The Myth of Multiculturalism in MT Esther: Comparing Western and Persian Hegemonic Tolerance

Abstract

In Esther 3:8–9, the central conflict of the book is introduced through the antagonist, Haman the Agagite, who argues through half-truth that because the Jews are scattered and separated amongst the people and have different laws from every other people, they should not be tolerated and instead should be annihilated. Although there is disagreement about when the book was written, the Persian kingdom is featured narratively as in power; King Ahasuerus is depicted as accepting genocide as an appropriate peacekeeping method. Many discussions on the central conflict focus on Haman, as Persia and its hegemony are depicted in the book as emotional and farcical, leaving many to dismiss its impact. Too often, with emphasis on Persian power at this time as generally benevolent, gracious, and accepting toward Others in biblical texts and scholarship, much is missed involving the insidious nature of how hegemonic powers still code and reify what differences ‘we’ deem threatening. Comparing, then, the discussions and use of multiculturalism in Western empires in current social scientific studies to rhetoric and practice in the scholarship and book of Esther, this article will address the underlying issues less discussed regarding Haman’s polemic, and the cost of “being tolerated” amongst the minoritized, including Haman.

1. “Not Like Us”

The Wikipedia page on “Multiculturalism”, part of a series they host on discrimination, features their own definition of the term, but more pertinent to this article is a note on the page that claims “the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great followed a policy of incorporating and tolerating various cultures” (Wikipedia 2025). What does it mean to tolerate?

Wendy Brown’s book offers an excellent overview of how the term ‘tolerance’ has shifted over time, “combined with a bewildering array of sites and calls for tolerance is an impressive range of potential objects of tolerance”, which has also “never enjoyed a unified meaning across the nations and cultures that have valued, practiced, or debated it” (Brown 2006, p. 3). The term is “not only protean in meaning but also historically and politically discursive in character” (Brown 2006, p. 4). Tolerance under the façade of some universal meaning makes certain kinds of governance invisible, even depoliticized, but depending on the power dynamics in a space, still defines and regulates what and who is in/tolerable; “it operates from a conceit of neutrality” (Brown 2006, p. 7) that justifies “imperial and colonial adventures” (Brown 2006, p. 8). Tolerance sounds virtuous and applaudable but is “never innocent of power or normativity” (Brown 2006, p. 14). The reality, however, is that the use of the term tolerance, right alongside the concept of multiculturalism, is more often rendered as a positive stance that demonstrates how ‘accepting’ peoples are of ‘difference’.

Thankfully, the prevalence of Persian benevolence and the ideal of multiculturalism, especially as these concepts are used in Western contexts, has been and is being rightly critiqued. I am not the first to address these concerns in the use of these terms. However, it does seem as if the marketing of the ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism has infected some readings of the Masoretic Text of Esther, as the idea is fairly commonplace in biblical scholarship that “life in the Persian empire (or its representation in the subsequent diaspora) was comfortable enough to generate witty parody and healthy hilarity” (Gruen 2002, pp. 147–48).1 Erich Gruen is not the only one to make a statement to this effect about the ancient Achaemenid hegemonic rule and its relationship to Jewish people, as will be discussed in Section 3 of this article. I must add that there is great merit in adding nuance to an often one-dimensional view of ancient Jewish diasporas beyond victimization. However, there should be concern that scholars wholesale write off claims of violation, even in ‘fictional’ stories, especially when it seems that part of this is due to an uncritical view of a particular power-holder. How might we better understand these terms and, thus, better reckon with both the “agentic and agonistic in human life” (Anthias 2021, p. 14)?

This article will begin with a brief and broad introduction to the conversations happening in modern migration studies from various disciplines on ‘multiculturalism’ before demonstrating the importance of incorporating these complexities when discussing the ancient Persian period of rule. The point is that the words we use to describe “cultures of mobility”2 have socio-political connotations and should be used with full awareness of this weight. Not only this, but current operative cultures of mobility differ in some ways from those of the past. I will first discuss ancient Persian hegemony and note these differences, before demonstrating how a top-down view of these concepts has been integral to some arguments for dating MT Esther. This generous view of Persia has also influenced interpretations of the book; although MT Esther is certainly a fictional account, I will highlight how a fuller understanding of multiculturalism and its conceptual baggage may challenge the certainty that the book is about any one historic regime to which the Jewish people were subject, which includes taking the historical data seriously. While the first part of reconsidering multiculturalism is undertaken to discredit the idea that the Achaemenid Empire was tolerant, the second part interprets specific passages in MT Esther to demonstrate how one might view the system of multiculturalism regardless of who is in charge. The ‘prologue’ of the book sets up the entire story, centering on the unstable and consistently shifting nature of ‘tolerance’. Those closest to the center of power dictate who is included and part of ‘we’, as well as reinforcing said identity through who is excluded. Chapter three demonstrates how the antagonist, Haman, readily utilizes this dominant framework and machinery as upheld by Persia to redefine who is (in)tolerable to those in power through caricature. The final two chapters show how the boundaries of belonging are in constant construction, as Esther and Mordecai are able to (re)position themselves in the ever-shifting hierarchy by demonstrating their difference as compatible or commensurable with those in dominance (Thambryajah 2022, p. 44). Nevertheless, survival in these systems, if one is not considered part of ‘we’, always comes at a cost.

2. Multiculturalism/Superdiversity in Current Context

Generally, the term ‘multiculturalism’ connotes the reality of diverse peoples living among one another in a place, but also what it may mean as the hegemonic power to govern or manage—tolerate—said differences. Stuart Hall’s definition of the “multicultural question” may be the best way to summarize:

What are the terms for groups of people from different cultural, religious, linguistic, historical backgrounds, who have applied to occupy the same social space, whether that is a city or a nation or a region, to live with one another without either one group (the less powerful group) having to become the imitative version of the dominant one—i.e., an assimilationism—or, on the other hand, the two groups hating one another, or projecting images of degradation? In other words, how can people live together in difference?

