Well-respected Mordecai
Part One: As ‘Marduka’?
by
Damien F. Mackey
“And Mordecai
the Jew was next in rank to King Ahasuerus. He was a man held in
respect among the Jews, esteemed by thousands of his brothers, a man who sought
the good of his people
and cared for the welfare of his entire race”.
Esther 10:3
With the assistance
of a significantly revised Neo-Babylonian dynasty through to the early
Medo-Persian period, I have been able historically to identify the King
Belshazzar of Daniel 5 as King Evil-Merodach, son of Nebuchednezzar II ‘the
Great’, and the un-named second ruler in Belshazzar’s kingdom as Jehoiachin (or
Coniah), whom Evil-Merodach had exalted over the other princes in Babylon (2
Kings 25:27-30).
These are all historically
verifiable kings.
Now, if Jehoiachin
(Coniah) is also, as I have identified him:
Haman
un-masked
then that leads us
into the Book of Esther, and to Mordecai, who, with Queen Esther herself, would
expose the machinations of Haman.
Is there any
evidence that this Mordecai, too, was a real historical person?
There may be. David
J. Clines, in his article “The Quest for the Historical Mordecai” (https://www.academia.edu/2454296/The_Quest_for_the_Historical_Mordecai), writes of one “Marduka” in Susa during
the Persian period whom various scholars have considered as a possible
candidate for Mordecai. I am interested here in what Clines writes about these
various opinions, since Clines himself seems pre-disposed to dismiss the Book
of Esther as merely “a romance”:
…. it appears
to be necessary to insist that evidence for a Persian official at Susa named
Marduka, if that is really what we have, is next to useless in any debate about
a historical Mordecai. For if on other grounds it seems probable that the
book of Esther is a romance and not a historical record, it is quite irrelevant
to the larger question of the historicity of the writing to discover that
one of its characters bears a name attested for a historical person. Fictitious
characters usually do.
Clines tells of these
other estimations of Marduka:
In the
standard works, commentaries, encyclopaedias and monographs, wherever the
historicity of the Book of Esther is discussed, there is usually to be found
some reference to the possible extra-biblical evidence for Mordecai. Here is an
extract from a typical encyclopaedia article in The Interpreter’s Dictionary
of the Bible:
Reference must be made to a single undated cuneiform document from the
Persian period, found at Borsippa, which refers to a certain Marduka who was a
finance officer of some sort in the Persian court at Susa during the reign of
Xerxes I. While a connection between such an individual and the Mordecai of the
book of Esther is in no sense established, the possibility of such a historical
event as is related in Esther cannot be dismissed out of hand. ….
Carey A.
Moore, the author of the Anchor Bible commentary on Esther, is a little more
positive about the implications of the reference to Marduka. This official, who
‘served as an accountant on an inspection tour from Susa’, could be, he
suggests, ‘the biblical Mordecai because, in all likelihood, Mordecai was an
official of the king prior to his being invested in [Est.] 8.2 with the powers
previously conferred on Haman’. To Moore, ‘at first glance all of this seems
rather persuasive, if not conclusive’. While he is indeed careful to point out
the uncertainties that surround the identification of Marduka with Mordecai, he
nevertheless concludes that
since the epigraphic evidence concerning Marduka certainly prevents us from
categorically ruling out as pure fiction the Mordecai episodes in the Book of
Esther, it is safest for us to conclude that the story of Mo[r]decai may
very well have to it a kernel of truth. ….
Robert Gordis,
rather more boldly, appears to have no reservations whatever about the
identification of Mordecai with Marduka.
For him, the
attestation of the names Marduka and Mrdk … is ‘the strongest support thus far
for the historical character of the book’. …. He writes:
A Persian text dating from the last years of Darius I or the early years of Xerxes
I mentions a government official in Susa named Marduka, who served as an
inspector on an official tour … [T]he phrase yōšēb bĕša‘ar hammelekh, ‘sitting in the king’s gate,’ which is applied to Mordecai repeatedly in
the book, indicates his role as a judge or a minor official in the Persian court
before his elevation to the viziership.
The conclusion
to be drawn is rather obvious:
That there were two officials with the same name at the same time in the
same place is scarcely likely. ….
From Edwin M.
Yamauchi we even gain the impression that the identification of Marduka with
Mordecai has now become the consensus scholarly view:
Mardukâ is listed as
a sipîr (‘an accountant’) who makes
an inspection tour of Susa during the last years of Darius or early years of
Xerxes. It is Ungnad’s conviction that ‘it is improbable that there were two
Mardukas serving as high officials in Susa.’ He therefore concludes that this
individual is none other than Esther’s uncle. This conclusion has been widely
accepted. ….
Siegfried H. Horn concurs:
The result of this disco[c]very has been a more favorable attitude toward
the historicity of the book of Esther in recent years, as attested by several
Bible dictionaries and commentaries published during the last decade. ….
So secure is
the identification of Mordecai with Marduka in his eyes that he can even invite
us to reconstruct the personal history of Mordecai on the basis of what we know
about Marduka:
It is quite obvious that Mordecai, before he became gatekeeper of the
palace, must already have had a history of civil service in which he had proved
himself to be a trusted official … the trusted
councillor of [t]he mighty satrap Uštannu,
whom he accompanied on his official journeys.
Since my re-setting
of Mordecai’s engagement with Haman has it occurring far earlier than the
standard time for it, in the reign of “Xerxes” (C5th BC) - and nearer to the
return from Captivity - it thus becomes necessary to demonstrate a compatible
revised chronology of Marduka.
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