It conflicts with historical truth.
It conflicts with historical truth.
§ 202. [IV] It conflicts with historical truth. In 16:14 Haman is said to “have thought to transfer the domination of the Persians to the Macedonians,” which cannot be reconciled with the histories. The consequence would be that the history of Esther would have occurred in the last days of the Persian kings, for Ahasuerus could not have been afraid that the kingdom of the Persians would be transferred to the Macedonians unless the kingdom of Macedonia had had a different name. The kingdom of Macedonia, however, was very obscure until the time of Philip, father of Alexander the Great, as is evident from the histories, though the history of Esther long preceded the reign of Philip of Macedonia.
Furthermore, if the history of Esther belonged to the end of the kingdom of the Persians, Mordecai would have survived for almost three hundred years, for he is said to have been carried away with Jeconiah from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldeans (Esther 11:4). He remained in captivity for seventy years. Afterward he continued to live from the beginning of the rule of Cyrus to the end of the rule of Artaxerxes Ochus, a period that covers 220 years. The sum of these is nearly three hundred years. Bellarmine lists various opinions as to who this Ahasuerus was who was the husband of Esther. (Some say Esther’s husband was Ahasuerus, father of Darius the Mede; some, Cambyses; some, Darius Hystaspes; some, Artaxerxes Memnon; some, Artaxerxes Longimanus.) Finally, he embraces that opinion that one should take the name “Ahaseurus” to mean Artaxerxes Longimanus. Having presupposed this foundation, he responds: “It is not unbelievable that Mordecai was deported with King Jehoiakim into Babylon and lived until the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus. From the beginning of the Babylonian captivity to Longimanus there are about 165 years; but now it is not incredible for Mordecai to live to be 165 because some lived to that age in later times.” Yet we shall have to add several intervening years to those 165 from the carrying into captivity to the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus. In 2 Kings 24:16, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have “deported the men of valor, strong and fit for war,” without mentioning any children. Mordecai would have been thirty then. Add those years to the 165 between the deportation into captivity and the time of Artaxerxes and you will have 195 years. Therefore if Mordecai had been that old at the time of Artaxerxes, he could not have performed his ministry at court nor would he have accomplished great things. Rather, he would have been a decrepit old man, ready for the coffin.
Bellarmine sees this; therefore he makes a different response: “Scripture says that Mordecai was deported into Babylon with King Jehoiakim. We can understand this in this sense: that he was deported not in himself but in his parents and ancestors, as Zerubbabel and Joshua are said to have returned ‘from the captivity’ (Nehemiah 7) into Jerusalem, though Zerubbabel was born in that captivity (Matthew 1).” Although this explanation is more forced, perhaps it could be possible, if the other things in the supplement were right. Were someone to say that even the canonical Book of Esther (2:6) mentions that Mordecai was deported from Jerusalem with King Jeconiah into Babylon, and that the authority of canonical Esther likewise is undermined by this argument, we would respond: The relative pronoun “who” refers not to Mordecai but to the nearest antecedent, namely, the great-grandfather of Mordecai. The words read as follows: “Now there was a Jew in the city Susa whose name was Mordecai, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, of the line of Jemini, who had been deported from Jerusalem.” Only three of Mordecai’s ancestors are mentioned in this passage. The genealogy is not pursued further than that ignoble man Kish, the Benjaminite. What more practical explanation for this can we offer as to why only three are listed than that which Cardinal Cajetan mentions: that it teaches that it was Kish who was deported into captivity, not Mordecai, and that it shows that Mordecai came from a posterity of devout ancestors who were deported with Jeconiah, and that God blessed him because of his ancestors? (See Scaliger, De emend. temp., bk. 6, and Drusius, on Esther 2.)