Hey, everybody, I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast, and we are doing a deep

dive into the historical background behind the book of Esther, and we're trying to get

a sense of this achaemenid dynasty, these kings who ruled over Persia and who were very

colorful characters surrounded by very colorful characters.

Now in addition to the story that we've been working through about the origins of Persia

and the origins of this dynasty, in addition to that just being ludicrously juicy and

salacious and interesting and dramatic and good, it is also in a practical sense helpful

to you and I in the task of positioning ourselves to understand the book of Esther, because

we're getting a sense of how storytelling worked at this time.

We're getting a sense of the twists of justice and the expectations of an audience member

at this moment in history when they were reading Herodidus, when they were reading Xenophon,

when they were reading Tseus, those three Greek guys who wrote about a lot of this stuff.

And if we understand what their expectations were when they were reading the storytelling

of those guys, it might help us to better understand what their expectations were and

what the rhythms of good storytelling sounded like when that same audience would have encountered

the book of Esther.

So for those of you who are less fans of the history side of this conversation, I just

want to take a minute and say, you rule, I commend you because if you don't like history,

you don't like history.

I don't know how you don't like history.

I think it's just awesome.

But hey, I understand it's not everybody's bag and we're doing a big setup for this book

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