(Hall and Yuval-Davis 2004)

Multiculturalism arises from cultural pluralism in that the term seems not to advocate for assimilation, or erasure of difference, but validates difference as something that can be integrated for “social harmony”. However, there are a few assumptions involved in this understanding that deserve to be problematized, particularly in that “defining the multicultural question as centred around the problem of how people with very different cultural traditions, ways of life and different understandings can live together unintentionally inflects difference with problems” (Anthias 2021, pp. 42, 170).3 Although critics on the politically right side prefer more explicit assimilationist rhetoric to preserve ‘national culture’ over and against the perceived celebration of difference in multiculturalism, critics on the politically left side noted that the language of multiculturalism, although softened, still presumes a normative or naturalized culture from which Others deviate. Thus, while the intent was a collective ‘we’ that embraced difference, the impact still demarcated differences from the ‘we’ as well as to delineate what differences should be tolerated and what differences should be understood as threatening, deficient, and even dangerous (Minh-ha 1989, pp. 89–90). ‘We’, although wielded as celebratory and universal, becomes a new, exclusionary bordering practice. Multiculturalism was presented as more benevolent than assimilation, but many “discourses of integration require compliance” with the supposed values and practices of the ‘universal’ dominant,4 thus still intending to erase the differences ‘we’ do not want (Anthias 2021, pp. 170–71). Sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis also points out:

both approaches were based on the inherent assumption that all members of a specific cultural collectivity are equally committed to that culture. They tended to construct the members of minority collectivities as basically homogeneous, speaking with a unified cultural or racial voice which was constructed to be as distinct as possible (within the boundaries of multiculturalism) from the majority culture in order to be able to be ‘authentically different’.

(Yuval-Davis 2011, p. 70)

These conversations about multiculturalism are essentializing, fixing groups of people to static perceptions and projections, and dissolving potential internal differences.

However, the terminology regarding the diversity of peoples in places has evolved once more, as Steven Vertovec coined the term “superdiversity” in 2007 (Vertovec 2007). This, in some ways, has acknowledged the assumption of a monolithic ethnic Other(s) as a falsified one, that diversity means, quite literally, many diverse positions and identity markers.5 To his credit, Vertovec had included that even identification markers more generally understood with concepts such as intersectionality6 needed to include variables and processes of how movements create effect both in person and in/on place(s). By 2013, he noted it was being used in quite interesting ways after his initial publication and that his meaning of the concept was that it was to depict “a changed set of conditions and social configurations which call for a multi-dimensional approach to understanding contemporary processes of change and their outcomes” (Vertovec 2013, 2014). While this may be a better term than multiculturalism, even Vertovec only calls it a “placeholder” (Vertovec 2013). This is a good concession because “superdiversity”, “despite the fact that the term partially arose as a dissatisfaction with the emphasis that multiculturalism placed on ethnic cultures”, has similarly “become a synonym for all those other terms that try to capture social heterogeneity, but often miss issues of class and gender and power relations” (Anthias 2018, p. 152). Without any acknowledgement of power differentials, super-diversity creates an “illusion of equality in a highly asymmetrical world, particularly in contexts characterized by a search for homogenization” (Makoni 2012, p. 193). Adding ‘super’ to ‘diversity’ is not very super if it does not recognize that many diverse aspects are not regarded as super by those with the power to define super; diaspora scholar Ipek Demir writes that “valorising pluralism without thinking through who holds the upper hand can end up reproducing racialised hierarchies” (Demir 2022, pp. 24–25). Vertovec, in addressing how places and spaces change because of the superdiverse that migrate there for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways,7 also fails to acknowledge that regardless of the superdiverse, the now reaffirmed and naturalized ‘we’ are understood as static. But regardless of the Other, places and peoples are also constantly moving and changing, and defining who ‘we’ are is always socially constructed and dynamic, even in their most “primordial” forms (Yuval-Davis 2011, p. 23). The assumption that spaces and peoples therein were unchanging and immobile until ‘they’ arrived is a mythological one.

All of these terms—even their failures—align with how belonging is created, curated, and performed in different physical locations by people in various social locations (Yuval-Davis 2011, p. 26). These terms all become wielded in projects, rather, a “politics of belonging”, defining where, how, and who is allowed to attach to specific objects (Yuval-Davis 2011, pp. 21–22). Insidiously, it is important to mention that difference is a tool for governing bodies in a multitude of ways, and in some instances, can be wielded by the powerful by “disaggregating subject populations in order to better administer them” (T. Asad 1993, p. 264). They may do so by clinging to a few subjects who, to maintain the veneer of inclusivity and their goodness, allow for a few forms of “commensurable difference” that those Other who do “transform”, or assimilate, become examples of what those with incommensurable differences should aspire to be (Fernando 2009, pp. 388–90). I argue that these terms, which seem to say the same thing but with a cushioned or even sanitizing force, have more to do with how those in power attempt to convince themselves and their constituents of some benevolence they so kindly offer to or bestow upon Others. These terms only serve to soothe the powerful.8 Willem Schinkel notes, “‘immigrant integration’ and, I would add, ‘super-diversity’, says more about those interested in it than about those whose condition or status it purports to describe” (Schinkel 2019, p. 4).9 Who do ‘we’ tolerate—‘we’ being the universal, generous majority—and who is intolerable?10 Who do ‘we’—the powerful—deem worthy enough to belong?

It would also be deeply ironic to commit the same sins of universalizing and naturalizing that I—and the other interlocutors—criticize here; to assume that the perceptions of assimilation and/or integration are perceived and received by those deemed ‘they’ are wholly negative as discussed above would be an imposition and similarly essentializing. In other words, some minoritized folks would wholly disagree with this critique of multiculturalism and express a desire to change parts and practices of themselves to fit in. Nevertheless, it is important to note that using these terms often benefits those with the most power in a space and disguises inequity. Whether a place contains many cultures or just one, there are always differences and negotiations. A singular culture in a place does not necessarily equate to harmoniousness, nor does a place containing many cultures necessarily equate to disharmony. What does this mean for an ancient political, economic, and cultural power?

