U.S. Note Part 2

Part 2: The U.S. Note, 1862 – 1879

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

    Following the War, the future of the U.S. note was hotly debated. U.S. notes presented two vexing problems: (1) a loss of purchasing power and (2) redemption in gold. These two issues lasted until 1879 when U.S. notes became redeemable in gold and thus achieved the purchasing power of gold.
    One group, the hard money people, wanted to return to the gold standard and either to retire all U.S. notes or to make them convertible in gold. The other group, the soft money people, opposed returning to the gold standard. They wanted the country to remain on the greenback standard.
        Much of the support for the greenback, especially for expanding its quantity, came from the mercantilists, who believed that expanding the money supply created prosperity.
    Industrialists, manufacturers, many businessmen, and some bankers opposed contraction and a return to the gold standard. Although a few businessmen favored increasing the supply of U.S. notes, most soft-money businessmen preferred expansion through the banking system.
    Some merchants involved in the export-import business opposed returning to the gold standard. They could enhance their profit by speculating on a rising gold premium. If the price of gold in U.S. notes rose between the time that they bought their goods and sold them, they made money on the change in the U.S. note price of gold in addition to the profit from selling the goods.
    Promoters especially opposed the resumption of the gold standard. They needed easy money to finance their schemes.
    Careyites were at the forefront of opposing the contraction of U.S. notes and the return to the gold standard. Careyites were the American School of political economy that Henry Carey created in 1850. He rejected the “wage fund” theory of labor against employers and the Ricardian rent theory. He believed that producing classes (agriculturalists, wage earners, and industrialists) had a common interest. That common interest was domestic industrial growth. Protective tariffs benefitted all producing classes. His political economy made manufacturers the great benefactors of the country. His great social enemy was moneylenders and the scarcity of capital. Money lenders were the enemies of productive capital instead of being the enemy of the poor. Interest rates needed to be pushed lower and the money supply expanded. Expanding the money supply would drive interest rates down. He accepted the mercantile principle that money creates prosperity; it precedes prosperity instead of accompanying or following it. An abundance of money would drive interest rates down and stimulate the economy. Cary was a nineteenth-century Keynesian.
    Another important group opposing contracting U.S. notes and returning to the gold standard was the greenbackers. They were mostly intellectuals and politicians with their working class and rural followers. Some were outright inflationists. Most considered inflation unimportant. For the most part, they opposed banks issuing bank notes; only the government should issue paper money. They saw the greenback as a way to push down interest rates; to them, high-interest rates were a bane to the economy. Greenbackers ranged from the pragmatic to the utopian.
    In summary proponents of the greenback and opponents of contraction and resumption of the gold standard fall into three groups:

One of these, identified politically with western and Pennsylvania Republicans, drew its support from promotional business elements. . . . A second soft money force was compounded largely of political elements—Jeffersonian Agrarianism, Democratic opportunism, and Copperhead thirst for revenge. . . . A third current, which drew from the same ideological reservoir as the postwar greenback Democracy, was utopian and reformist in nature and expressed the frustrations and aspirations of labor and the extremist humanitarian reformers in the uncongenial postwar era.[1]

    Proponents of redeeming U.S. notes in gold had a common goal: resumption of the gold standard. They varied on the best way to achieve this goal.
    Some wanted to return to the gold standard immediately or at least as quickly without waiting for U.S. notes to contract. A second group supported quickly accumulating a gold reserve to raise the value of U.S. notes to that of gold. (This was the plan that was eventually adopted.) Others wanted to retire or contract U.S. notes until the value of the U.S. note and gold were equal. A fourth group proposed redeeming U.S. notes in gold below value. Another group wanted to do nothing: Just wait for production and commerce to increase the value of the U.S. note until it was at par with gold and then return to the gold standard. Because of the depreciation in the value of U.S. notes, redemption was delayed until the premium of gold over the U.S. note narrowed significantly.
    Calvinist and Reform clergy favored returning to the gold standard. They viewed the gold standard as an honest and ethical monetary system unlike the greenback monetary system, which was dishonest and unethical. Irredeemable paper money was immoral and a curse. Many Baptist and Methodist ministers also supported returning to the gold standard.
    Another group promoting returning to the gold standard was the academic economists. Most of them accepted classical economics and Ricardo’s and Mill’s anti-mercantilist capital theories.
    The reformers out of whom came the Liberal Republicans and later the Mugwumps also supported returning to the gold standard. Along with advocating hard money, they also advocated free trade and civil service reform. They were mostly from the middle and upper classes. Most came from New England or were descendants of New Englanders.
    Two important business groups supported the gold standard. One was the Republican merchant who wanted free trade and an end to governmental extortion. This group resided primarily in New England and was mostly involved in the textile business. The other was the merchant involved in the export and import business. (One important exception was the importers and exporters who speculated on the change in the gold premium.) They centered around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Merchants not involved in the import-export or textile business were divided over returning to the gold standard although most were inclined toward returning. Being off the gold standard made foreign trade speculative and risky as the U.S. note price of gold fluctuated.
    The big eastern national banks favored returning to the gold standard. However, eastern private bankers and bankers in the Midwest generally opposed contracting U.S. notes in preparation for returning to the gold standard although they were inclined toward the gold standard.
    Until 1873, most farmers favored the gold standard. After 1873, many switched to favoring the greenback.
    In summary, proponents of the gold standard “were a socially superior breed, representing an older elite of eastern merchants, commercial bankers, textile manufacturers, professional men, gentlemen reformers, and respectable literati.”[2]

