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4. Prayer of the Queen: Esther's Religious Self in the Septuagint
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4 Prayer of the Queen: Esther’s Religious Self in the Septuagint Esther Menn The prayer of Queen Esther in the Septuagint version of the book of Esther provides a telling site for investigation of the concept of the religious self in antiquity. This well-crafted prayer is clearly a secondary composition by a Hellenistic Jewish author, probably living in Palestine sometime in the late second or first century b.c.e. After carefully considering the sparer version of the narrative circulating in his time, which may not have even mentioned the name of God if it closely resembled what ultimately came to be known as the Masoretic Text, this anonymous author creatively imagined the words that its female protagonist might have addressed to her deity before risking her life in an attempt to save her people. The invention of a prayer for the queen therefore also meant the simultaneous invention of a particular religious selfunderstanding for her, in keeping with what the author’s Hellenistic Jewish community was capable of imagining for a woman in Esther’s unique position. Esther’s prayer, which appears in the Septuagint version as the second half of Addition C,∞ cannot tell us anything about the religious self of the historical Esther, if there ever was such a figure, or even much about the religious self of the literary character minimally sketched by the original author in the earliest Hebrew version. But Esther’s prayer in the Septuagint can certainly reveal central aspects of what it meant for the author’s religious community to be Jewish, and for this reason alone it is worthy of careful exploration. The Septuagint is not the only version of the narrative that secondarily attributes a prayer to Esther. The two Targums, the Babylonian Talmud, and midrashic collections including Esther Rabbah and the Midrash on the Psalms all interject distinctive prayers through which the Jewish queen directly dis- Prayer of the Queen 71 closes an illuminated interiority building on, but far exceeding, the intimations of her inner life in the Masoretic Text. The reasons for this virtually universal practice of supplementing the original narrative with a prayer attributed to Esther are not di≈cult to imagine. The introduction of her prayer fills a gaping void of religiosity left by the Hebrew version of the narrative and transforms her character into an exemplar of conventional piety. The descriptions in chapter 4 of fasting by Mordecai and the rest of the Jewish community as well as by Esther and her maids no doubt also motivated the introduction of the motif of prayer, since fasting and prayer are commonly associated practices in early Judaism. Ultimately, a specific detail in the biblical text itself was identified as an indication that the queen prayed before taking action: the unnamed ‘‘king’’ approached by Esther in 5:1 came to be regarded as an allusion to the divine Sovereign whom Esther first approaches in prayer. In every version of the narrative that includes some form of the queen’s petition, Esther’s prayerful articulation of her self-understanding corresponds with the portrayal of her character in the larger text into which it is embedded. Comparative study of Esther’s many prayers in ancient Jewish literature would therefore reveal a fascinating variety of conceptions of the religious self in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods as these conceptions came to be applied to this single female figure responding to the particular circumstances of her life and times in the Persian court. Esther’s prayer in the Septuagint is an excellent focus for this initial study of the queen’s religious self in Jewish antiquity. For one thing, it appears to be the oldest of Esther’s prayers preserved in any extant literature. The colophon concerning the translation of the Esther scroll into Greek suggests that this prayer may have been composed already in the late second or first century b.c.e.≤ Esther’s prayer in the Septuagint is also exceptionally well-developed and reveals a number of aspects of her identity, since it appears at a critical turning point when the Jewish queen emerges from her characteristic silence and compliance to deliver the Jews from annihilation. This version of her prayer is also thematically coherent, presenting an overarching understanding of Esther’s religious self as a humble subject of the divine King who claims the complete loyalty of the entire Jewish people. This essay will explore this conception of the religious self, reflecting...