A couple of weekends ago I received John Anthony Dunne’s new Esther and Her Elusive God: How a Secular Story Functions as Scripture in the mail. It would have been timely to mention this book before Purim, but it still looks like a book worth reading any time of the year. The blurb on it is as follows:
What if the way the book of Esther has been taught to us in church and retold to us in films, cartoons, and romance novels has missed the original point of the story? Far from being models of piety and devotion, Esther and Mordecai seem indifferent to the faith of their ancestors. How then did this story become part of the Bible and gain the broad acceptance that it has? If the church should not neglect the story, how should it be read? Esther and Her Elusive God calls Christians to avoid the common attempts to make Esther more palatable and theological, and to reclaim this secular story as Scripture. Readers will be encouraged to see in Esther a profound message of God’s grace and faithfulness to his wayward people.
As always, once I finish reading it I’ll share my thoughts here.
the archives near Emmaus 