leg of bronze?
Xanthias: By Poseidon, yes—and the other is cow dung, / Be sure of it.

Now we turn back to the Greek texts of Esther Addition D. He, the king, not aroused by her; he sees Esther’s appearance but is “alarmed.” He turns to her: “I am your brother,” which we all know makes him an equal and her ineligible for advances. He opens up and wants something from her: “Speak to me!” He’s asking to be persuaded by a woman, by her rhetoric, and so he is. She herself might have been Jacob, wrestling with an angel, changed forever. She grants that he’s like the Lord, “marvelous” and “full of grace” and “like a divine angel.”

The religious and the literary, more and more, come through the Jewish Greek Esther. And what good turns the story takes, for the good, as the changes are made.