For our analysis of multiculturalism and other concepts encapsulated in it, such as tolerance, difference, and belonging, I intend to highlight how a more ‘common sense’ understanding of these terms quite seriously erases the real difficulties that those subjugated to a regime may face. Nevertheless, reckoning with these concepts may help us to be more explicit about the underlying framework that sustains these hegemonic entities. The point of this article is to first demonstrate how a more neo-liberal understanding of multiculturalism has affected a view of the ancient Persian empire and even how one dates the book of MT Esther. This is to say bluntly that “our own ideological assumptions about mobility [should be] accounted for as hermeneutical factors” (Trinka 2022, p. 2). Thus, I begin the next section by highlighting the differences between the cultures of mobility of the present and the past as they pertain to these concepts before addressing the issue of non-reflexive application of terminology.

3. Multiculturalism/Superdiversity in MT Esther

As I attempt to translate between two different cultures of mobility, it is important to discuss differences between the present and the past in relation to multiculturalism and other related concepts. The significant difference to be discussed is that, often, multiculturalism discussed today is in relation to a nation-state, and how the nation-state itself defines its own identity through inclusion and exclusion. However, modern migration studies have held issue with the naturalizing of the nation-state as the main unit of analysis, even coining “methodological nationalism” as shorthand for this problem (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). This should be less of an issue in the ancient past, due to the fact that nations did not exist as we know them. This fact, however, has not stopped biblical scholars and ancient historians from using the anachronism ‘nation’ in their studies, often in relation to a kingdom, empire, or territory (Johnson 2024, forthcoming; see also Osborne 2021). There is also something to be said about multiculturalism as it pertains to empire, which is often how specific entities are described as they control others in the ancient past. It does seem as if some of the principles of empire, such as expansion and domination, with some sort of centralized authority, are easily applicable;11 however, this still means we must be clear about how this ruling power governs or controls those it dominates. Shane Thompson argues against the use of terms such as empire because of the “preconditions and prioritization of evidence” due to its “top-down” analysis (Thompson 2023, p. 2). If one uses, instead, as Thompson suggests, the term “hegemony”, one can be more specific about the ”strategies that dominant powers can use to impact subordinate populations” (Thompson 2023, p. 9), as well as how others also influence, or counter, those in power. Nevertheless, if multiculturalism is about diverse peoples living in a place, to varying degree, that has been a constant, regardless of who is in power over a place. Multiculturalism was not, for the ancients, a value in that difference is somehow celebrated in the way many currently understand it. Multiculturalism, for our purposes, refers to how an entity controls these diverse and different peoples, including who or what they tolerate.

To clarify other categories and terms, this also means that who is the ‘majority’ and the ‘minority’ in a place are categories defined by number, not necessarily power, although they sometimes correlate. For instance, a ruling power, such as Persia or the Persians, and the geographic region over which they claim authority, would not necessarily hold the majority population over that space. If one narrows the geographic range, such as the area of Susa in MT Esther, one could speculate that, numerically, Persians were the ethnic majority and other ethnicities in the region were the minority. Nevertheless, minoritization or being minoritized is about the lack of power and access instead of numeric quantity.12

Therefore, when discussing ancient Persian hegemony, we see that it was not wholly distinct from its predecessors, nor from those that followed in Hellenistic rule, in that they were all multicultural. I also argue that how these entities controlled diverse peoples was also not wholly distinctive. What may be understood as tolerant to readers is likely based on selective data that were then made ‘universal’. But like many forms of domination, “what was consistent was that it always had Persian self-interest at heart” (Fitzpatrick-McKinley 2015, pp. 79–80). This next section will then discuss how this regime governed diverse peoples, and how the virtuous rendering of multiculturalism as understood today has influenced interpretation of history and MT Esther.

3.1. The Persian/Achaemenid Hegemony and Governing Others

As the introduction portrayed, there is a pervasive assumption that the ancient Persian hegemony was quite tolerant in light of how many diverse groups they had conquered.13 It does not help that the picture readers receive of Persia in many biblical texts often say just as much; biblical texts such as Isaiah 42:1–7 and 45:1–20 and Ezra 1:2 certainly paint the picture of a generous and considerate ruling power. With proper nuance, Adele Berlin writes,

for the Bible, Persia was, in comparison to Babylonia, a beneficent and tolerant empire. Cyrus instituted a policy toward the various peoples of the empire that has often been considered benevolent. He and the kings who followed him respected local languages, traditional laws and religious practices, and some governmental structures, permitting them to coexist within the centralized Persian system of government. This was not, however, done out of love for the various people in the empire; it was, rather, a politically wise policy intended to secure the loyalty of the conquered peoples, and it was for the most part quite successful.

(Berlin 2001, p. xxxii)

Yet, even the fact that Persia ‘allowed’ differences to exist because it was beneficial to the maintenance of their control and not out of altruism can still further an understanding of this power as somehow better than or distinctive from other ruling bodies.14 Just because this particular hegemony figured out that covert violence may be more sustainable than overt violence in their maintenance of power does not mean that they were not also overtly violent when they felt necessary (Boer 2018, p. 197).

Many reasons cited for viewing Persia as benevolent are also practices that were done by Assyria and Babylon; the “reversals” and “policy differences” should instead be understood as quite an intelligent campaign by the Persian hegemony to present themselves as better than their predecessors, which the Ptolemies did as well (Fitzpatrick-McKinley 2015, pp. 56, 61). Specifically, the Cyrus Cylinder is often referenced as promoting religious tolerance, even exemplifying Cyrus as the “founder of human rights” (Hedrick 2007, p. xiii).15 Persian scholar Amelie Kuhrt in comparing the cylinder with other traditional Mesopotamian royal building texts writes that

the assumption that Persian imperial control was somehow more tolerable than the Assyrian yoke is based, on the one hand, on the limited experience of one influential group of a very small community which happened to benefit by Persian policy and, on the other, on a piece of blatant propaganda [the cylinder] successfully modelled on similar texts devised to extol a representative and practitioner of the earlier and much condemned Assyrian imperialism.

