In this study we have considered the only documents relating to the Persian Empire at the time when the history that concerns us should be placed –Megillat Esther, the Behistun Inscription and the Persepolis Administrative Archives, the Shâhnâmeh and the Avesta–, which provide three parallel stories.
How and when the Achæmenids converted to Zoroastrianism is an unsolved enigma, as well as the time when Zarathustra lived and what was his origin. In order to place the events of the Kayanid dynasty with those of Achæmenid in a historical context, the Zoroastrian scholars identified Kavi Vištāspa with Cyrus the Great –therefore, Hutaosā would be Kassandanē, his wife, or else Hutaosā would not have been Vištāspa’s wife but his daughter– and consequently, they attributed to the legendary Kayanid king the edict that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem (Ṭabari, book I). They also credited Vištāspa of having established the seven imperial families of Persia (Ṭabari, I), which according to the official version of the story would have been the done by Darius Hystaspes.
If we take into consideration the elements analyzed here and try to organize them to formulate a hypothesis, we would have a complicated combination of protagonists who could be identified with different characters among the stories involved, considering that each of them is an expression of the point of view of the author and consequently, the reality could be different and not coincide in full with any of them, but partially with all. In all three stories there is a very important woman who is the queen: Hadassa/Esther the Jewess, Hatossa/Hutaosā the Achæmenid, Hutaosā/Estār the Kayanid, each of whom have in common exerting a significant influence on her husband, who is the king, Ahasuerus, Darius, Vištāspa, and a particular devotion to her God. In all cases, they are decisive in interceding in favor of people who supported a monotheistic faith, be it Judaism or Zoroastrianism.
From these postulates arise some conjectures:
If the Hadassah of the Megillah was not actually a Jewish woman, but the daughter of Cyrus the Great, perhaps it was she who led her father to the Zoroastrian faith, adopted as the official religion of the crown of Persia, or perhaps she had converted to the Judaism and for this reason her influence in the court of Darius was very valuable in encouraging the king to satisfy Nehemiah’s requests...
Or perhaps the prophet Zarathustra, of whom nothing is known and whose biography is legendary, was indeed an Israelite who introduced monotheism in the court of Cyrus... Could he be Prophet Daniel himself?
Concerning the queen’s identity, if Hutaosā was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, and if also Artastūnā, was, were then Esther and Vashti sisters?...
Summing it all up, we know that the history of the Kayanids is mythological, reported in the Shâhnâmeh, which was written by the poet Firdawsi towards the end of the tenth century CE, while the scarce documents on the Achæmenids are the work of Darius Hystaspes, and hence, lacking in objectivity, or else they are imprecise and confused versions given by the Greek narrators who collected different oral traditions that did not agree with each other and without being able to verify the facts; and finally, the Book of Esther, which for all of the above would be equally credible. Therefore, the events could have happened as follows: Hatossa, daughter of Cyrus –who is called “Messiah” in Isaiah 45:1– had believed the preaching of a prophet of Israel before her father took Babylon, and therefore converted to Judaism, she exercised her influence to decree the return of her adoptive nation to Jerusalem. Subsequently, being the wife of Darius, from her position in the royal court she continued to favor her people, and, out of gratitude, the people of Israel dedicated a novel to her in which she is the protagonist and heroine of the Jews.

