One Night With The King Esther Comparison

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Throughout the course of history, many historical events and people have been portrayed on film. While some films have been done accurately, others take an extensive liberties with historical reality. Likewise, the book of Esther, a commonly known book in the New Testament, was recently portrayed in a film in 2006 called One Night with the King. During the time period of the book of Esther, Persian culture and the Persian Empire were a dominant force throughout the ancient world, which ends up playing a key role in the development of One Night with the King. This film is an adaptation of what is known in Judaism as Megillat Esther (the book of Esther in the Bible). The epic journey of Queen Esther in the Persian Empire is an intriguing story…show more content…
A young Jewess, named Hadassah at the opening of the film, switches her name to Esther in order to conceal her Jewish identity. She then proceeds to ascend to the queenship of the Persian Empire, a dominant force in the ancient world at the time. Simultaneously, a man named Haman, known as an enemy of the Jews, also gains power and gets the King of Persia to approve an order to destroy the Jews and take their property away from them. Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, tells her that she is in a good position to save her people. A great love story between Esther and King Xerxes develops as they later get married. With great personal pride and peril, Esther approaches the King without permission and begs him to save her people--advocating on behalf of the Jewish people and revealing herself as a Jewess. Haman ends up being punished as the King grants Esther’s wish and the Jews are not destroyed, leading to the founding of the holiday known as…show more content…
However, this fact does not say that the book of Esther portrays people that are completely estranged from God, but rather, the book simply does not mention God. Because this story does not mention God once, this idea shows the importance of God, similar to how in Genesis 3 the story of the Fall describes the entrance of sin into this world while not mentioning the word “sin” once. On the contrary, the film mentions God throughout its entirety, while keeping Him behind the scenes but repeatedly having the film characters make decisions based on His activity in human affairs and His love for His people. For example, in an emotional scene between Queen Esther and King Xerxes, Esther states, “My father told me it takes the glory of God to conceal a matter. And it takes the honor of Kings to search it out.” Subsequently, King Xerxes goes on to beg her to marry him in order to discover this “truth” together. Such an idea strays away from the actual book of Esther in the Bible as the film needs to mention God directly to the audience in order to show and tell the audience everything they need to

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