And the luckless conspirator is eventually executed for a crime he did not commit – when he throws himself on Esther’s mercy, Ahaseurus mistakes it as a sexual assault. “I had no problem trying to be a bit cheeky with the interpretations because I think that is much more faithful to the style of the book,” Silverstein says.
A “fun-loving approach” to the text is more in keeping with the spirit in which the book is read than the drama of a foiled genocide, he argues.
But the Megillah is not the only version of the book we have. Few of us are probably familiar with the Septuagint, the translation of the Bible into Greek begun in the third century BCE, which for some Jews in antiquity would have served as their gateway into the story. Crucially, the Septuagint offers additions at various points such as a dream Mordecai has and also his and Esther’s prayers. There is also another extant Greek text, known as the Alpha-text (AT), which some scholars believe was a translation of a Hebrew edition that could be older than the one that made it into the biblical canon.
“In all the versions, Mordecai is a good Jew and Esther wins a beauty context. But in each version Haman is a different type of villain,” he points out.
In the Tanach, Haman is described as an Agagite, a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites, the biblical arch-enemy of the Israelites. Thus his hatred of the Jews could be taken for granted.
However, in the Septuagint, he is described both as a “bougean”, a Greek word meaning “braggat” but also possibly harking back to Bagoas, a regicidal character in Persian chronicles. He is also said to be “Macedonian” – as was Alexander the Great, conqueror of Persia – and thus is portrayed as an enemy not only of the Jews but of the Persian empire too against which he is plotting.
In the AT, he is a “Gogite” which carries a different set of connotations as a possible scion of “Gog”, the apocalyptic northern invader of Israel in the End of Days.
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In the Septuagint, Haman is not impaled on a tree but crucified – a detail that led some Jewish communities in their Purim celebration to make an effigy of Haman on a cross – but which did not go down well with early Christian authorities. Many centuries later, in his antisemitic polemics, Martin Luther noted that Jews equated Jesus with Haman.
“Whatever you think of the original story itself, over history, he has managed to cause a lot of trouble for Jews wherever they lived… Whether he existed or not in ancient Persia, even for people who don’t think Haman as he is described in the Megillah existed exactly as portrayed, the literary character Haman very much existed,” Silverstein says.
While Esther and Mordecai do not appear in the Qu’ran, Hamas does, where he retains his villainous status. But here he is a henchman of Pharaoh in Egypt who is asked to build a tower to the skies (which to Bible-readers would echo shades of the Tower of Babel). To Christian polemicists, this was an anachronism that challenged the veracity of the Qu’ran.
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Silverstein’s study shows how the different Abrahamic faiths might have influenced and reacted to each other through their treatment of Haman down the ages.
What has surprised him over the 20 years the book took shape is the way that the findings of modern scholarship have often reinforced views rather than make people question their assumptions. So those who believe in the historicity of the biblical story consider their belief vindicated by certain discoveries, while others have drawn the opposite conclusion from them.
For example, the appearance of a functionary in the Persian court called Marduka and another in an earlier generation called Hammedata (the name of Haman’s father) have excited some supporters of the historical claim. But a few bones do not a skeleton make, he points out: there is no record so far of a plot to kill the Jews in the record or a character called Esther.
Silverstein first began looking at Esther for his doctoral thesis on postal services in the Near East – what he calls the “Ancient Persian Pony Express” appears in the Megillah (see 8:10-14). “I realised most people weren’t as interested in postal systems as I was – and Haman was the real star of the show,” he says wrily.
His aim was not to paint a definitive portrait but allow people to make up their own mind through a variety of sources. Even today the story may have radically different applications. For a contemporary Israeli government, Esther may represent the ineluctable persistence of antisemitism, while Iranians take an altogether different line – “You see, Jews flourished in the Persian Empire!”
Haman - A Biography, Adam J.Silverstein, Princeton University Press, is out now. Professor Silverstein will be speaking free at Jewish Book Week next Wednesday, March 4 at 3pm
