Working through the Bible one book at a time — an introduction, then a chapter at a time
Each book gets a front door — where and when it is set, who is thought to have written it, and the live disagreements about it — and then a page per chapter. Nothing here asks to be believed on anyone's authority. Bring a Bible; check everything.
1 book · 3 pages · 13,727 words
An introduction to the book, its world, and the historicity fight — with the two strongest opposing cases stated as their own advocates would state them, and a third reading the site argues for.
Every word in Esther that appears in no other book of the Hebrew Bible, computed rather than collected — twenty-six items of ordinary vocabulary and thirty-eight proper names, with the verse, the Hebrew, and what the King James does with it.
Chapter one in notes — the king and his fundraiser, the objections to the book and what they are worth, who gets called queen and who gets called wife, and a formula in verse 19 that first appears the day Samuel sentenced Saul for sparing an Amalekite.