(Kuhrt 1983, pp. 94–95)16

Even the examples that are referenced in the biblical corpus that may seem to “demonstrate Persian respect for local sanctuaries” are actually much more of a “quid pro-quo between temples and Persian authorities” (Fried 2004, pp. 154–55), meaning that this included “strict supervision of the sanctuaries’ material resources and with the expectation that sanctuary officials would respect Persian orders” (Fitzpatrick-McKinley 2015, p. 62; Briant 2002, p. 77; Alstola 2020, p. 7). This is not done as a kindness but as part of the Persian bureaucracy to facilitate the collection of taxes17 and to keep those subjugated relatively placated; this is about power and its maintenance. For those people groups who did not remain appeased sufficiently by their situation under the thumb of hegemony, which was dependent on local conditions, there was no hesitation to use force (Fitzpatrick-McKinley 2015, p. 69). Nevertheless, the image of tolerance persists.

This image of a tolerant Achaemenid Empire also persists in part because their propaganda extended into imagery; the Persian Empire indeed attempted to—and in many ways succeeded at—differentiating themselves from their predecessors in iconographic features. A few specific images depict ethnic differences as features, such as dress and hair distinctions. The Apadana reliefs depict the subjugated “lined up in an orderly fashion … waiting to pay homage to [the king]” (Fitzpatrick-McKinley 2015, p. 57). Yet, one of the features that was alluded to by Herodotus as depicting who is delineated as having more or less merit (1.134), often excused as propaganda itself, is demonstrated in many of these images in that those with physical proximity to Persia are at the front of the line. Above the tombs of Xerxes I and Darius I in Naqš-i Rustam, the king is seen praying to his deity while seated upon a throne bench. The people are also represented in this façade, in which the “structure of the empire as well as its ethnic diversity” are depicted (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 26). These people are seen as adopting an “atlas pose”, which looks as if they are holding up the very foundation or structure of the bench. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones rightly reminds readers in his extensive work on Persia in the book of Esther that while “this might be interpreted as a joyous act of reciprocal collaboration—the peoples of the empire exalting their monarch … it is more probable that the emphasis is not so much on willing togetherness but on political subjugation” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 27).18 Lori Khatchadourian also writes that one should recognize that the pose could represent not just the seeming support of the subject peoples but also that the subjugated have agency and could choose otherwise. There is thus a “looming metaphorical possibility that the figures would drop their arms … could entail letting go of the imperial apparatus and undermining proper sovereignty” (Khatchadourian 2016, p. 9). Khatchadourian is correct in highlighting the agency inherent in anyone and how the Persians may have understood not only the threat of revolt but the “dependency” this power has from those it dominates. However, the imagery should also be seen as an intentional way to stave off potential revolt with a hidden rebuttal within it: if the people were to drop their arms, it would not just be the empire that falls, but the pieces of the bench would crush them as well. Indeed, this image is not as extreme as what the Assyrians illustrated, but still, the tomb inscription of Darius brags that “the spear of a Persian man has gone far”. Perhaps this adds to the refrain that just because there is representation does not necessarily mean there is liberation.

The content of the Achaemenid Empire was culturally diverse, as it was with its predecessors and those that would follow. There were some differences in how they controlled these populations of different people from former rulers, and interestingly, that involved how they presented themselves with ideological propaganda through imagery and Pax Persica could be seen as similar to how current nation-states bolster themselves as seemingly benevolent to their diverse populations. They ‘allowed’ indigenous elites to rule in the areas they conquered, and even tolerated some independence, in part, because they were cooperative and could be exploited on the basis of those elites maintaining their power instead of losing it. This should not be regarded as respect or generosity; instead, we might better understand tolerance as “the conditional withholding of force by those at the top of a ‘hierarchy of belonging’” (Wemyss 2006, p. 215). Unfortunately, the sanitized and polished reading of the term multiculturalism, the “top-down” perspective, is often what is truly meant when scholars discuss the Persian hegemony (Day 2005, p. 15; Alter 2018, p. 713; more citations directly quoted in the section below), including in relation to the fictional Persia we encounter in MT Esther.

3.2. MT Esther and Multiculturalism

3.2.1. Dating MT Esther

Establishing a date for MT Esther has been fraught and complex, as it is with many biblical texts. The book itself places the story during the reign of King Ahasuerus, better known as Achaemenid King Xerxes, who ruled from 486–465 BCE after his father Darius the Great (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 21). Of course, scholars are aware that this has been written with a level of distance from this fictional setting, but that distance is not agreed upon. It seems that many scholars have bought into the ideology that the ancient Persians purported of a generally harmonious, universal rule as a reason to date Esther in specific ways. Llewellyn-Jones asserts rightly that it had to have been written to articulate current struggles, which for him means it had to have been written later because “the Jewish author felt secure enough in his environment to portray Jews killing their non-Jewish enemies—this, surely, is the world of the Maccabees’ struggle against the Seleucids and their pagan allies” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 11). Even as he articulates the false imagery of a ‘tolerant’ Persia well in his book, given that many biblical texts have written positively of Persia, there is no question that this fictional book could diverge from this opinion. Berlin notes regarding her opinion on dating the book that because “the worldview portrayed, in which the Jews are ultimately safe and successful in the Diaspora”, it would therefore “suggest a time before the Maccabean revolt” but shares too many similarities to Greek literature and Greek stereotypes of Persia to not have been still written in the Hellenistic period (Berlin 2001, pp. xxviii, xlii). Similarly, Jean-Daniel Macchi writes that “such reflections would hardly make sense when Jews lived in harmony within a foreign empire, and would seem suicidal in a diaspora context. They assume a radical rupture in confidence regarding imperial institutions, which, in Jewish history, occurred during the Maccabean crisis” (Macchi 2018, p. 47). I did not realize there was confidence in any imperial institution beyond what is depicted in Ezra-Nehemiah. Apparently, there is a singular biblical perspective on Persia, although we would call any notion of univocality in the biblical text an apologetic for most any other topic.19 Helge Bezold argues that “this focus does not fit well with earlier biblical traditions about Persia that reflect the idea that Judeans can live peacefully under Persian rule”, thus concepts such as “imperial power and collective violence” are themes that can only find resonance in the Hasmonean period (Bezold 2021, p. 55).

