The JC offers several email newsletters to keep you updated with our news, features and comment. Take your pick from a daily update, the Editor's weekly selections, lifestyle, politics and sport — or choose them all. The Jewish Chronicle. Got a story? Contact us. Register Sign In. According to Scripture, Esther had no parents. She had lost both her father and her mother and was raised by her older cousin, Mordecai Esther The Persian King, Xerxes a.
Ahasuerus , was displeased with his wife and sought her replacement. So, naturally, he made a decree in order to gather to himself all suitable virgins in the region. Esther We read in Scripture that Esther was young and exceptionally beautiful. She was young, she was pretty, and she was taken. This part comes as a shocker to people — even to those who have read the whole Megillah as part of their yearly Purim celebration.
But the Scriptures are pretty clear about what happened. Now when the turn came for each young woman to go in to King Ahasuerus, after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and ointments for women — when the young woman went in to the king in this way, she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace.
In the evening she would go in, and in the morning she would return to the second harem in custody of Shaashgaz, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines. She also knew that Sisera would be killed if captured, therefore she would kill him and thus cement a friendship with the victor. Biblical commentaries have viewed Jael as either a heroine or someone much less so.
Priscilla was a woman of Jewish heritage and one of the earliest known Christian converts who lived in Rome. Her name is a Roman diminutive for Prisca which was her formal name. She is often thought to have been the first example of a female preacher or teacher in early church history. Priscilla is an English female given name adopted from Latin Prisca, derived from priscus.
One suggestion is that it is intended to bestow long life on the bearer. The name first appears in the New Testament of Christianity variously as Priscilla and Prisca, a female leader in early Christianity.
Eunuchs would usually be servants or slaves who had been castrated to make them reliable servants of a royal court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence. Saint Philip the Evangelist, also called Philip The Deacon, born 1st century; feast day June 6 , in the early Christian church, one of the seven deacons appointed to tend the Christians of Jerusalem, thereby enabling the Apostles to freely conduct their missions.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Which Xerxes did Esther marry?
Ben Davis May 31, But others had made contributions prior to this. See, e. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible Grand Rapids: , pp. The main text which enabled the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform, and subsequently of Elamite and Akkadian cuneiform, was a lengthy trilingual text with an accompanying relief composed at the instruction of Darius I.
It was inscribed on the rockface at Behistun, overlooking a main road leading to Hamadan. The name of the king is found in Aramaic in the panels of the Dura-Europos synagogue 3 rd century C. Xerxes was also the first son born to Darius after Darius became king. These factors distinguished him from his older half-brother Artabazanes, and merited Xerxes being chosen to succeed Darius.
This alternate translation is followed in the Loeb Classical Library edition ed. Godley, Cambridge, Mass. But the only wife of Xerxes that Herodotus ever mentions is Amestris, and it would be too coincidental for the commander to have been the son of someone named Amestris as well. This makes the alternate translation very unlikely. This passage does not necessarily imply that Amestris was already the wife of Xerxes at the time of the invasion.
For this particular section of Ctesias, what has survived is a summary by Photius 9 th cent. All my translations of Ctesias are from Jan P. All the events involving Amestris that are described occur in the reign of her son, Artaxerxes. The notorious women in this history should be confined to their real place, that is in literature. One of the co-conspirators was named Otanes.
Could this be the same person? Herodotus nowhere states that the Otanes, father of Amestris, was the co-conspirator Otanes. Pierre Briant, one of the foremost scholars of this period, writes that if Amestris had been the daughter of co-conspirator Otanes, Herodotus would doubtless have pointed this out.
See Briant, pp. But Mordechai cannot be Mardonius. Mardonius encouraged Xerxes to undertake his own invasion.. Or Photius himself may have erred, writing or dictating in haste. There are many manuscripts of Photius, but all derive from two. Neither is the exchange of D and T.
For example, he refers to Artaxerxes a few times, and he tells a story about something that Amestris did in her later years: she had fourteen children of noble Persians buried alive, as a gift on her behalf to the god of the nether world.
It was not reported by Herodotus. Mitchell First is an attorney, with an M. His website is www.
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