The book of Esther, which features a beautiful and heroic queen, an evil scheme, suspense, and a dramatic reversal, seems to be perfect material for a cinematic adaptation. Indeed, there have been multiple attempts to make the biblical book into a movie, from the 1960 feature film Esther and the King (starring Joan Collins) to the heavily Christian The Book of Esther of 2013. To Yosef Lindell, none are particularly impressive artistically, except perhaps a 1999 made-for-TV adaptation. Almost every one, for instance, turns Ahasuerus into a dashing figure in order to make his marriage to Esther into a romance:
But there is a cost to all this. Turning the book of Esther into a love story diminishes Esther’s agency. In the biblical account, Esther saves the day.
Yet perhaps we ought to cut the movies some slack. For all their flights of fancy and questionable storytelling choices, the Esther films are following a long tradition: interpreters have never been satisfied just to leave the story of Esther as it is.
The Septuagint translation of Esther adds over 100 verses not found in the traditional Masoretic text. Further, there are more midrashic collections on Esther than on any other biblical book, and they all embellish the story significantly.
Maybe the book of Esther has been so frequently recast because of its unusual features. Unlike other biblical stories, it lacks important religious elements like prayer, troublingly fails to mention God, and is told in a decidedly unbiblical comic voice that is full of hyperbole, repetition, caricatures, and surprising reversals. It’s likely that both Esther’s irreligiosity and its irreverence led interpreters to propose readings that made it more consistent with the rest of the biblical canon. The Septuagint’s additions, for example, comprising largely of prayers and declarations of piety, fill this religious lacuna.
Read more on Moment: https://momentmag.com/queen-esther/