Jill Middlemas wrote on how there was, momentarily, a shift toward a (late) Persian period date in juxtaposition to a wholly Hellenistic one, for the same reasons others use in the opposite direction: “a growing number of interpreters favor a Persian date citing the lack of Hellenistic details in the account and its generally positive attitude towards foreigners” (Middlemas 2019, p. 149).20 The concept of tolerance has created a numbing effect for biblical scholars, buying into the ancient Persian propaganda of an “universal empire” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 25). Biblical scholars and historians are often ready to acknowledge that Greek sources about Persia, such as Herodotus, are obviously biased, but cannot similarly acknowledge that the Persian sources, even our biblical sources, might do the same.21

Middlemas continues on in her survey of opinions on dating Esther, writing that “the historical, linguistic, reference, and ideological details used to promote Persian or Hellenistic provenance are not objective pieces of evidence, but rather subject to the interpretation of the commentator” (Middlemas 2019, p. 158).22 Indeed, I believe that both modern, ‘common sense’ understandings of multiculturalism alongside the uncritical acceptance of ancient Persia as tolerant have influenced some of the arguments for dating the book. Although not as concise or specific as the field would like us to be, Kristen Joachimsen writes that “whether scholars opt for Persian or Hellenistic dating, there might be some risks of one-dimensionality … as there might be both Persian and Greek influence under both Persian and Hellenistic rule” (Joachimsen 2019, p. 216, fn. 51).23 This leans toward a more fluid approach in juxtaposition to others, necessarily highlighting the assumptions that permeate how scholars may participate in essentializing hegemonic people groups, even if the texts we read may themselves essentialize. I am hesitant to situate early forms of Esther as firmly founded in the Hellenistic era; I would be amongst those who date the book to the earliest 4th century BCE, but certainly do not, nor can I deny its prominent Greco characteristics, especially in relation to Maccabees. However, as Adam Silverstein has demonstrated, some of this work too often overemphasizes the storytelling of the “West”, missing that what we often characterize as the Greek novel “can apply just as well to … Persian stories” from the Parthian period (Silverstein 2018, p. 96). Some of the features we deem as belonging to one historic moment or place, such as collective violence or unease with imperial powers, may ironically be more universal motifs and concerns. Given the prominence of diaspora realities for Jewish people during this time period and beyond, I argue that although the Achaemenid empire is what may be mythically presented, it is not any one regime that Esther sets out to depict. Emanuel Pfoh rightly notes that our distinctions between fact and fiction were not the same for the ancients (Pfoh 2016, p. 202); while this may be unpopular to state, could MT Esther represent a form of pushback against the other biblical texts that present Persia in a positive light, even amidst all of its falsities?

The first half of this article was written to correct the narrative on ancient Persia as a benevolent ruling entity. The second half of this article intends to make visible the underpinnings of how the boundaries of tolerance are dynamic rather than static in MT Esther.

3.2.2. Melting Pot or Tossed Salad?: Esther 1–2

Many disregard the first few chapters of Esther in favor of the ‘real’ conflict of the narrative; however, through the critical eye of multiculturalism, this supposed prologue readily acknowledges the intolerance of this ruling power and settles the conditions of difference as a problem. Linda Day reminds scholars that space is not neutral but imbued and inflected by and with power, calling power and space one of the main thematics of the book (Day 2005, p. 8). The space and setting in the first verses should thus remind readers not necessarily solely of the King’s excessive ego on display, but in particular, the wealth and riches of the citadel (1:6–8) as reminding ancient readers of “all the goods stolen by the Babylonians and conquered by the Persian kings” (Van Den Eynde 2001, p. 145). Imperialism is not about tolerance but conquest. Those closest to the King in power first celebrate for half of a year (1:3–4), then all the people in the citadel of Susa receive a feast for seven days, with emphasis on this benevolence bestowed on those both great and small (1:5). The King and his identification markers mark where power is centrally located and held, and they move from him to the margins; “While the imperial elite was largely Persian, a more important criterion for social standing was royal favor, and this could fluctuate” (Silverman 2020, p. 12). Little has been said about the enslaved laborers that likely provided the ability to have such elaborate parties (Mosala 1992).

Marie Theres-Wacker writes that the book points to “the violence of power by which the Persian Empire is held together in the narrated world” (Theres-Wacker 2017, p. 103). The King creates a power structure by which he is “Lord of Bodies” (Nadar 2006). Although the first conflict in Esther features the King who “breaks the social conventions” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 109), not Vashti, her seeming insubordination threatens the security of the power structure the King has established in this empire. Because of her position as subordinate gender, she is quite literally damned if she does, damned if she does not. Vashti holds no ethnic identification marker in the text, but she is a woman; therefore, all women must be put back into their place in the hierarchy in all spaces (1:15–21). Often understood as the book’s way of connecting the individual to the collective, which is undoubtedly true, it could also be understood how one individual’s difference as problematic gives way to flatten and essentialize a whole heterogeneous group sharing this one marker. Vashti’s class and royal connections do not save her. The edict moves through, which sanctions “variously abusive practices—mass surveillance and the abuse of women in particular” (Ki 2023, p. 189). While Elsie Stern argues that “the laws of the king do not discriminate or make distinctions” (E. Stern 2010, p. 43), this is a discriminatory law dispersing a particular ideology, and the law may disproportionately affect women in different spaces or with other identity markers.