It remains still unsolved without a historical explanation the crucial event in the Megillah, the decree of extermination of the Jews and its outcome, a highly unlikely fact in the Achæmenid Empire. No reasonable king would admit a proposal like that of Haman, nor a civil war in his kingdom provoked by an unfair edict – let alone Darius, who in the second year of his reign decreed and financed the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (Ezra 6:1-12,15), which was completed four years later, and himself sponsored Ezra to attend the inauguration in the seventh year of his rule (Ezra 7:12-27), at the same time that he would presumably be choosing Esther to make her his wife (Esther 2:16 ). Those who may have been able to authorize large-scale genocide were the Seleucids. During the domination of that Greek dynasty some novels were written in which they were indirectly alluded, but placing them in previous empires and personifying their monarchs as Assyrians in order to avoid that the work be censored or exasperated even more the hatred of the despots and their governors. This is how the fantastic tales of Judith and Tobias were born, full of inaccuracies and historical errors, probably because the authors lacked adequate information on the Assyrian Empire, or else they made them intentionally in order to make it understood that actually they were referring to Greek kings and ministers and not to those presented in the aforementioned works. Regarding the Book of Esther, the author perfectly describes the details of the Persian court and shows that he has exact and detailed information on the matter, so his intention may have been to convey an event that really happened, even if in a different context. An extermination decree may have happened, but in a limited territory and not in such large a scale as covering the whole empire, in one of the Seleucid domains, and the writer decided to create a romantic tale in which that fact was recorded and at the same time honor the Queen of Persia, she whom the Jews had to remember with respect and of whom nothing had been written yet. In this way, he brought together two totally different events separated in time and space, in the same work. In particular, the facts related to Haman and his intention to destroy the Jews could be connected to the campaign of the Seleucid general Nicanor, a fierce enemy of the Jews, who fell defeated in the battle of Adasa (Hebrew: Hadasah), near Jerusalem, on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, clash in which he lost his life and his head was exposed as a trophy. Since then, the Jews celebrated that day with great joy, and only in the Diaspora was it replaced by Ta’anit Esther. . According to 2Maccabees 15:36, the commemoration of that festival was instituted on the 13th of Adar, “on the eve of Mordechai’s Day”, which would indicate that in the Hasmonean era Purim was already commemorated. However, there is no indication that Purim was observed during the Second Temple period, until long after its destruction. In fact, it is not mentioned in the Qumran Scrolls (among which there is not any copy of Megillat Esther, the only TaNaKh book absent from that collection of manuscripts), nor in the New Testament, nor in any other document of that time. In fact, Purim was promoted to national celebration by the rabbis of the Diaspora, and given the proximity to the day on which the defeat of Nicanor was commemorated, they unified both holidays by canceling the latter, which was replaced by the “fast of Esther”, who it did not happen in Adar but many months earlier, according to Esther 4:16, and was to last three days, not one. The purpose of this replacement was that the Jews would not observe or remember any of the Maccabees’ undertakings, considered usurpers of David’s throne because they did not belong to his lineage and therefore could not be recognized as legitimate kings of Judah. “Mordechai’s Day” during the Second Temple period was likely to have been an end of winter Babylonian festival adopted by the Jews of the Diaspora, and close to the Zoroastrian New Year, Nowrūz.

