
The Book of Esther and the Jewish Festival Purim - diodorus
http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/03/the-book-of-esther-and-the-jewish-festival-purim.html
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acqq
> As God’s name is not explicitly mentioned in the Book of Esther, it was
> considered permissible to illustrate it.

Wow. Does anybody have some good info abut this aspect of Judaism, wikipedia
doesn't have much. Specifically I'd like to know the historical reliable
sources about it, not the qoutes from the Bible, that is, I'm interested in
the evidence for and against the use of illustrations among the Jews.

~~~
js2
In Judaism, G-d has no physical form nor image, so there would be no way to
illustrate G-d:

[http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm#Image](http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm#Image)
and [http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm](http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm)

This may be the wikipedia page you're looking for:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Judaism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Judaism)

~~~
cobookman
Due to this belief you get some interesting Jewish thoughts. Such as Atheist
Jews who do not believe a supernatural being exists. But that G-d is the
spirit / will / empathy of the people in aggregate. For example a Jewish
Atheist would say it was not some super natural being's doing that saved the
Jews from the holocaust, but the good nature of people in aggregate. And it
was that good nature that represents G-d.

Finally as the joke goes in Judaism. You've got 2 Jews in a room and 5
conflicting opinions.

~~~
relics443
They way I remember it, it was 10 conflicting opinions...

~~~
mbubb
binary 10 ?

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andrewflnr

      Some scholars have contended that given the striking resemblance between the names Esther and
      Mordecai to the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar, the story was rooted in
      Babylonian worship practices...
    

They really just left that there, without any hint as to whether there's
anything in common besides the names? The Wikipedia pages for Marduk and
Ishtar don't give any hints AFAICT.

~~~
josh_fyi
It's normal to have names based on divinities. E.g., Venus Williams. Or Jesus
in Spanish names. It does not mean that the person _is_ the god.

~~~
andrewflnr
Sure, but that's sort of why it's odd that TFA seemed to be suggesting that
the _story_ was based on Babylonian religious practice, citing no evidence
other than the similar names.

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empath75
>references to Purim do not feature in the Jewish literature before the 1st
century CE.

> the festival had long been established by the 2nd century CE as evidenced in
> the tractate Megilah of the Mishnah (corpus of the oral tradition of Jewish
> law).

I'm confused by this.

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dragonwriter
It's perfectly consistent with it being established in, say, the early 1st
century CE and spreading rapidly; a century is plenty long enough for a
festival to be "long established", which it was (per the quote) by the second
century CE, despite being absent from the literature before the 1st century
CE.