This edict is sent to every province under Persian control in its own script and to every people in their own language (1:22). True to historical record, “the Persians never forced their language on subject peoples” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 119). Aramaic was the imperial lingua franca used for administrative purposes, still indicating the power structure but not necessarily enforced in social spaces (Silverman 2021). Due to this repeated statement (1:22; 3:12; 8:9) and accurate reality, Randall Bailey notes that “the mention that these groups maintained their own languages and scripts, and by implication their own cultures, suggests a situation where total assimilation was not expected” (Bailey 2009, p. 229). My warning remains that while “the laws may be written in everyone’s language and script … this is not for fostering diversity but for enforcing the authority of Persia alone” (Dunbar 2021, p. 119). Specific differences, such as language, may then, at this point in the story, be deemed as nonthreatening, or at the very least, too difficult to enforce upon others.24 Given that the King himself would have also spoken a different language than Aramaic (Silverman 2021, pp. 148, 165), one might understand one reason as to why this difference remained a non-issue.

While seemingly invisible, or rather, not a difference of importance in chapter one, ethnic difference will coincide with gendered difference, mutually constitutive of one another in this system of power. Just as the Persian hegemony directs and dictates the movement of laws across borders, it also controls the transportation or mobility of bodies (Dunbar 2021, p. 119). The King feels Queen Vashti’s absence (2:1), so his attendants suggest another round of plunder in every province of beautiful young virgins to be displaced to the citadel in Susa (2:2–4). Magdalen Ki writes that the King certainly wants to convey a more benign message, that he “does not discriminate against individuals of any race, and he welcomes them all as long as they serve his (sexual) interests” (Ki 2023, p. 195). Dunbar further notes that “on top of the obvious physical and emotional exploitation, sexual exploitation is an exploitation of a region’s resources and capital” (Dunbar 2021, p. 62). Once more, although “beautiful young virgin girls” may be identity markers that they share, they also have differences among them that certainly affected the spaces they were taken from in disparate ways. If one returns to the gift that is the Persian “accommodation” of language difference, there is the horrifying realization that the girls in the harem from various provinces would have significant barriers to communication, stifling potential for resistance (Dunbar 2021, p. 41).

The ethnic (or ancestral) difference of Esther, which Mordecai tells her repeatedly to hide for unknown reasons (2:10, 20), could be due to the “internalization of hegemonic insistence on the superiority of the empire” (Mapfeka 2018, p. 93). If she “suppresses” what may be understood as different, it may help her to get closer to the “very heart of the empire’s power centre” so that she might prosper (Mapfeka 2018, p. 94). Alongside many other ethnically different beautiful young virginal girls, this process of assimilation may have been aided by the cosmetic treatments (2:3). As Anne-Mareike Wetter convincingly argues using a theory on rites-de-passage, the girls going through these bodily treatments are being transformed or transitioned into what could be called a cookie-cutter concubine, erasing who they were before and changing their status and identity, albeit impossible to erase ontologically or biologically.25 She asks if this ritual treatment affects only “the girls’ gender, turning them from pre-sexual adolescents into women for marriage or concubinage? Or does it also cancel out their ethnic and religious roots, precisely by over-emphasizing the gender aspect to the exclusion of everything else” (Wetter 2012, pp. 325–26)? These treatments, alongside the centrally located spaces to which they are displaced, could be anachronistically understood as a kind of ‘melting pot’, washing away differences seen as incommensurable for the King. Nevertheless, Esther pleases the King the most and becomes Queen, which scholars of Persia deem “perhaps the most fantastical aspect of the Esther story”, “because a Persian King would not take a Jewish girl—or any foreign woman—as a consort” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 153), although she could be a concubine. But what is more ironic is that this historical reality reinforces the imagery of intentional ethnic erasure at hand: she must be perceived or pass (Tamber-Rosenau 2022, p. 108) as Persian to the Persians! As both Caryn Tamber-Rosenau and TK Mapfeka have noted, the price of passing and gaining status comes at a significant cost (Mapfeka 2018, p. 94; Tamber-Rosenau 2022, p. 108). She is noted as accepted and belonging to not just those surrounding the King, but the King himself.

The first two chapters of MT Esther, then, highlight how, certainly, ancient Persian hegemony was multicultural in content, but it is the ruling center that defines certain differences as tolerable or intolerable. Present at this point in the story, the differences most explicitly excluded are those explicitly behavioral and gendered, but perhaps implicitly ethnic. It is ethnic or cultural exclusion that features explicitly in the next section, alongside questions of belonging for Esther herself.

3.2.3. Haman’s Edict: Esther 3

Chapter two ends with a pericope highlighting Mordecai and Esther’s concern for the King’s safety (2:19–24). Although the two threatening the King are Eunuchs, there is an interruption in the pattern of the King punishing a whole group that shares the identity marker of the one(s) threatening order. However, the pattern will persist in chapter three, a similar image to the episode in chapter one with Vashti, however, with the introduction of a new character as the main antagonist: Haman (3:1). Haman has a newfound dominant spot on the hierarchy, and given his own ethnic status as a non-Persian, Agagite/Amalekite, the further propaganda of the Persian hegemony’s inclusive nature endures. The King commands a bodily posture to recognize Haman’s great status, which Llewellyn-Jones notes that, at least, according to Herodotus (1.134), “unspontaneous, semi-ritualized gestures were a hallmark of Persian social communication”, which served to enforce and maintain “notions of hierarchy and status” (Llewellyn-Jones 2023, p. 166). Mordecai does not bow to Haman, which is in direct conflict with the King’s command (3:2). Given the longstanding ethnic enmity between Amalekites and Israelites (Kugler 2020), it has been speculated that this is the reason Mordecai does not obey the law (Wetter 2011). The text moves swiftly to dialogue between others at the gate and Mordecai, explicitly mentioning Mordecai’s Jewishness (3:3–4). Could it be that this was more about male ego? Once more, this can be another incident in which untangling motives that are mutually constitutive, such as gender and ethnicity, are not supposed to be separate.26 While one wonders if Haman was “anti-Jewish before this incident or not” (Beal 1999, p. 209), Haman certainly earns the label of proto-antisemitic, as he plots a genocidal campaign against all Jews in the Empire due to Mordecai’s disobedience (3:5–6). Berlin writes that

there is a certain perverse logic in extending his hatred to all Jews. If Mordecai’s refusal is based on ethnic grounds, then no Jew will bow down to Haman. The only way Haman can guarantee universal obeisance, which for a personality like his would be of paramount importance, is to get rid of all the Jews.

