When yesterday someone I was having a conversation with mentioned that the one thing she didn't like about the modern Jewish festival called Purim was that it that it was getting to resemble Halloween, it reminded me of the way Purim actually began as a Babylonian Carnival that Persian Jews adapted to make their own. It is no accident that the two main festivals observed by Judaism and Messianism that are not found in the Torah, whose observance is nowhere commanded by Yahweh anywhere in the Bible (the other being Hanukkah - 2 Macc.10:9), should be changing to show more of their true pagan, chauvanistic and violent origin as the current Age begins to wind up and all emet (truth) is revealed as Yah'shua (Jesus) promised:

"For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light" (Mark 4:22, NKJV).

Today is the day (or the first of two days) that Talmudic Judaism and most of Messianic Judaism celebrates Purim or the Festival of Lots. It's the last of what they call the major annual festivals, one of two post-Biblical additions occupying the winter months. Before the Babylonian Exile there were no winter festivals, Hanukkah being originally a man-made 'late Sukkot' that evolved into something quite different as legend was added. Both have political origins, the observance of both being commanded, without divine revelation or mandate, by a non-priestly Judahite revolutionary leader and a Bejaminite queen married to a pagan Persian king after recommendation from her uncle, respectively. Of the proto-Hanukkah we first read:

"They (Maccabaeus and his revolutionary companions) also decreed by public edict, ratified by vote,that the whole Jewish community should celebrate those same [eight] days [of Hanukkah] every year" (2 Macc.10:9, JB).

"Mordecai committed these events to writing. Then he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes), both near and far, enjoining them to celebrate the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar every year...He therefore told them to keep these as days of festivity and gladness...the Jews vowed and took on themselves and their descednants and on all who should join them, to celebrate these two days without fail, in the manner rpescribed and at the time appointed, year after year. Thus commemorated and celebrated from generation to generation, in each family, each province and in each city, these days of Purim shall never be abrogated among the Jews, nor shall their memory die out among their race. Queen Esther, the daughter of Abihail, wrote with full authority [of the Persian king] to radify the second letter...enjoining them to observe these days of Purim at the appointed time, as Mordechai the Jew had recommended, and in the manner prescribed for themselves and their descandants, with additional ordinances for fasts and lamentations. The Ordinance of Esther fixed this observance of Purim and it was recorded in writing" (Esther 9:20-22,29-32, JB).

So it must be understood from the start that these two festivals were not commanded by Yahweh anywhere, and such is not even claimed in the accounts of them. They were ordered celebrated by men and a woman without the authority to do so. Indeed we have been warned:

"Every Davar Elohim (word of God) is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar" (Prov.30:5-6, NKJV).

"Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it" (Deut.12:32, NKJV).

Purim, far from being an Israelite festival like Pesach (Passover), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) or Sukkot (Tabernacles), is Talmudic-Jewish to its core. It is a celebration of vengeance and victory against all enemies of the Jews. Though purporting to come from the 4th century BC, the Book of Esther is found in no ancient collection of Scripture and was noticable by its absence in the oldest known collection of Tanakh (Old Testament), the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS).

Several explanations have been offered by Sidnie White Crawford in her article on the Book of Esther in the Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1: 269) to account for the absence of the book from the DSS:

• 1. The fact that no fragments have been preserved is simply owing to accident or chance. The book is relatively short and may have been in existence in the community but simply not preserved or discovered;
• 2. The male community at Qumran was not interested in a book in which the hero was a female;
• 3. The Qumran community was opposed to the book which describes a Jewish woman marrying a Gentile king and not following the Jewish laws;
• 4. The book of Esther was not known in the land of Israel in the first century; or
• 5. The book was written too late to be included in the body of sacred scrolls.

However, she refused to consider the more obvious explanation, which I shall attempt to justify today, namely:

• 6. The book was a piece of fiction invented by the early Pharisees, the characters and story-line being liberally borrowed from Babylonian and Elamite deities and their contests, to justify their adoption of a Babylonian Carnival while in Captivity to consolidate their power by mandating the use of revenge killing against all their enemies. The Essenes knew this and for this reason saw no reason to 'add' it to the Tanakh (Old Testament) in use in their day.