Allegorical aspect

The Book of Esther has the characteristic of having an important symbolic meaning which is valid for two different religious systems: Judaism and Zoroastrianism. The work in its essence is a metaphor for the struggle between Good and Evil and also contains the paradox of the exaltation of two deities of Babylon: the names of the two main actors representing Good are Mordechai and Esther, are equivalent to Marduk and Ishtar respectively. Rabbi Nehemiah explains in the treatise Megillah 13a the following: “Hadassah was her original name; why then was she called Esther? Because the idolaters have compared her to the planet Venus, or Ishtar”. Notwithstanding, this name has even another interesting feature: it shares the same root wit the Hebrew verb “lehastir”, that means “conceal, hide, cover, disguise”, which is a recurring aspect in this book.
To better understand the hidden meaning of the figures in this book, it is necessary to briefly explain some fundamental concepts of Zoroastrianism: this religion, at least in its origins, conceives the existence of only one God, Creator of all things and in turn, Principle Absolute of Good, whose name is Ahura Mazdā –that can be translated as Wise God–. From him emanated the Aməša Spənta, six divine “concepts” or “qualities” (not deities on their own right), and they are: Vohu Manah, ithe Good Thought, Aša Vahištā, the Best Righteousness or Best Truth, Xšaθra Vairya, the Desirable Dominion, Spənta Ārmaiti, the Creative Harmony or Holy Devotion, Haurvatāt, the Perfect Health, and Amərətāṯ, the Immortality, to them joins Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit, son of Ahura Mazdā and “one with the Father“, by means of whom the Universe was created and is sustained, he is the Principle of Good and, together with the other six mentioned, comprises the Seven Spirits of the Creator. He is opposed by Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman, the adversary, Principle of Evil and father of lies, the prince of demons. During their lives, human beings must decide whether to be children of light or of darkness, that is, to be on the side of Good or on the side of Evil. All the works of a person’s life are written in the Book of Life, which will be consulted on Judgment Day to determine the final destination of everyone.
Before Zarathustra, the Persian religion was similar to that of other polytheistic peoples, especially those of India. In that system, Ahura Mazdā had a consort, Ārmaiti, who represented “Mother Earth” and was the protector of women who, like Earth, produce and feed life. Contrary to the deities of fertility, Ārmaiti was honored as the custodian of the virtuous woman, the mother of the family. There was a festival dedicated to her, where girls could court young men and choose their boyfriends – it was a celebration exclusive for women, as was Vashti’s banquet. Zarathustra did not admit the existence of other divinities outside the Creator and transformed Ārmaiti into a quality of Ahura Mazdā, that is, the first of the three female Aməša Spənta , Spənta Ārmaiti, becoming identified with the physical Creation, Nature, and with the Earth itself, to which it is immanent. Since Creation is in an intimate relationship with the Creator, Zarathustra metaphorically defined Ārmaiti as “daughter” of Ahura Mazdā, which later, perhaps in a misunderstood way, gave place to the permissiveness of incestuous marriage, because in popular consciousness she continued to be his consort.
Notwithstanding, the most revered female deity in the whole region of Persia and Media was Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, or simply Anahita, identical to Sarasvatī of India and equivalent to the Semitic Ishtar. There were more temples and shrines dedicated to her than to any other Persian entity, even after the advent of Zoroastrianism, which established a monotheistic paradigm. The ministers of the Anahita cult were the Magi, the caste called “Chaldeans” in Daniel 2:2; 4:7; 5:7. Anahita survived Zarathustra’s religious reforms, becoming an emanation of Ahura Mazdā and losing her goddess rank, though not her intrinsic divinity. She could still be worshiped under the name of Anāhīd, but with the awareness that it was an aspect of Ahura Mazdā and not a true divinity by itself. This practice would be similar to the subsequent development of the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism. Anahita was also called “our lady” and “immaculate”. The Achæmenid devotion to her evidently subsisted after the conversion of this dynasty to Zoroastrianism, and it appears that they used their royal influence to adopt it in that religion. Anahita received a special reverence for being subsequently identified as the daughter of Ahura Mazdā. Anahita, as well as Ishtar, was associated with the planet Venus and its two daily appearances, the morning and the evening. All these elements are present in the Book of Esther, as will be seen later on.
The claim that in the laws of Persia “every decree or law which the king enacts may not be changed” (Esther 1:19; 8:8; Daniel 6:15) must not be understood literally, but in the Zoroastrian concept, every design by Ahura Mazdā it is immutable, and although instigated by the Principle of Evil cannot be removed, it can only be countered by greater actions performed by the Principle of Good. Royal decrees could be changed (Ezra 6:11). In the Megillah’s account all things exist in relation to their opposites and events turn out to be contrary to what was expected – this dialectical approach is the very essence of Zoroastrianism.
The story begins with large banquets that can symbolize the Creator’s joy for his original Creation, having seen that everything He had done was good. The king and his seven ministers represent Ahura Mazdā and his Aməša Spənta, and the deposed queen is a figure of Ārmaiti, who had her own feast for women and, stripped of her divinity, was reduced to a simple quality, being segregated like an odalisque in the king’s harem. But in its place emerges, like the planet Venus in the morning, Ishtar, which then hides and reappears at dusk, when she reveals her identity. –Concealment is one of the recurring motifs in the Megillah also in the Jewish interpretation–. She does not belong to the king’s people; she is a “foreign divinity” who introduces herself into his kingdom. And although she has only become an aspect of Ahura Mazdā, she was not eclipsed as Ārmaiti, who took the form of one of his Aməša Spənta. Ishtar/Anahita was not relegated to the king’s “harem”, she retained her own cult.

