Character Development in MT Esther
By (author) Bernard Tola
Through this literary reading of MT Esther Bernard Tola determines-in this early example of a novel-whether character change and complexity can be discerned in the four main characters: Esther Mordecai Ahasuerus and Haman. Characterization in MT Esther has widely been assessed as flat and unchanging resulting in portrayals that lack depth with the possible exception of Esther herself. In this view the characters remain superficial merely fulfilling archetypal roles or representing static wisdom types.
Tola investigates if the narrative is more concerned with the quality of Jewish life in the diaspora rather than with depicting character. This monograph shows how the author of Esther makes use of a wide range of tools in their work with characterization creating a variety of characters that interact with each other in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.
By applying the anthropological model of Cultural Theory Tola provides a typology for linking worldview and behaviour. Tola uses this for analysing the interactions between different worldviews clarifying the cultural commitments of the four main characters. Other methodologies are used to analyse how the worldviews and psychology of the characters manifest themselves through their speech. They provide a means of investigating the interactions between protagonists and of identifying character changes.
This study establishes that the many clashes between the various characters arise from differences in their worldviews that the result of these clashes is often a change in worldview and that the worldviews of the characters fuel the plot of the narrative. In their own way the four main characters change in the course of the narrative. Their changes are sometimes abrupt sometimes gradual sometimes profound and sometimes do not amount to character development. Their changes are however always important in the narrative.
- By (author) Bernard Tola
Similar Books
Apocrypha, Magic, Liturgy
The Multiple Identities of Coptic Prayers in Late Antique and Early Islamic Egypt
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Contesting Labeled Identities
The Sociology of Gentilics in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
Franciscan Exegesis in a Time of Crisis
Paradise Lost in Transmission
The Return to Eden in the Apocalypse of Peter within Its Ethiopic and Early Christian Contexts
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
