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ASK AUGUSTINE

On March 1, our newspaper reported that day was Purim and is celebrated by Jewish communities to “commemorate salvation of Jewish people in ancient Persia from a plot to annihilate them.” Where can I read that story in the Bible?

You will find the story of Purim in the Old Testament book of Esther.

Another article deconstructs the celebration of Purim as paralleling “the experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered people coming out of the closet and as such, is a National Jewish Coming Out Day.” They say this is because there were problems with the canonization of the book of Esther which does not ever mention God and secular history has no mention of a Jewish Queen in Persia. Is all of this true?

I am no longer amazed at how the deconstructionists of our day continue to deny that there is any single correct meaning or interpretation of a passage or text. At the heart of the deconstructionist theory of interpretation are two primary ideas. First is the idea that no passage or text can possibly convey a single reliable, consistent and coherent message to everyone who reads or hears it. The second is that the author who wrote the text is less responsible for the content than are the impersonal forces of culture such as language and their unconscious ideology. Therefore, the very basic tenets of deconstructionism are contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible that absolute truth does exist and we can indeed know it.

The deconstruction approach to interpreting the Bible comes out of postmodernism and as such it is simply another denial of the existence of absolute truth, which is one of the most serious logical fallacies anyone could ever commit. The reason the denial of absolute truth is a logical fallacy of the greatest magnitude is because it is a self-contradictory statement. The deconstructionist or postmodern thinker who denies absolute truth cannot rationally make such a statement because to do so would be stating an absolute which is what they are saying does not exist.

Like other philosophies that developed during the postmodern movement, deconstructionism celebrates human autonomy and places the autonomy of man at both the beginning and the end of determining what can be deemed to be truth. According to the postmodern thinker all truth is relative and there is no such thing as absolute truth. At the heart of this type of postmodernism and the deconstructionist thought process is pride and arrogance.

The deconstructionists think they can discover a personal or social motivation that lies behind what is said and therefore can determine what is really being said. The end result is a very subjective interpretation of the passage or text in question. Instead of accepting what it actually says the deconstructionist is arrogant enough to think they can determine the motive behind what was written and come up with the real or hidden meaning of the text. However if one were to take deconstructionism to its logical conclusion then the results of the deconstructionist’s efforts would have to be deconstructed themselves to determine what the deconstructionist really said and the endless line of circular reasoning is therefore self defeating.

The deconstructionist does not study the Bible or a text to find out the meaning intended by the writer, but instead tries to read between the lines to find out the cultural and social reasons and motives behind what was written. To the deconstructionist there is no right or wrong interpretation and the meaning of the passage or else text becomes very subjective and one that can only determined by the reader. The deconstructionist on the other hand would attribute the primary meaning of the text to the reader not the author. Therefore, there is no one right way of interpretation and the reader’s cultural and social background will influence the meaning of the passage.

In my opinion these deconstructionist scholars clearly miss the point of Purim and the book of Esther, which illustrates not “a coming out of the closet experience,” but that redemptive history takes place within the context of ordinary time. With God there is no linear dimension to time and redemptive history has a transcendent and vertical dimension to it. In redemptive history the eternal intersects the temporal, the infinite God touches our finite horizontal dimension of time.

The Old Testament gives us multiple examples of the intersection of redemptive history with secular history. One such example is seen in the narrative history of Esther, who was born at the precise second and in the precise place that God had ordained from the foundation of the world.

It is true that there were several problems with the Jewish canonization of the book. Except in Roman Catholic versions of the Bible, the name of God is nowhere found in the book of Esther’s 167 verses (yet the King of Persia is mentioned 190 times), Esther was married to a non-Jew, and Purim was a pagan festival. Yet it is a most popular book among Jews. It is the only book (beside the Pentateuch) that has two Aramaic translations; there are more medieval manuscripts of Esther than any other Old Testament book; and its record of deliverance encourages readers to expect a similar deliverance.

Yet even without the name of God mentioned, the book of Esther displays a profound faith in Providence. The Hand of God, which is hardly burlesque or low comedy, is seen throughout its reading. In the story of Esther, the king of Persia made a seven-day feast and summoned his queen, Vashti, to present herself to the dignitaries assembled to display her beauty. Vashti refused and she was forever forbidden to come before the king again.

What followed was an attempt to find a suitable replacement for the queen. A spectacular beauty pageant was held and a young Jewish girl named Esther became Queen. It is true that liberal theological scholarship’s primary argument for the book of Esther being fiction rests on the point that secular history contains no record of a Jewish queen in Persia. But since Esther could not reveal her nationality, why would there be a record, outside of the Bible, of a Jewish Queen in Persia?

Esther then “just happens” to be in a position to counter a villainous plot to exterminate her people. Yes God is nowhere mentioned in the story, but God is everywhere implied in a series of “non-coincidences” throughout the book. Esther “just happens” to win the beauty contest to become queen; her uncle Mordecai “just happens” to foil a plot to kill the king; wicked Haman “just happens” to be hung on the gallows he prepared for Mordecai.

Some deconstructionist theologians argue that the book of Esther contains no ritual or other Jewish religious practices. I guess they must have skipped those passages that speak of the Jewish people responding to the lethal decree of the king by fasting. This fasting implies the belief in and reliance upon God. If the Jewish people had no hope of surviving, why would they fast? They would eat drink and be merry for tomorrow they die. This was no time for Esther and her maidens to go on a crash diet!

The fast was a way of the Jewish people reaching out (as they often did throughout the Old Testament) to God, of humbling themselves and acknowledging complete dependence upon Him. God’s Providence is everywhere demonstrated throughout the book of Esther, and that the people’s only hope was in God is also implied in the passages on fasting.

Today Purim is celebrated as a noisy and fun festival. Some view it as a kind of Jewish April Fool’s Day. Perhaps the humor is in keeping with the irony of how God “chose” to preserve His people during the time, and particularly how He elevated the humble Mordecai and Esther and brought down the proud Haman. It is not an allegory for “coming out sexually” but a story that calls us to remember the serious danger the Jewish people faced, and to remember the necessity of total dependence upon God’s preserving power.

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