Then Haman appeared, impersonating Ahriman, the enemy who tries to destroy all the Good Creation, and his appearance on the scene occurs in the first month of the year (Esther 3:7), consulting the Magi on the most propitious days for carrying out his evil plan, and the lot fell to the last month (Esther 3:13), causing the anguish of the righteous throughout the year: this sequence represents the pitfalls of Evil from the beginning of Creation, and all the suffering it causes in the world until the end of time, when in the last battle it will be defeated by Good, being the year a figure of humanity’s life span. The queen, who had been hidden for a month from the presence of the king (Esther 4:11) asks supporters of the Good to fast three days and three nights (Esther 4:16), allegory of death and resurrection (Genesis 22:4; cf. Hebrews 11:19; Jonah 1:17), to achieve triumph over Evil.
Haman had made a 50-cubits high (75 feet) wooden gallows in his own home: an absurd height in an absurd place. The meaning of this is that the final battle will be waged in the heavens, but in the territory and domain of Evil. Whoever is hanged on that gallows will define humanity’s destiny: either Evil will conquer heaven, as is its intention (Isaiah 14:13-14), or Good will prevail and will strip Evil of all its power.
The king’s sleepless night is a literary resource to represent the moment when the Supreme God consults the Book of Life, where the good works of the righteous are recorded and will be rewarded. On the Day of Judgment, the destruction of all Evil will depend on the actions of the righteous, who bring Good to victory. This is the reason why the king appears incapable of revoking any decree he has issued, because fate is at stake among human beings, who must seek the Good. This is a fundamental principle in Zoroastrian theology: bad thoughts, words and actions cannot be canceled, they can only be expiated by good works that go beyond them.

The author’s wit, a Jew disguised as a Persian chronicler, adapted this story, which clearly illustrates the thinking of Zarathustra’s followers, and turned it into a Jewish epic novel. He hides not only his own identity, but all his characters represent others, and even the God of Israel is veiled between the lines of the narrative. The protagonist of the story, as we have seen, was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, and obviously she was not Jewish and for this reason the writer resorts to presenting her as an orphan, adapting her Persian name to the Hebrew Hadassah. Apparently, she displaced Artastūnā, the banquet organizer, who may have been her sister –and here we find another parallel with Ārmaiti and Anāhīd, both “daughters of Ahura Mazdā”.
Since the king of Persia is undoubtedly Darius the Great, esteemed by the Jews and considered a good king –he authorized to continue the construction of the Temple (Ezra 6:7-12) and granted Nehemiah the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem and named him governor of Judah (Nehemiah 2:6; 5:14; 13:6)–, the writer hides his true identity and calls him Achashverosh, because he needed to caricature him and present him as a fool, vain and fickle, resorting to the name used by Ezra in reference to Cambyses (Ezra 4:6). And for another of the purposes of his work, he needed a protagonist belonging to the tribe of Benjamin and the house of Shaul –maybe because that was the author’s lineage–, and he found in Mordechai the appropriate one. That his name and that of the queen represent two Babylonian deities can only be circumstantial, if there is a possibility that anything throughout the plot was left to chance.
Then, Haman, the “Agagite”, who actually had to be the personification of some Seleucid (probably Nicanor) and obviously did not live in the times of the Achæmenid Empire but much later, was the right individual to embody the enemy and settle a pending account that King Shaul had left open. And since all the things in this novel are masked, the nickname Agagite means Amalekite, and as such, a sworn enemy of the people of Israel. This does not imply an ethnic descent (since Agag theoretically had no descendants) but an attitude that in our times is called anti-Semitism. On the other hand, if the name of the wicked father, Hammedatha, for the Persian narrator evokes the conspirator Gaumata, usurper of the throne, for the Hebrew that name, although very different in writing, would have an assonance with Ašməddāy/Hammadāy (Asmoeus), a demon ridiculed in the apocryphal literature, whose name derives from the Persian aēšma-daēva, two terms found in the Avesta, although not together, and whose meaning would be “demon of wrath”. In the author’s view, the forces of Good are identified with the Jews, and those of Evil with their enemies, embodied in the Amalechite Haman. The mission of the children of light is summarized in Esther 8:17 - “And many of the people of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews fell on them”: The certainty of the triumph of the Good would convince many to review their way and follow the ways of Justice. However, mass proselytism in Judaism had its beginnings in the Hasmonean period, which is another indication that the Megillah was composed at that time.
The Book of Esther represents a parody of Zoroastrianism, which got rid of one pagan deity to replace it with another, but in turn shows how Judaism also introduced a Babylonian festival among its celebrations, for which inclusion is taken as reference this literary work. In the Book of Esther things are not what they seem to be, people are not who they are said to be, and events have happened in other ways, in other places and at other times. For this reason Purim is a holiday celebrated in disguise.

