Qohelet stands in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom schools.

He recognizes the relative value of wisdom as against foolishness, but

he rejects the oversimplified and optimistic view of wisdom as security
for life. He offers a religious skepticism that rejects all facile answers
to life’s mysteries and God’s ways.

Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is a romantic and patriotic tale, perhaps with some

historical basis but with so little religious purpose that God, in fact, is
not mentioned in it. The book may have been included in the Hebrew
canon only for the sake of sanctioning the celebrations of the
festival Purim, the Feast of Lots. There is considerable evidence that
the stories related in Esther actually originated among Gentiles
(Persian and Babylonian) rather than among the Jews. There is also
reason to believe that the version given in the Septuagint goes back to
older sources than the version given in the Hebrew Bible.

Laying the scene at Susa, a residential city of the Persian kings, the
book narrates that Haman, the vizier and favourite of King Ahasuerus
(Xerxes I; reigned 486–465 BCE), determined by lot that the 13th of
Adar was the day on which the Jews living in the Persian Empire were
to be slain. Esther, a beautiful Jewish woman whom the King had
chosen as queen after repudiating Queen Vashti, and her cousin and
foster father Mordecai were able to frustrate Haman’s plans. Haman
then schemed to have Mordecai hanged; instead, he was sent to the
gallows erected for Mordecai, and Jews throughout the empire were
given permission to defend themselves on the day set for their
extermination. The governors of the provinces learned in time that
Mordecai, who had saved the King from being assassinated by two
discontented courtiers, had succeeded to Haman’s position as vizier;
thus, they supported the Jews in the fight against their enemies.

In the provinces, the Jews celebrated their victory on the following

day, but at Susa, where, at Esther’s request, the King permitted them
to continue to fight on the 14th of Adar, they rested and celebrated
their success a day later. Therefore, Esther and Mordecai issued a
decree obligating the Jews henceforth to commemorate these events
on both the 14th and 15th of Adar.
Theme and language characterize Esther as one of the latest books of
the Hebrew Bible, probably dating from the 2nd century BCE. Nothing
is known of its author. According to the postbiblical sources, its
inclusion in the canon, as well as the observance of the feast of the
14th and 15th of Adar, still met with strong opposition on the part of
the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem as late as the 3rd century CE; yet,
despite its lack of specific religious content, the story has become in
popular Jewish understanding a magnificent message that the
providence of God will preserve his people from annihilation.