The Book of Esther: Reflection on a Diasporic Literature in Judaism in the Period of the Second Temple

The Book of Esther constitutes a piece of literature emanating from the Jewish communities of Antiquity, which tells the mainly fictional story of a young Jewish woman who lived at the court of the Persian king Xerxes and managed to save her people from a pogrom. The analysis of this biblical text furthers our understanding of the issues and challenges confronting the groups that produced it between the third and the first centuries BCE, in a world largely dominated by Hellenistic culture. G..