For this to be true we would have to prove, amongst other things that the Book of Esther is of later origin and that there was no Purim festival until long after the events the boor purports to portray, since the command in the book was that the festival be observed mmediately and without fail thereafter each year. We would also have to prove that the literary style of the book was from a period of time much later than the Exile and that it contained no other evidence as having been written retrospectively by someone who could not have been there.

Indeed, the internal evidence has led all modern scholars to date Esther between 150 and 100 BC, after the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. Like the Book of Enoch, the Apocrypha and all the other Pseudepigrapha - best described as 'fake scriptures' written in the name of long dead biblical notables - it is a product of a period of time when the spirit of prophecy had been withdrawn from Israel because of apostacy, what we call the 'inter-testamental period' (between the two Testaments of the Bible) when heaven was silent and no prophet was known after Malachi until the advent of John the Baptist. This period of time was flooded with cheap imitations of authentic Scripture by the emerging Pharisee sect.

The Book of Esther is no exception when compared to these non-biblical works. The Hebrew is undoubtedly late and not from the time it purports to come. Reading like a novel, the Persian Empire is given what L.E.Browne calls "a halo of romance which indicates that it had long ceased to exist" [1]. German theologian M.Haller was therefore right to translate the opening phrase, "Es war einmal" or "Once upon a time..." because this is not an historical work even though it names an historical King (Xerxes - 468-465 BC). As explained at greater length in an earlier article, False Paradigms, it has strong parallels to pagan myths:

"The names of the characters all bear striking resemblance to pagan deities: Esther to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar; Mordecai to the Babylonian god Marduk; Haman to the Elamite deity, Humman; Vashti to the Elamite goddess Mashti. Two sets of gods and goddesses representing two different cultures: Babylonian and Elamite" [2]

The Book of Esther's references to forcible converts to Judaism (Esther 8:17; 9:27) strongly suggest a date in the Greco-Roman period later than 128 BC as does the reference to many heathens becoming Jews out of fear (Esther 8:17). The latter is another key to the dating of the book as it is almost certainly based on the policy of John Hyrcanus and his son Aristobulus (135-104 BC) who forced the people of Samaria, Idumea (Edom) and Galilee, upon pain of death (like a modern fundamentalist Muslim) to become circumcised Jews. Hyrcanus' attack on Idumea (where the Herods originated) took place after the death of Antiochus VII (Sidetes) which, according to Josephus, was in 128 BC [3].

Purim as a festival is not referred to in any writing earlier than 2 Maccabees 15:36 (a Pharisee political tract) where the 14th of Adar is called the "Day of Mordechai" and that is because it didn't exist any earlier. The Book of Esther is never quoted in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) nor is the festival of Purim mentioned once, though unsuccessful attempts have been made to link it to an unnamed festival in one of the Gospels.

Justification for revenge against gentiles is the clear purpose of this book and it has been used ever since for the same purpose, especially by the modern Israeli State. But the Torah makes it clear that "vengeance is Mine (Yahweh's), and recompense" (Dt.32:35, NKJV), not man's. Only once in Israel's history has Yahweh ever commanded a war of retribution and extermination and that was against a Canaanite culture that was so cruel, depraved and murderous that it was wholly beyond redemption. Thereafter wars of defence were permitted and when this rule was broken, trouble followed. It was because David went too far sometimes, shedding inordinate amounts of blood in his many wars of expansion beyond the edge of the ordained Tribal Boundaries, that he was not permitted to build the Temple.

The Book of Esther not only does not invoke a revelation from Heaven for the slaughter of the Jews' enemies, it does not even mention 'Elohim (God') or His Name, 'Yahweh', one single time. Indeed, there is no effort to link the events of the book to Divinity at all, except in a latter Greek supplement that is universally recognised as a fraud and is a part of the Catholic Apocrypha. The 'testimony' at the end of the Greek fragment has convinced no scholar:

"In the fourth reign of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who affirmed that he was a priest and a Levitem and Ptolemy his son brought the foregoing letter concerning the Purim. They maintained it as being authentic, the translation having been made by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, a member of the Jerusalem community" (Esther 10:31; 11:1, JB).

Let we be in any doubt, the writer of Hebrews reminds us of Yahweh's Torah position on vengeance of any kind:

"For we know Him who said, 'Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,' says Yahweh. And again, 'Yahweh will judge His people.' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living Elohim (God)" (Heb.10:30-31, NKJV).

It is no accident that the Obama's invasion of Gadaffi's Libya occured on 31 March 2011 during the Purim celebrations or that Bush's earlier 'shock and awe' attack on Hussein's Iraq in 2003 also began on Purim. They were revenge against modern Talmudic Jewish enemies, the inheritors of the manufactured Edict of Esther. And if Russia's Putin had not intervened in Syria, there is no doubt that an attack on Iran (Persia) would have taken place using the same pattern.

The head of the Jewish Zionist state, Benjamin Netanyahu, made a peculiar statement in a press conference with Obama two years ago at this time of the year (in March 2012), saying that:

"Americans know that Israel and the United States share common values and that we defend common interests...we also face common enemies and Iranian leaders know this as well, they call the United States 'the great Satan' and Israel 'the little Satan' and you know what, Mr.President? At least on this last point I think they are right. We are you and you are us, we are together."

You can read what you will into that statement, be it a gaff or tacit an admission of a dark relationship by the modern Synagogue of Satan - Rev.2:9; 3:9), but there is no doubt that American policy in the Middle East has essentially be an extension of Israeli Talmudic Purim-like policy and that no effort has been spared to label these wars as Purim-type wars of revenge as a warning of what happens to those who oppose the Zionist State whose origins are Idumean and therefore Maccabean.

Some of you may have seen YouTube videos that try to link the execution of the Nazi war leaders at Nuremberg in 1946 to Purim. Much is made of Julius Streicher's cry on the gallows, "Purimfest 1946!". He certainly believed Esther's propaganda. We are being asked to believe that the a clear error in the Book of Esther was actually a prophecy of Jewish revenge against Nazi war criminals. In Esther 9:11-19, Esther asks for a second day to continue the slaughter of the Jews' enemies and that the 10 sons of Haman might be hanged too. However, the sons had already been hung according Esther 9:10. Thus Jews and Messianics are asking us to believe that the 10 "sons of Haman" not yet executed were actually the 10 Nazi war criminals hung in Nuremberg. According to Talmudic sources, Haman's daughter committed suicide and this they try to link to Herman Goering who cheated the hangman by committing suicide 3 hours before his execution. Based on an unsubstantiated rumour that Goering was a transvestite, the purveryors of this absurd theory claim that Goering represented Haman's daughter.

Far from containing so much as a hint of prophecy, this Pharisee fairy tale not only fails to mention Elohim (God) or religion (which, as we have seen, another Greek pseudepigraph tried to rectify but added further contradictions in the process [4]), but actuates the basest motives of pride, greed and cruelty that only someone from the Hasmonean era would have understood, because these were characteristics of that uninspired, apostate time. Attempts to elevate the Book of Esther into Scripture are as absurd as the attempt by Ron Hubbard to turn Science Fiction into a religion called Scientology. Yet millions of gullible people have swallowed the myth of what is a dangerous religious cult. Purim and Hanukkah, along with all the false scriptures of the second and first centuries BC, are a part of the Pharisee Cult that evolved into modern Judaism. The tragedy is that Zionist Christians and Messianics (not to mention the ordinary hapless, scammed Jews themselves) have been fooled into lending their support to this branch of Moloch-worship which Yahweh calls the Synagogue of Satan. (See Reading List at end of article).

We have no need of the counterfeit Book of Esther or the Festival of Talmudic Vengeance known as Purim. It wasn't in the earliest known Tanakh (Old Testament) and it shouldn't be in it today [5]. The strict Essene Judahite sectarians, who probably had contact with the first believers and who wrote and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls, knew better [6]. It comes from a time of darkness in Jewish history when the nation was anxiously waiting for the Messiah to come but who looked to human revolutionary warrior-saviours like the Maccabees and Zealots for whom bloodshed was the only path of liberty. And when the true Messiah did finally come, after gathering those who accepted Him as their Elohim (God) and King, He rejected both the ruling religious class, their followers, and the fake writings from that equally dark inter-testamental period that they loved so much, all but the Book of Esther of which were ommitted from what became our Protestant canon.

