Cruelty and Violence Science and History Dwindling in Unbelief
"Then said Esther ... let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the
gallows. And the king commanded it so to be done ... and they
hanged Haman's ten sons." -- Esther 9:13-14 Esther for Skeptics
Esther is one of the two books in the Bible in which God is not
even mentioned (the other is the Song of Solomon). Maybe that's
why some Bible believers, such as Martin Luther, believed that
it should be excluded from the Bible. In Luther's case, however,
it probably had more to do with his extreme antisemitism.
Because the point of the Book of Esther, if it has a point, is
this: God loves Jews more than everyone else and anyone who has
ever had a bad thought about them should be killed. (And Luther
had lots of bad thoughts about Jews.) There is a whole series of
killings in Esther, all of them to avenge antisemitism. But
since the Book of Esther does not mention God's name, it's
difficult to blame him directly for these killings. Still, since
Esther is included