Hello and welcome to the scriptures are real podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about

elements in scriptures that have made them become more real to us so that we can draw more

power out of them. I'm your host, Carrie Mealstein, and this is a short cast just to get us ready for the

Book of Esther, just kind of an introduction to the book of Esther.

And then we explored more in depth with author Heather Moore, who has written a historical fiction

book about Esther.

I think you'll find that interview fascinating. So this is just

kind of a short interview to the story of Esther. The book of Esther is an interesting book.

There are some unique things about it. One of those things is that the name of God is never

mentioned in the book of Esther. And many people think that that may be the reason for another interesting thing.

It's the only book of the Old Testament that there was no fragment of in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now, maybe they had a copy of it and that fragment didn't survive. It just didn't survive at all.

But the fact that there's not even a teeny little fragment of it suggests that they didn't have

that book, and it's likely that the reason was that it wasn't accepted as scripture because it

didn't talk directly about God. Others will argue, and I lean this way, that really there's a literary

device being employed here, and that is that God is directing all of the events of Astor,

but he's doing so in a way that isn't easily seen by those who don't have eyes to see.

So, for example, we have the character of Mordecai, a really interesting character.

I love Mordechai, and I particularly love him in the Veggie Tales version,

that Pa, P, but anyway, he are great. I mean, he, Mordecai must be at least a somewhat,

from a somewhat prominent Jewish family. He ends up in the capital, working for the king. And so

the capital in Persia at this time is Sousa.

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