Hey my friends it's Matt this is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast and we have been working through

a book that came out in nineteen oh nine called Legends of the Jews by Lewis Ginsburg and it's got this huge section on oral tradition

and other written traditions and really legends surrounding the story of Esther.

Yesterday we spent some time looking at some of the most interesting ones in the first half of the book and today we're going to take some time to look at some other interesting ones and then we're going to consider what the existence of all of these goofy fun juicy legends means for our evaluation of Esther in the big historical

sense.

All right, I'm going to have my buddy Jeff play some music, and we're going to get back after it. There's lots of super fascinating stuff here.

There's lots of super fascinating stuff here.

I'm having to be selective, but I'm trying to go, you can see what I'm doing but I'm trying to go you can see what I'm doing

I'm trying to go chronologically through the story so we're kind of paralleling what we

already read. There's a great legend here about the conspiracy to kill the

king and Esther and Xerxes have this crazy showdown.

She's very direct. The king asks Esther, whose daughter art thou?

And Esther says, and whose son art thou?

And Xerxes says, I'm a king and I'm the son of a king. And Esther says, and whose son are thou. And Xerx, who says, I'm a king and I'm the son of a king.

And Esther says, and I'm a queen, the daughter of kings, a descendant of the royal family of

Saul. Whoa, she just comes right out and says that she's Jewish according to this legend.

Well, that takes a lot of fun out of the climax of the actual book.

But okay, let's keep going, if thou art indeed a real prince, how couldst thou put Vashti to death?

Xerxy says, it was not to gratify my own wish, but it's how couldst thou put Vashty to death?" Zerkei says.

It was not to gratify my own wish,

but at the advice of the great princes of Persia and media.

Okay, that sounds like Xercester says.

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