The Declaration of Independence is just over 200 years old and it has to be kept in a glass case with all the air sucked out of it.

I'm guessing paper that's well over 2,000 years old is in pretty fragile shape. This book in scroll form was written by Esther and his been unrolled and signed by every woman descended from her the night before her wedding. The actual story of Esther wasn't too bad, I mostly had a problem with the premise.

(First published at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile) Yet, she's managed to come through it all as the winner, not the victim. You can see that she's been hurt so much by the death of her family, that she feels trapped in time. And then the chapter ends with these six words: In the triumphant ending, Esther not only saves her people, but manages to wipe out the Agagites, fufilling the commands of God centuries before. You see, the early part of the book recounts how Esther watched her whole family die (on her birthday!) and how that resulted in many years of bitterness. And like a normal human, there are times when she forgets, but that adds to the charm of reading about her journey of faith.įor some reason, the most touching paragraph in the whole book is a single sentence of six words.

But as the book progresses, she experiences His love, which changes her. She doesn't start of as a young women full of faith she actually has a lot of doubts and anger towards God, especially about the death of her families. My favourite part of story is Esther's journey. Using a metaphor, this book's treatment of the Esther story is like the movie Prince of Egypt's treatment of the Exodus story.

While there is some creative license (like what she was thinking and details of palace life), the book stays true to the actual Bible story. Hadassah is written in the form of a letter from the elderly Queen Esther to a young Queen hopeful, full of advice and her life story. And my favourite re-telling of the Esther story is Hadassah by Tommy Tenney (not that I've read that many retellings). Plus, the fact that she saves her people means that she's way better than most of the Disney princesses (i.e. I mean, it's a classic Cinderella-type tale. One of my favourite books in the Bible is the story of Esther.

Hadassah by tommy tenney