The JW's love using the account of Mordecai and Esther. I stumbled across this page whilst looking at the Qur'an, not knowing anything about it.
http://www.islamic-awaren...trad/External/haman.html Source page
The real meat of it is the analysis of the book of Esther. I will quote from its sources:
How many other books of the Bible are ficticious? It never occurred to me that this book would have been.
Another thread discussed the Tower of Babel and how ridiculous that was
Genesis account thoroughly disproved by science
Accounts in Daniel partly true
No wonder the Catholics view Dogma as above the Bible, if they themselves prove lots of it to be untrue.
Many of the reasons JW's put forwards as why other religions are not the true religion(eg not viewing Bible as infallible) fall down when under real scrutiny.
What other accounts are complete fabrications?
http://www.islamic-awaren...trad/External/haman.html Source page
The real meat of it is the analysis of the book of Esther. I will quote from its sources:
Universal Jewish encyclopedia wrote:
The majority of scholars, however, regard the book as a romance reflecting the customs of later times and given an ancient settings to avoid giving offence. They point out that the 127 provinces mentioned are in strange contrast to the historical twenty Persian Satrapies; that it is astonishing that while Mordecai is known to be a Jew, his ward and cousin, Esther, can conceal the fact that she is a Jewess - that the known queen of Xerxes, Amestris, can be identified with neither Vashti nor Esther; that it would have been impossible for a non-Persian person to be appointed prime minister or for a queen to be selected except from the seven highest noble families; that Mordecai's ready access to the palaces is not in consonance with the strictness with which the Persian harems were guarded; that the laws of Medes and Persians were never irrevocable; and that the state of affairs in the book, amounting practically in civil war, could not have passed unnoticed by historians if this had actually occurred. The very tone of the book itself, its literary craftsmanship and the aptness of its situations, point rather to a romantic story than a historical chronicle.
Some scholars even trace it to a non-Jewish origin entirely; it is, in their opinion, either a reworking of a triumph of the Babylonian gods Marduk (Mordecai) and Ishtar (Esther) over the Elamite gods Humman (Haman) and Mashti (Vashti), or of the suppression of the Magians by Darius I, or even the resistance of the Babylonians to the decree of Artaxerxes II. According to this view, Purim is a Babylonian feast which was taken over by the Jews, and the story of which was given a Jewish colouring.
JPS Bible commentary wrote:
The language, like the story, is full of exaggeration and contributes to the sense of excess. There are exaggerated numbers (127 provinces, a 180-day party, a 12-month beauty preparation, Haman's offer of 10,000 talents of silver, a stake 50 cubits high, 75,000 enemy dead)... Esther's attempt to sound like a historical work is tongue in cheek and not to be taken at face value. The author was not trying to write history, or to convince his audience of the historicity of his story (although later readers certainly took it this way). He is, rather, offering a burlesque of historiography... The archival style, like the verbal style, make the story sound big and fancy, official and impertinent at the same time - and this is exactly the effect that is required for such a book. All these stylistic features reinforce the sense that the story is a farce.
New Catholic commentary on Holy scripture wrote:
... a tissue of improbabilities and impossibilities... Further, notwithstanding the dates which he gives us, the author had in reality no notion of chronology... That the Book of Esther cannot be regarded as a genuine historical work is avowed even by many adherents of ecclesiastical tradition. Since, however, the most essential parts of the story, namely the deliverance of the Jews from complete extermination and their murderous reprisals by means of the Jewish queen and the Jewish minister, are altogether unhistorical, it is impossible to treat the book as an embellished version of some real event... and we are forced to conclusion that the whole narrative is fictitious.
How many other books of the Bible are ficticious? It never occurred to me that this book would have been.
Another thread discussed the Tower of Babel and how ridiculous that was
Genesis account thoroughly disproved by science
Accounts in Daniel partly true
No wonder the Catholics view Dogma as above the Bible, if they themselves prove lots of it to be untrue.
Many of the reasons JW's put forwards as why other religions are not the true religion(eg not viewing Bible as infallible) fall down when under real scrutiny.
What other accounts are complete fabrications?