Prophetic aspect

After having analyzed all these things and considerrd the particular characteristics of this book, one wonders if there is any reason that justifies its inclusion in the Scriptures. Of all the things hidden in this novel, even the Name of God is veiled from sight, and even a prophecy that was fulfilled a few decades ago.
In the Megillah there is apparently no reference to God, neither as YHVH nor as Elohim, and indirectly, there is only one expression that insinuates an allusion to Him:

“For if you are completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance shall rise up to the Jews from another place”.
–Esther 4:14 –

However, He is present secretly, and His Name is also written, albeit not in a visible way.
We do not refer to the Bible codes, which are parallel messages written in TaNaKh through sequences of letters, and through these codes we can find the Name YHVH also in the Book of Esther. Rather, we will mention only four acrostics in which the Name is visible without need of doing any mathematical calculation: These are four sentences pronounced by four different people and with the following characteristics:
· In each case the four words are consecutive.
· There are no two acrostics with the same construction, but each one is composed in a structure different from the others.
· Each sentence is pronounced by a different person. The first from Memukan (1:20); the second from Esther (5:4); the third from Haman (5:13); the fourth by the author (7:7).
· The first two acrostics make a pair, in which the Name is formed by the initial letter of each word.
· The last two acrostics make a pair, in which the Name is composed of the last letter of each word.
· The first and third acrostic make a pair, in which the Name is written backwards.
· The second and fourth acrostic make a pair, in which the Name is written in the normal way.
· The first and third, in which the Name is spelled backwards, are pronounced by Gentiles.
· The second and fourth, in which the Name is written in the normal way, are pronounced by Jews.
· The acrostics in which the Name is formed by the initial letter of each word refer to initial events; while the acrostics in which the Name is formed by the final letter of each word refer to final events.

(The transliterations in the table correspond to the value of each letter, they are not phonetic).

	1st			“HI’ VEKOL HANASHIM YITTENU”
	2nd			“YABO’ HAMELECH VEHAMAN HAYOM”
	3rd			“ZEH ’EYNENV SHOVEH LY”
	4th			“KY KALETHAH ELAYV HARA’AH”

· First acrostic: formed from the initial letter of each word, the Name is written backwards because HaShem is dismantling human advice:
1:20 “all the wives shall give” [their husbands honor]; in Hebrew it says: “HI’ VEKOL HANASHIM YITTENU”, whose initials form “HVHY”, the Name written backwards.

· Second acrostic: formed from the initial letter of each word, the Name is written in a normal way because HaShem is encouraging Esther to take an initiative:
5:4 “let the king and Haman come”; in Hebrew it says: “YABO’ HAMELECH VEHAMAN HAYOM”, whose initials form “YHVH”, the Name of the fourth Invisible Guest at the banquet.

· Third acrostic: formed from the last letter of each word, the Name is written backwards because HaShem decreed the end of Haman:
5:13 “all this is no gain to me”; in Hebrew it says: “ZEH ’EYNENV SHOVEH LY” whose final letters form “HVHY”, the Name written backwards.

· Fourth acrostic: formed from the last letter of each word, the Name is written in a normal way because HaShem had determined the end of that wicked one.
7:7 “evil was fulfilled against him” [by the king]; in Hebrew it says: “KY KALETHAH ELAYV HARA’AH” whose final letters form “YHVH”, who was the one who had actually decreed evil for Haman.

Besides the hidden name of HaShem in the Book of Esther, there is also a secret prophecy in the following passage: