Claudine Cavalier: Between the Sages and the Fathers : Esther, a key book

The book of Esther encountered difficulties in becoming canonical in both Judaism and early Christianism. It also appears to have circulated, inside the Jewish canon, between the Prophets and the Writings, in which it eventually took place. Moreover, the book offers a particularly complex textual tradition: in addition to the presence in Greek of six passages absent from Hebrew, the Greek is transmitted in three different forms (LXX, L and GIII, only known by theVetus Latina translation, and shorter than the other two). The presentation will try to list and describe the main ancient Jewish and Christian sources about the book’s canonization, to compare them and observe their reciprocal functioning. It will start from a rabbinic text, Meghillah 7a-7b, in which one can find an attempt to summarize and understand most of the main problems Esther encountered in ancient Judaism. Put into perspective with the early Greek codices lists and the Fathers lists and quotations about the book, it can help us answer a few questions: did the Sages influence the Fathers? What arguments, for or against the book’s inclusion in the canon, are common to both traditions, and why? Is there any connection between the problems raised by Esther’s canonical process and its textual variations? What links exist between the controversies around Esther’s canonization and the way each religion conceived its Holy Scriptures?