CYGNUS, ESTHER MARRIES XERXES?

Posted by Gary [GLamotta] on March 30, 1999 at 07:41:03 {.Oe37V.qjQMRXA6xmpscboLUiPtahc}:

Hello Cy,

I mentioned to you some interesting research regarding the revisionism of the Jewish apocryphal writings during the Persian Period, some of which have some embarrassing complications now that we are in a position to compare all the records.

I referred you to Josephus, but I thought I'd simply
quote for your convenience exactly what I was
talking about, after all, I'm not sure if you have
a copy of Josephus and some of these things then
fall by the wayside.

Here's some quotes from Josephus.

In Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, chapter V, Josephus starts off the chapter title as:

"HOW XERXES,THE SON OF DARIUS, WAS WELL-DISPOSED TO THE JEWS; AS ALSO CONCERNING ESDRAS AND NEHEMIAH"

It is in this chapter, clearly under Xerxes that Josephus presents the history of Ezra and Nehemiah. He talks about the Jews returning with Ezra (Esdras and
about the incident with the foreign wives, etc. And
then later he talks about Nehemiah: He says: "Now there was one of those Jews who had been carried captive, who was cupbearer to king Xerxes; his name was Nehemiah."

So you see, this is very, very direct and deliberate, and directly in contradiction of the canonical scriptures. Josephus is clearly doing his own thing historically here. During Xerxes' reign he mentions the building of the walls and the whole bit, changing some details along the way, of course. Then he starts the next chapter, chapter VI, thusly:

"CONCERNING ESTHER, AND MORDECAI, AND HAMN; AND HOW, IN THE REIGN OF ARTAXERXES, THE WHOLE NATION OF THE JEWS WAS IN DANGER OF PERISHING."

The chapter starts out by saying: "After the death of Xerxes, the kingdom came to ge transferred to his son Cyrus, whom the Greeks called Artaxerxes."

He then relates the whole story about Esther being married to Artaxerxes.

So it is not just an issue of a name mispelling or understanding, Josephus clearly understands this history and what kings he is talking about and has deliberately misrepresented this history.

But it is not entirely inconsistent with the Jewish methodology for dealing with their history when it conflicts with that of the gentiles. That's because the original book of "Esther" in the Septuagint, does have Esther married to Artaxerxes. That means the current Hebrew version is newer and revised which says she was married to "Ahasuerus."

The book of Esther was originally a folklore tale like Tobit and Judith, but semi-historical as it actually took the life of Nehemiah and immortalized what he did in the characters of Esther and Mordecai. Of course, Mordecai represented the activities of Nehemiah as the chief cupbearer to Artaxerxes and the character of Esther was based upon Nehemiah being the king's favorite eunuch and Jewish folklore always overexaggerated Nehemiah's effeminism. One had him sitting on Artaxerxes lap, "batting his eyes" at the king as he requested permission to go to rescue his people. So it wasn't that much of a literary stretch to recreate Nehemiah as the beautiful Esther.

The book, basically, though, addresses how prominent Nehemiah became under Xerxes.

On the other hand, since Xerxes and Artaxerxes were the same king, in a way, Josephus' history is really an encryption of the truth. That is, Ezra and Nehemiah did, indeed, serve under Xerxes, technically. And the story of Esther covers the history of Nehemiah's adventures under Artaxerxes. So this is just a clever duplication of the history in order to deal with the lie that the Persians were telling that Xerxes and Artaxerxes were the same king.

All this backfired, big time, though, once Josephus wrote his history and it became famous and then began to be compared to the Biblical writings and other pseudepigraphal writings and thus this swith-a-roo
is discovered.

The force behind this history, though has to do with Nehemiah being so prominent in Persia and so well liked by Artaxerxes.

In this bas-relief we can see clearly how Nehemiah was honored by Artaxerxes since he depicted him with him in many of the reliefs at Persepolis. If you check your "Insight Book" (I don't know what page) in the color inserts where it deals with the persian empire, you can barely make out Nehemiah again holding a flyswat behind Artaxerxes. You can recognize him quite easily since he has the Jewish headpiece on. Note that the fluted caps worn by Xerxes and his father, Darius, show they are Persian, and the rounded caps are worn by the Medes (see page 330, Aid Book). This person following behind Xerxes is Nehemiah. He is a eunuch, and the chief cupbearer. So he was very influential. But since Jewish records date him as having been one who came from the exile, which he did, when Zerubbabel returned, there is no way they could address him directly historically, nor Ezra and so they revised their chronology, re-wrote the book of "Esdras" creating the apocryphal Esdras which covered some of the history of Ezra, but not that of Nehemiah.
Thus Esther, based upon Nehemiah, after becoming to popular, began to be acceted as history, but only after they made some revisions. It was originally written to imply she was married to Artaxerxes so that those who knew the history understood this was about Nehemiah. But it was changed later so that the Jews began promoting Esther as married to Xerxes/Ahasuerus so that it could become history and so that it would not contradict the canonical book of Ezra/Nehemiah.

Bottom line here, though, is you have direct evidence of historical revisionism by Josephus during the Persian Period in association with Xerxes and Artaxerxes, wherein he interchanges their histories.

So one must ask WHY did Josephus misrepresented so blatantly this history and why no one really addresses this issue.

Of course, the reason why is because this period was a time of complex historical manipulation. Even the rulerships of the Herods during Josephus' day were manipulated and contradict scripture. So there was no real concern for TRUTH in history, the bottom line was historical "propaganda."

For persons who don't understand this, and superimpose a cultural bias based upon our current concept of "history" it would seem these ancients wouldn't be so quick to lie, but in fact, historical revisionism was the RULE, not the exception to the rule.

Thus the fact that the Greeks totally revised this part of history, even realigning everything with astronomical events, means nothing. If it worked out for their cause, then they did. And that is why we have all these complications in chronology now.

But while they were at it, amazingly, some of the astronomer priests decided to preserve some references to the original chronology and thus we have references to the original chronology in two astronomical texts, the VAT4956 and the SK400. The references to 511BCE are not a mistake! 511BCE was actually the original 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar and that's why those references are in that text.

Add the revisionism of Josephus to other incredible contradictions such as Cyrus being born 15 years before his own mother and the spurious references in the VAT4956 and SK400 that don't match 568 or 523BCE but match 511 or 541BCE and it is clear what happened:

There was a conspiracy that everybody whose history survives had to comply with and Josephus continued the secret in the 1st century.

But of course, those who scoff at the corrected chronology that dates the fall of Jerusalem in 529BCE are the same ones who don't care to investigate any of this and pretend that chronology is not an issue.

I don't blame anyone for being totally overwhelmed
over confused over all the chronology issues and the contradictions. But one nice thing about it all is that once you know how unreliable this history is and how unreliable the historians are, then it is easy to simply allow the Bible's chronology to be true.

The Bible is our best and most reliable reference to ancient chronology. It dates the fall of Jerusalem in 529BCE and now that has been confirmed by astronomical text. Thus the Bible is vindicated and it will continue to be vindicated. But not for those who don't know the facts or who pretend they are not interested in the facts. Thus those in darkness, who love the darkness, remain in darkness. And these are the very same ones who laugh at those who dare to disagree with the standard, politically correct chronology, but they do so without real knowledge.

There's a lot more than clay tablets and astronomical texts to consider before deciding about what is the correct chronology.

I urge you to keep an open mind and to do a little more research....

Cheers,
Gary

Photos courtesy of Oriental Institute.

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