<div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"> Yitzhak Grossman <span dir="ltr"></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">

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There&#39;s a lot of speculation out there that Mordechai and Esther derive<br>
from Marduk and Ishtar, but a quick googling indicates that it is just<br>
that - speculation.  There seems to be no actual evidence for the<br>
hypothesis, and some scholars reject it, e.g.:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=RxYXAAAAYAAJ&amp;printsec=titlepage#PPA77,M1" target="_blank">http://books.google.com/books?id=RxYXAAAAYAAJ&amp;printsec=titlepage#PPA77,M1</a><br>
<br>
Anyone know anything interesting about this?<br>
</blockquote></div><br>Per Rabbi Menchem Leibtag:<br><a href="http://www.tanach.org/purim.htm" target="_blank">http://www.tanach.org/purim.htm</a><br>  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 &amp; Yeshayahu 39:1!). <br><br>
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