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b. Megillah 11a: “From India even unto Ethiopia” (Esther 1:1). Rav and Samuel: One says: India is at [one] end of the world, and Ethiopia is at [the other] end of the world. And one says: India and Ethiopia are adjacent to each other. And just as he reigned over India and Ethiopia, so did he reign over the entire world. In a similar vein it says: “For he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river, from Tiphsah even to Gaza (1 Kings 4:24). Rav and Samuel: One says: Tiphsah is at [one] end of the world, and Gaza is at [the other] end of the world. And the other says: Tiphsah and Gaza stand next to each other. And just as he reigned over Tiphsah and Gaza, so did he reign over the entire world. I analyzed this passage in detail in the Babylonian Esther Midrash. I shall limit myself here to a summary of the conclusions that were reached there, with special reference to the concerns of the current study.1 The dispute about the relation between India and Ethiopia is ultimately over the question of whether to read it as a statement of the geographical vastness of Ahasuerus’ empire or of the power of his control over it. According to the latter explanation, his hold over the (undefined) farthest reaches of his domains was just as powerful as his dominion over these neighbouring provinces. An identical dispute is recorded concerning a verse in 1 Kings that describes the territories ruled by King Solomon. Although this blatantly non-literal midrashic exegesis can be explained as the result of an apparently superfluous singling out of these two provinces (when we have already been informed explicitly that the total number of his provinces was 127), I find it more difficult to construct a convincing homiletical rationale for the interpretations.2 63 10:“From India Even unto Ethiopia” A unique version of this text, contained only in ms Munich 140, proposes a negative interpretation of the second position, which holds that India and Ethiopia are neighboring provinces. According to this reading, Ahasuerus’s effective control was confined to these two provinces, implying that he ruled over the other 125 provinces in name only. Underlying this reading is an evident dissatisfaction with the standard text, which presents Ahasuerus in an uncharacteristically favourable (or, at best, neutral) light. The basic geographical premise of this midrash is factually untenable. Even by ancient standards, India and Ethiopia were not neighbouring states, and the rabbis must have had some familiarity with the locations of such well-known places as India, Ethiopia, and Gaza.3 The weak link in this reasoning is the obscure Tiphsah, mentioned in 1Kings. Hence the midrash probably originated as a comment on 1 Kings, and was only secondarily applied to the context of Esther. For this reason, the biblical texts were interpreted only as glorifications of royal conquests and not as ways of belittling or minimizing the kings’ achievements . This phenomenon makes better sense if we assume that it was applied originally to Solomon. While merely extolling the greatness of a figure such as Solomon could be an adequate homiletical theme, this motif could also have fitted neatly into a sermon about how (according to midrashic tradition) Solomon’s pride led to his being deposed from the throne and forced to wander as an unrecognized beggar —a powerful object lesson about the perils of arrogance. The mightier we portray his original empire, the more intensely do we feel his fall from glory. Indeed, in Palestinian midrashic literature, it was always the 1 Kings passages that attracted exegetical attention from the rabbis.4 Thus, in Song of Songs Zut· a 1:15 and Midrash on Proverbs 20:9,6 the 1 Kings verse is expounded without any reference to Esther. Each of these midrashim includes some additional exegetical material about Solomon that is not found in our passage. However, the midrashim on both Esther (Esther Rabbah (1:4) and Panim ah· erim B)7 include discussions of the 1 Kings verse. Yet neither adds any exegesis to the Esther verse beyond what is found in our passage in the Babylonian Talmud. In other words, the Babylonian Talmud has taken a piece of “pseudo-exegesis” that was originally composed with reference to King Solomon and then applied it as a real exegetical rule for expounding “from…unto” in connection with Ahasurerus’s...

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