[Avodah] Mordechai and Esther

[Celejar]

On Tue, 19 May 2009 22:06:27 -0400
Saul Guberman <saulguberman at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Yitzhak Grossman  wrote:
> 
> >
> > There's a lot of speculation out there that Mordechai and Esther derive
> > from Marduk and Ishtar, but a quick googling indicates that it is just
> > that - speculation.  There seems to be no actual evidence for the
> > hypothesis, and some scholars reject it, e.g.:
> >
> > http://books.google.com/books?id=RxYXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPA77,M1
> >
> > Anyone know anything interesting about this?
> >
> 
> Per Rabbi Menchem Leibtag:
> http://www.tanach.org/purim.htm
>   The name Mordechai is probably the most provocative word in the entire
> Megilla for it stems from the name of the Babylonian deity -Marduk (see II
> Kings 25:27 & Yeshayahu 39:1!).

Interesting, but as I said, pure speculation.  The fact that "Merodach"
appears in Yeshayah as the name of a Babylonian king (the text of the
lecture that I see doesn't mention Melachim, and the verse in Yeshayahu
is referring to a monarch, not a deity) is hardly compelling evidence
that "Mordechai" is derived from the name of an Aramaic deity.

Yitzhak
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