(Berlin 2001, p. 37)

Haman needs the King’s approval to carry out his plot, and he uses the language of securitization to do so. Securitization “is a process, then, the active practice of identifying a threat, specifying its character, tapping into a “social imaginary”, of fear, and crafting a response that, presumably, is robust and effective in enhancing security” (White 2012, p. 23).27 While this language is often done and discussed with migration concerns, under the guise of securing one’s borders to expel the Other, this expulsion can also move into a logic of “permanent security”, which can induce the violence of genocide (Moses 2021). Gregory White has noted that these concerns are trifold: economic, social, and security (Moses 2021, p. 19). Haman articulates all of these concerns to King Ahasuerus. Specifically, 3:8 articulates the social and security aspects, highlighting their difference and threat to everyone. Michael Fox argues that “in the context of the accusation, ‘scattered’ insinuates moral disintegration and lack of substance, as well as an insidious ubiquity: this unnamed people is all around you”. There is no discussion on who these particular people and laws are, and this also seems intentional: “it is easier to kill an abstraction than a person” (Fox 2001, p. 48). Yet, it could be that it also truly did not matter to the King who this people group was—not to be confused with him being unbiased. In addition, 3:9 articulates the economic aspect. This may be a bribe, but others have argued that it could compensate for the loss of revenue that the Jewish people brought into the empire (7:4; Miles 2015, p. 138). Timothy Beal says that the message of Haman to the King is that the removal of the Jews would “remove all otherness and establish unity and wholeness” (Beal 1999, p. 217).

It is for this reason that Steed Davidson makes a distinction between diversity and difference. The imperial self “requires diversity for its rule” because they view themselves as “the paradigm of humanity”. Although “diversity is constituted by differences”, empires employ “mechanisms to manage diversity” and have no issue with diversity “as long as diversity buys into the larger imperial narrative, accepts its overarching forms of rule, and keeps its place on the periphery”. This is how “stability is ensured in the empire”. However, “difference … resists the binary construction that secures imperial power”. “Difference opts out of the imperial narratives, discards the predetermined identities, and claims its unique subjectivity” (Davidson 2009, pp. 284–85). Haman is part of the diverse Persian Empire, but he is not different in ways that threaten imperial power—at least, not in ways the King is aware of at this moment in time. Haman ensures the King knows that these people are distinct. The King asks no questions, offers no rebuttal, “genocide obviously being for him an acceptable political strategy” (Theres-Wacker 2017, p. 106). The edict goes out to every people in their own tongue, reminding those in the provinces that their “differences could remain in practice as long as the people also adhered to the oppressive practices of the empire” (Bailey 2009, p. 231).

For many scholars, this is one of the other laughable sections of the text because “Persians were not xenophobic” (Fox 2001, p. 49).28 Stern argues that “the assumption that the inhabitants of Persia will carry out Haman’s decree of destruction and the existence … is anomalous within the larger portrait of tolerance in Persia/Shushan” (E. Stern 2010, pp. 43–44). The text does note that this edict throws the city of Susa into confusion (3:15), and although they are a nameless and faceless entity, this confusion does demonstrate that while patriarchy’s establishment was no surprise (1:19–20), annihilating an entire people group certainly is astonishing. Confusion could also demonstrate mixed feelings regarding the edict; although they are labeled as one group based on location, they are not a monolith. However, we have already seen how tolerance is unstable, and those with the power to tolerate draw and redraw boundaries wherever and whenever they see fit. Prejudice can be created just as much as it can be dismantled. The book of Esther expresses just how mobile and fickle hegemony can be in governing difference. Belonging has always been contingent, regardless of claims to universality.

Noah Hacham writes that the relationship between the king and the Jews in the book of Esther seems “generally favorable”, so “disturbing the idyll is not the king, but his vizier” (Hacham 2007, p. 782). Even Davidson notes that the book portrays an “indifferent position toward King Ahasuerus” (Davidson 2009, p. 285). Haman seems to be everyone’s scapegoat, and while this is deserved, it does not adequately hold the King and the systems that enable violence responsible for anything. Haman knew the King was susceptible to fearmongering and would act on manufactured hatred to preserve and protect his power; just because the King is manipulable does not mean he is unaccountable. The King may allow others to do his bidding, but he is still implicitly implicated: “the law is written by the king’s scribes, in the king’s presence, in the king’s name, and then is sealed with his ring and publicly announced everywhere” (Beal 1999, p. 216). The better question may be to ask why Esther does not explicitly implicate the King, and thus, the Persian hegemony.

What is most ironic is that, at this point in the story, one may not be able to articulate how Jewish people are distinctive in the story other than Mordecai’s individual refusal to bow; even Mordecai has to tell those at the King’s gate that he is Jewish (3:3–4). Nevertheless, the edict necessitates a response from the Jews that then makes them identifiable, now distinct, by their dress and activities (4:3). Although sackcloth, ashes, mourning, fasting, and weeping are not distinctly Jewish practices, these practices become distinctive as they render visible who is Jewish, which was not but is now an identity marked as problematic thus necessarily purgeable.29 The difficulties of Esther’s own attachment to her Jewish identity are exacerbated in chapter four, as it begins with her seeming dis-identification in dress and activities (4:4) and ends with her leading the mobilization of her people, including her enslaved girls who are not marked by an ethnic identity in the text, in a fast (4:15–16). These features should similarly point to the ever-changing aspects of belonging.

Although already seen as a factor in the ‘prologue’ of Esther as it pertains to the girls and women in the kingdom, the story makes clear that “having power implies being able to employ deadly force legitimately against an entire group of people” (Bezold 2024, p. 2). Having power also means one must be close to the one who grants access to power, that being the King. The story progresses by explicitly demonstrating that the machinery at play makes it possible to justify violence. Specific behavioral differences attributed to a people group are perceived as too different, incommensurable, deviant, and intolerable, thus necessitating their total exclusion. This section concludes with Esther herself negotiating how to belong to multiple communities that are currently at extreme odds; Mordecai actually redefines the boundaries and requirements of belonging to her ancestry. The rest of the text, in many ways, is about Esther’s navigation of belonging, and the imperial machinery is a significant part.

