[Avodah] Mordechai and Esther

[Lisa Liel]

On Tue, 19 May 2009 22:06:27 -0400, Saul Guberman  
<saulguber... 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!).

Esther is similar.  Chazal say that Esther is Ayelet HaShachar (Yoma  
29a), which means the Morning Star.  The Morning Star and Evening Star  
are both the planet Venus, at different points in its movement, and  
the Babylonians called Venus Ishtar.

Chazal also identify Mordechai Bilshan in Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7 as  
Mordechai from the book of Esther (Megillah 16b).  While there's  
certainly no way for us to know for certain what Mordechai and Esther  
were called, the names Marduk Belshunu and Edeset Ishtar are not  
uncommon.  The first means "Marduk is their lord", and there are many  
records of men called Belshunu from the Persian period.  One was even  
a governor of the province the Persians called "Beyond the River",  
which referred to Syria and Israel.  There was a Belshunu as well who  
was the governor of Babylon for a time during that period.

The name Belshunu was probably a common one for Jews.  There's a  
Babylonian inscription that refers to a Jew named Hanun son of  
Belshunu  
(http://www.archive.org/stream/jewsinbabyloniai00daicuoft/jewsinbabyloniai00daicuoft_djvu.txt):

"Bel-shu-nu, father of Hanun, 87: i. Also a very frequent Babylonian name.
It is a shortened name ; see Tallqvist, 1. c, p. 43. Its meaning is :  
' (This or that god is) their lord.' The name áìùï (Ezra ii. 2 ; Neh.  
vii. 7) is identical with Belshunu."

Edeset Ishtar means "the renewal of Ishtar/Venus", and is a name that  
refers to Venus alternating between morning star and evening star.   
Edeset is cognate to the Hebrew "chadash", and when the Megillah  
refers to Esther as äãñä äéà àñúø, this might have been her full  
Babylonian name.

Lastly, Chazal seem to indicate that Mordechai's Hebrew name was  
Petachiah (Menahot 65a).

And yes, it's all conjecture and speculation, but how can it be  
otherwise?  The issue is that it's speculation based on sound  
linguistic grounds.

Lisa