Esther and Mordecai = Ishtar and Marduk?

[lilitudemon]

I wrote an article for the Jewish holiday of Purim that celebrates the story of Esther who saved the Persian Jews from genocide. You can read the article here. I found out a lot but I felt as though it left a lot to be desired.

Basically, scholars traced both Esther's name and Mordecai's back to Ishtar and Marduk. It's very curious that Jews would put two Babylonian deities in there. What's more while it's probably a work of historical fiction, it featured Xerxes I king of Persia and is considered to be accurate towards it's Persian themes.

Does anyone have any more data on this?

[mesopotamiankaraite]

Very interesting, I'm going to show this to my Israeli friend because she's named after Esther

[lilitudemon]

It is really interesting. I'm not sure when the text was written, I read during Babylonian captivity... But the last revisions to it were done in the Greek period.

[creyente]

pretty impresive article, i like it. ive found many myths from sumer to be part of the bible with some differences here and there... i was wondering, was this story about esther and mordecai recalling some other myth from the past? it could be that there was another myth with a similar story in sumer, and just like the flood, the babel tower and other things like that, it was ripped of by the early jews?