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The following is excerpted from Bill Cooper’s Authenticity of the Book of Esther (2013).
Bill Cooper (1947-2021) was a prolific writer and speaker, with a gift of cutting through the fog of biblical criticism to defend the infallible, plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture, the six-day creation, and the Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek texts. He was a council member of the Creation Science Movement and the Tyndale Society and an adjunct professor for the Institute for Creation Research’s Master Faculty. His most popular book is After the Flood which gives evidence for the historicity of Genesis 10 based on ancient, little known British and European genealogies. He published a series of books entitled “The Authenticity,” which included The Authenticity of the Book of Genesis, Joshua, Judges, Esther, Daniel, Jonah, the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation. In The Forging of Codex Sinaiticus, Cooper gave evidence to support his thesis that Sinaiticus is a forgery.
Cooper was a careful researcher, an independent thinker, and a brave defender of God’s eternal truth. He accomplished this in spite of suffering serious illnesses, including leukemia, the last two decades of his life. We can’t agree with all of his conclusions; at times he seems to be dogmatic when the evidence isn’t absolute; there are a few occasions when he might have been led astray by Jewish mysticism; but everything we have read from his pen is well worth considering.
If you want to be encouraged in your faith in the divine inspiration of Scripture, read Bill Cooper.
Ten of Cooper’s books are available in print from Gullion’s Christian Supply (King and Statesville, NC)
https://www.gullions.com/contact-us
https://www.4gospel.com/bill-cooper/
All of Cooper’s books are available in Kindle format from Amazon.
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There are no Greek words, nor even traces of Greek in the Book of Esther. It is pure Hebrew and Aramaic (with a little Persian thrown in), and holds not an iota of Greek.
This is a major quandary for the critics.
If the Book of Esther was indeed composed during the Maccabaean Period - i.e. the 2nd century BC – it would most certainly have been contaminated by the intrusion of a great many Greek words and phrases. It would have been unavoidable. Alexander the Great burst onto the world stage in the late 4th century BC, spreading his empire even as far as Persia, Afghanistan and the Indus Valley. That means that Greek words and phrases had a full 100 years and more to infiltrate the Hebrew language before the Book of Esther was allegedly composed in the time of the Maccabees. Greek words and phrases certainly did infiltrate the Hebrew language at this time, as we know too well, almost to the point of extinguishing it. Yet in the Hebrew text of Esther, there is not a solitary trace of the Greek language to be found.
That means only one thing. The Book of Esther was written long before the days of Alexander and his Hellenising hordes.
This complete lack of Greek influence is seen most clearly in the name of the king who appears throughout the Book of Esther, Ahasuerus. This is a Latinised form of the Hebrew transcription (ahasweros) of the king’s Persian name, Khshayarshan. All straightforward enough, but not something that the Greeks could have managed with their rendering of the name - Xerxes. In other words, any Greek influence here would have been immediately obvious, and the same goes for all the other names in the Book of Esther. It also goes for the entire diction, syntax, grammar and all other linguistic facets of the Book.
Not surprisingly, these are not points that the critics like to highlight.