Why, then, did Yahweh permit the Book of Esther to remain? Because there is always a snake in the Garden of Eden to test the children of men. The Book of Esther, and the devilish festival of Purim, have been used - and will continue to be used - to justify satanic doctrines, coercive and murderous methods of conversion, and carnal man-made alternatives to the real Zion. This festival was proposed by a man, voted into existence by man, and made official by a woman. It was never commanded by Elohim (God). And Mordecai was modelled on the Babylonian god Marduk, one of the early nephilim.

Messianic Israel - the true Israel anticipated by all the prophets of old - comes in only in one way:

"Not by might nor by power, but by My Ruach (Spirit),' says Yahweh of hosts" (Zech.4:6, NKJV).

Endnotes

[1] L.E.Browne in Esther in Peake's Commentary on the Bible (Van Nostrand Reinhold, Wokingham, England: 1982), p.381
[2] Purim 2007: False Paradigms and Looking Ahead
[3] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XIII.ix.I
[4] For example, in the Hebrew version, Haman is called an Agagite (Amalekite), but in the Greek, he is a Macedonian, two totally different races
[5] All the other 38 books were present and correct, and remain fully inspired Scripture of El Elyon, the Most High
[6] See, for example, James H. Charlesworth (ed.), John and Qumran (Geoffrey Chapman, London: 1972)

Essential Book Reading List

[1] Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland (Verso, London & NY: 2012)
[2] Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, London & NY: 2009)
[3] Michael Hoffman, Judaism's Strange Gods (Independent History and Research, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho: 2011)
[4] Alexander McCaul, The Old Paths, or the Talmud Tested by Scripture, being a Comparision of the Principles and Doctrines of Modern Judaism With the Religion of Moses and the Prophets (London Societies House, London: 1880 reprinted by Forgotten Books: 2012)
[5] Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford: 2007)
[6] Texe Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star (RiverCrest Publishing, Austin, TX: 2011)
[7] Texe Marrs, DNA Science and the Jewish Bloodline (RiverCrest Publishing, Austin, TX: 2013)
[8] Dr. Henry Mackow, Illuminati: The Cult That Hijacked the World (Silas Green, Winnipeg, Canada: 2012)

Key Articles and Sermons by the Author

[1] Jacob's Trouble - important 5-part series on the origin of Israel and the Israeli Republic
[2] Talmudic Judaism: The Dark Truth - things no Messianic will ever tell you
[3] Deadly Star: The Mystery of Solomon's Seal Revealed
[4] What is a Jew? - Judahite, Judean or Jew? Do you know the difference?
[5] Kabbalah Exposed: The Solomonic Roots of Messianic and Anti-Messianic Judaism
[6] Headcoverings - important articles on the surprising origins of Jewish tallit, kippah and tefillin
[7] The Creation Calendar - the origin of the Jewish calendar compared to the true biblical calendar
[8] Purim - everything you need to know about the origins of Purim
[9] Hanukkah - everything you need to know about the origins of Hanukkah
[10] Sabbath - the Orthodox Christian (Sunday) and Jewish/Adventist (Saturday) 'sabbaths' compared with the true biblical Seventh-Day Sabbath

Comments from Readers

[1] "Thanks for pointing out Esther. You might be right... Even the name (title of the book) is all wrong. I was thinking, how can she been a "hero" if she turned her back on Yahuah to marry a pagan, godless, king. What about her children having a pagan dad and you know the kids would become pagan themselves. It just doesn't make sense. Why would he bless a marriage like that? Yahuah could have saved them in any way He felt like it. He didnt need her to save them. And when has Yahuah ever rewarded us for turning our backs on Him? How could she maintain a pure walk with Yahuah, if the king is a devil worshipping pagan. She may have risked her life for her people but she walked away from her faith in Yahuah to do it... Nowhere does it show that she and the king repented & turned back to Yahuah and His commandments. I realized that there is actually no love for Yahuah represented in that book. I actually see the book in a whole new light now. If the story is real, she certainly isn't a role model... Now, if the end of the story went a little like this, "After the Jews were saved, Esther and the king were very grateful, so they thanked Yahuah and turned back to Him and His Commandments." Then I might buy it but that was not the case. Also, Yahushua said that we know a fruit by its tree, the fruit is the festival Purim and the book of Esther is the tree. Need I say more?" (TA, 17 March 2015).

[2] "A very well written piece. Thank you for posting" (M, USA, 18 March 2014)