About the real origin of Purim, a purely secular jollification, preceded, after a certain date, by a fast, we know nothing. It is first mentioned in the Book of Esther, which is so secular that the name of God is never mentioned in it. Scholars have debated as to the date of Esther, which Mr. Frazer places in the fourth or third century B.C.; some, as Kuenen, place it later. Some think it historical, as Mr. Sayce does; others regard it as a romance, composed to supply an account of the origin of the feast of Purim, which we never hear of before the exile.
The account in Esther is well known. Xerxes quarrelled with his queen, Vashti, and, after a series of experiments in wives, selected Esther, cousin of an artful Jew named Mordecai. This man discovered, and through Esther reported, a conspiracy. He later behaved with insolence to Haman, the Vizier, who settled with Xerxes a kind of St. Bartholomew's day for all the Jews. But Xerxes was accidentally reminded of the services done by Mordecai, and asked Haman how a grateful prince should reward an unnamed servant. Haman suggested the ride in royal splendour, which Mordecai enjoyed. Haman then erected a very tall gallows whereon to hang Mordecai. But Esther got news of the intended massacre, and, as Xerxes had promised to give her any gift she asked for, she demanded the death of Haman. So Haman was hanged, and the Jews were allowed to defend themselves. They massacred an enormous number of their enemies, and henceforth kept Purim, a feast of two days, on Adar (March) 14 and 15. 'Wherefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur,' and 'pur, that is, the lot, was cast before Haman for a whole year from Nisan to Adar.'[15]
The word pur, 'a lot,' does not occur in Hebrew, says Mr. Frazer. However, the Assyrian puhra means an assembly, and there was an assembly of the gods at the feast of Zakmuk. Why the Jews went after an Assyrian word we may guess; but we also learn that 'pur or bur seems to be' (one wants to know if it really was) 'an old Assyrian word for 'stone,' and a stone may be used for a lot,[16] as the Greek ψῆφος, a pebble, also means a vote. Thus either the Assyrian puhra or pur may have lent a name to the feast of Purim.
I am no friend to etymological conjecture, especially when two Assyrian words put in rival claims to be, each of them, the origin of a Jewish word. Mr. Frazer does not, I think, allude to the other guess, connecting Purim with the Persian feast, Phurdigan (Phurim? or Purim).[17] We find Purdaghân, Purdiyan, and so forth. This Persian feast was a drinking bout and time of jollity, so that Hyde very naturally compares it to Purim and to the old Persian Sacæa, or Sakea, or Sakia, which means 'drinking together,' or 'drinking healths.'[18] If Sakia means a convivial feast in Persian, it fits very well the Persian Sacæa, which were a time of jollity. The learned may settle their etymological guesses among themselves, but we are not obliged, for want of another conjecture, to fly to old Assyrian for Purim: still less do we agree that Mr. Frazer has made out a fairly probable case for holding that 'the Jewish feast (Purim) is derived from the Babylonian new year festival of Zakmuk.'[19]
No ease at all, I venture to think, is made out. Mr. Frazer's Assyrian etymologies are met by competing etymologies. Moreover, we know next to nothing of the Babylonian Zakmuk, but we do know that the Persian Sacæa, Sakea, or Sakia was, like Purim, a period of hard drinking and wild licence: which does not resemble a solemn religious festival of the supreme god, Marduk, or a period of wailing for Tammuz. There is another coincidence, unnoted, I think, by Mr. Frazer, but already noted by us. Herodotus, our oldest Greek source for the Persians, tells us that their chief feast was called Magophonia, and celebrated the massacre of the hostile Magi.[20] Strabo tells us that the Sacæa were supposed to commemorate a massacre of intoxicated Sacæ. Purim is held to celebrate a massacre of the foes of the Jews. Can these three feasts for a massacre coincide by accident? It is not easy to see how this tradition attached itself to the slaying of a criminal, either as king's proxy or as representative of Tammuz.
IV. IS PURIM PRE-EXILIAN OR POST-EXILIAN?
In any case Purim has not been successfully connected with Zakmuk. Mr. Frazer, however, says that 'an examination of that' (the Jewish) 'tradition, and of the manner of celebrating the feast, renders it probable that Purim is nothing but a more or less disguised form of the Babylonian feast of the Sacæa or Zakmuk.'[21] We have seen that stern dates do not allow us to identify Sacæa with Zakmuk. The month Lous is firm as the Macedonian phalanx, and will not masquerade as March-April, when Zakmuk was held. Setting that aside, 'there are good grounds for believing that Purim was unknown to the Jews until after the exile,' and yet 'that they learned to observe it during their captivity in the Bast.'[22] But their captivity in the East was the exile, so how did they know nothing of Purim at the very time when they also learned to celebrate that festival'? However, it is reckoned 'fairly probable' that the Jews borrowed Purim either 'directly from the Babylonians or indirectly through the Persian conquerors of Babylon;' the only question is from which?[23]
The Jews probably borrowed Purim in or after the exile. But they also kept Purim before the exile, at least Mr. Frazer thinks that 'the best solution.' It is Jensen's solution, stated, however, only 'in letters to correspondents.'[24]
It really seems hardly consistent that Mr. Frazer should both think Purim probably a feast borrowed in or after the exile, and also appear to approve a theory which regards the feast as familiar to the Jews before the exile. Yet that is what he has apparently succeeded in doing.