The Book of Esther between Judaism and Christianity: The Biblical Story, Self-Identification, and Antisemitic Interpretation#

Isaac Kalimi#

The book of Esther is one of the most challenging books in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, not only because of the difficulty of understanding the book itself in its time, place, and literary contexts, but also for the long and tortuous history of interpretation it has generated in both Jewish and Christian traditions. In this volume, Isaac Kalimi addresses both issues. He situates ‘traditional’ literary, textual, theological, and historical-critical discussion of Esther alongside comparative Jewish and Christian interpretive histories, showing how the former serves the latter. Kalimi also demonstrates how the various interpretations of the book of Esther have had an impact on its reception history, as well as on Jewish-Christian relations. Based on meticulous and comprehensive analysis of all available sources, Kalimi’s volume fills a gap in biblical, Jewish, and Christian studies and also shows how and why the book of Esther became one of the central books of Judaism and one of the most neglected books in Christianity.

ISBN: 978-1-00-926612-3
Publication date: 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Professor Isaac Kalimi

About the author#

Isaac Kalimi is Research Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies and Ancient Israelite history (emeritus) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany and a member of the Philosophy, Theology and Religous Studies section of Academia Europaea since 2020. His scholarly output has been prodigious and has encompassed a wide variety of fields. He is author of numerous books and articles, including The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (2005, reprinted 2012; R. B. Y. Scott Book Award of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies 2006); An Ancient Israelite Historian (2005); The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature (2009); Fighting over the Bible (2017); Metathesis in the Hebrew Bible (2018); Untersuchungen zur Jüdischen Schriftauslegung und Theologie (2018; Franz Delitzsch Prize 2019); and Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel (2018).