3.2.4. What a Difference a Difference Makes: Esther 9

Esther can work her way through saving the Jewish people, partly by playing to hegemony’s insecurity. Chapter seven narrates how she demonstrates that Haman is our enemy (7:6), claiming that the King is more identified with the Jewish people than his right-hand man (Beal 1999, p. 260). She distances the King from his edict, and in reminding him of its content, she claims that Haman is a traitor to the King in stating there is no compensation “for this damage to the King (7:4)”; she knows he is concerned for not only his reputation but that bodies in Empire are mainly measured by “utilitarian and consumptive terms” (Dunbar 2021, p. 118). Haman meets his end here, although close readers are aware that it is likely that he is killed because he is perceived to be assaulting Esther (7:8), thus an(other) attempt to usurp the King’s position, and not because of the genocidal edict. Esther is aware that belonging is a tenuous thing, and in this Empire, only those who reinforce the social order will be accepted. In distancing the King from being truly accountable, she shows she is “one of the good ones”, still ensuring someone else is to blame. Ki notes how these bodies of governance can fluidly shift between policies of “racial assimilation”, “persecution”, and “strategic integration” (Ki 2023, p. 188) as long as it serves their best interests and comes at no actual cost. As Harald Wahl has shown, even all parts of a judicial case are present (Wahl 2000, pp. 106–12).

Although much of the book is marked by ironic reversals, Esther’s ask for a second day of fighting in Susa (9:13) beyond the counter-edict breaks said pattern. The second day is not a reversal, but an expression of the internalized violence to which they had long been subjected in this space (Mapfeka 2020). The structures and weaponry of control create cycles of violence. Counter to Haman’s fear-mongering cry that “they” do not follow the King’s laws, the book shows this to be a bit more complicated. Craig Stern aptly writes, “the supposed dignity and permanence of unchangeable Persian law has resulted in actual lawlessness” (C. A. Stern 2014, p. 261). Many nameless, faceless people are killed, heeding no ethnic, gendered, or age identification marker, just that of enemy. While 13 Adar’s killings are easily defended as defensive, 14 Adar’s killings should be condemned.30 Yet, “the book of Esther does not make an apology for violence but shows that because of the profound dysfunctioning of imperial power the use of force cannot be avoided” (Macchi 2018, p. 235). These actions are presented as lawful, even “just”, but as we saw in chapters one through three, it is certainly not the laws in this system that dictate what is just. The story legitimizes these behaviors because the ‘right’ people are engaging in them. In this way, what makes Esther and Mordecai different from Haman except for ethnic identity?

Athalya Brenner writes that although there is good and bad, there is no “wholly” anything in this book, and it is simply whoever is “ours” that is superior (Brenner 1995, p. 79). While it is clear who is “ours”, Bailey rightly notes that readers might notice the book intentionally blurs these distinctions through its ethical questions, rendering the identification markers we often essentialize “multivalent and ethnically ambiguous” (Bailey 2009, p. 231).31 Indeed, what defines and makes each group distinctive is actually an “open field of contestation” (Butler 2008, p. 5). Even much of what defines “Persia” in the book is not self-evident, and these actions, as well as the commemoration of Purim, “destabilize the Persian hegemony and culture in the book of Esther” (Gwyther 2021, p. 61). More complicated yet concerning this conversation is the hapax legomena in 8:17 (Thambryajah 2023).32 Difference is only determined by perspective (Fernando 2014, p. 98), and here, the center is reproduced through violence. Violence is not something that an ethnicity is more or less prone to doing, but violent is something that hegemony has always been. The cost of being tolerated is paid by many other(ed) bodies deemed disposable—a classic case of the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” (Bott 2015).33 It is only a matter of time before your body is marked as disposable, as Haman easily found out. Nevertheless, the book clearly demonstrates that identity factors at play “are not stable entities, but open to manipulation” (Oren 2009, p. 156).

The book ends with Mordecai-the-Jew (10:2–3) as second-in-command and Esther remaining ‘Queen’. While this may perpetuate the universality of the Persian Empire, we are reminded that marking their difference from the normative is part of the propagandistic image of hegemony in that these Others have the ability to “transcend their difference” (Fernando 2009). We cannot claim that the book depicts any “actual living conditions or the history of the Judeans in Persia” (Holt 2021, p. 122); the many gaps in MT Esther have allowed Jewish people from any place and Empire to insert their own experiences and wrestle, which is likely a major part of its popularity. Perhaps the most necessary dismantling is any interpretation that lends itself to a unidimensional or univocal narrative, not only of this particular empire, hegemony, or diaspora, but also of this story. Even the final chapter has some scholars who argue differently about the taxation at the end. Macchi writes that this “testifies to a fair and powerful state that does not use an unequal taxation plan as a political tool” (Macchi 2018, p. 283); meanwhile, Klara Butting notes that “at the closing lines of Esther, the beginning of the book of Exodus is pointed out to us. With the lines of 10:1, we are reminded of the beginning of Israel’s oppression in Egypt (Exodus 1:11). The exodus from oppression is still missing at the end of the book of Esther” (Butting 1999, p. 248). Meaning, like belonging, is constructed.

4. Conclusions

As MT Esther concludes, we, as readers, consider the power that those within the story had to shift the boundaries of tolerance, repeatedly redefining what it also looks like to belong not only to Persia, but also to belong as a Jew. In many ways, chalking up these acts to individuals might erase how it is the systems that enable control and violence that are utilized in order to do so. These systems of governing multicultural populations also appear to exhibit significant stability over time, regardless of who is in power. Certainly, MT Esther uses the ancient Persian hegemony as a gloss, but I still ask: Who does it serve to continue to uphold and reinforce an image of a tolerant (ancient Persian) Empire?

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.

(Said 1979, p. 17)