A one day festival observed in Judaism and in most of the Messianic movement celebrating the deliverance of the Persian Judahites from one of the most dastardly plots in history to exterminate them.
The redacted Book of Esther found in the Masoretic Tanakh (Old Testament) commonly used in today's Bibles tells the story of how the beautiful Benjaminite Esther (Hadassah) and her counsin Mordecai thwart the evil Amalekite Haman who plots to massacre the Judahites. According to the story, the festival was instituted by Queen Esther but its observance is nowhere commanded anywhere by Yahweh in Scripture. Just as the Judahites were rescued, so, many Messianics teach, believers are redeemed by our Righteous Messiah, Yah'shua (Jesus). True and complete redemption lies in our hands as we must turn to Yahweh in complete repentance. The attempt to exterminate a couple of the Israelite tribes in Persia foreshadows, it is claimed, the Great Tribulation in which the Antichrist will attempt to exterminate all true believers just prior to the return of Yah'shua.
Though Messianic Evangelicals make mention the story of Purim as found in both the Masoretic Tanakh and Apocryphal Books of Esther, we do not hold any formal observance of the festival. Find out why this story was totally absent from the Dead Sea Scrolls and therefore the earliest Yahwist Scriptures and why it is almost certainly a nationalistic work of fiction invented to bolster Pharisee political power. See Origin of the Canon: The Tanakh (Old Testament).
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