A Tale of Two Purims: Food-Identity Ideology and Purim Reception from the Late Persian to the Byzantine Christian Era

Abstract Royal banquets in the ancient world typically reinforced a particular food-identity ideology. mt Esther reveals an identity of excessiveness and self-indulgence to Persian banquets that easily lent to Grecian stereotypes of Persians also appropriated by Hellenistic Jewish writers. By contrast, Mordecai emended Jewish Purim with a food-identity ideology of moderation and compassion for its inscribed memory. This article traces the reception history of Purim from the late Persian to the Christian Roman and Byzantine eras to reveal in effect two Purims. Throughout these eras, the incorporated memory of Purim with its incidences of drunkenness and gluttony punctuated by occasional outbursts of violence principally, if not wholly, neglected Purim’s inscribed memory, despite efforts at emendation, inauguration of different festivals among Alexandrian Jews, and rabbinic dicta of “food gifts to the poor” as an act of tzedakah.