Endnotes

1. Unger, p. 118.

2. Unger, p. 162.

Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

Part 1 Part 3

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U.S. Note Part 1

Part 1: The U.S. Note, 1862 – 1879

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

    The U.S. Note, commonly called the greenback, was legal tender paper money. It was fiat money. Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury, instead of the markets, decided the quantity to issue. Until 1879, it was not redeemable in specie. Even after it became redeemable at par in gold in 1879, it remained fiat money. First, Congress still decided the quantity to issue. Second, unlike gold certificates, which were fully backed and not legal tender, gold backed only about one-third to one-half of the outstanding U.S. notes, which remained legal tender.
    Between 1862 and 1879, the history of the U.S. notes falls into two periods: the inflationary period from 1862 to 1865 and the deflationary period from 1866 to 1879 when it became redeemable in gold.
    On the money issue of this era, people fell into two camps: soft money and hard money. Soft money people preferred legal-tender paper money that was not redeemable in specie. Moreover, if issued, bank notes should be redeemable only in government-issued legal tender paper money. Hard money people preferred the gold standard and requiring U.S. notes, if retained, and bank notes and all other forms of credit money to be redeemable in gold on demand.
    The U.S. Note was introduced as a necessity to finance Lincoln’s War against the Southern States. Proponents of the greenback claimed that legal tender paper money was a wartime necessity. Senator Sherman, who favored the legal tender law, argued the “necessity to give currency to treasury notes, necessity to provide money which would in turn purchase bonds.”[1] Senator Sherman expected the legal tender notes that Congress was about to authorize to lose value. That is the primary reason that he insisted that U.S. notes could not be used to pay tariffs on imports.
    Rothbard refutes the necessity claim:

    The spuriousness of this argument is seen by the fact that greenbacks were virtually not issued after the middle of 1863. There were three alternatives to the issuance of legal tender fiat money. (1) The government could have issued paper money but not made it legal tender; it would have depreciated even more rapidly. At any rate, they would have had quasi-legal tender status by being receivable in federal dues and taxes. (2) It could have increased taxes to pay for the war expenditures. (3) It could have issued bonds and other securities and sold the debt to banks and non-bank institutions. In fact, the government employed both the latter alternatives, and after 1863 stopped issuing greenbacks and relied on them exclusively, especially a rise in the public debt. The accumulated deficit piled up during the war was $2.614 billion, of which the printing of greenbacks only financed $431.7 million. Of the federal deficits during the war, greenbacks financed 22.8 percent in fiscal 1862, 48.5 percent in 1863, 6.3 percent in 1864, and none in 1865. This particularly striking if we consider that the peak deficit came in 1865, totaling $963.8 million. All the rest was financed by increased debt. Taxes also increased greatly, revenues rising from $52 million in 1862 to $333.7 million in 1865. Tax revenues as a percentage of the budget rose from a minuscule 10.7 percent in fiscal 1862 to over 26 percent in 1864 and 1865.[2]

    Some believe that Lincoln could not have fought his war even if the North had adopted an effective system for selling bonds and stringent taxation in 1861. The War could not have been financed with specie because of a lack of confidence in the Lincoln administration; legal tender paper money was necessary. Perhaps this explanation has merit. (This argument is correctly based on the premise that when people lose confidence in their government, they hoard gold and spend government notes as fast as they can before the notes become worthless.) However, Napoleon fought much of the world for more than a decade and conquered most of Europe with specie; he did not resort to fiat paper money.
    (Issuing irredeemable, noninterest-bearing, nonlegal tender Treasury notes was considered. Their issue was rejected because banks might not accept them and customers might refuse to accept them if a bank offered them. Without being legal tender for private debt, people would refuse them unless they wanted the notes to pay taxes.)
    Taxes paid less than 20 percent of the cost of the War.[3] Adopting a highly protective tariff, the Morrill tariff, significantly cut the tax revenue of the U.S. government. If it had the courage to raise taxes much more than it did, the U.S. government could have financed the War with taxation. Any shortfall could have been covered with borrowing. By financing the War with governmental notes, it paid:

    an average premium of 50 per cent on all its purchases from the beginning of 1862 till May 1865. The total expenditure of the four years was $3,352,380,410, of which it is safe to say that $2,500,000,000 consisted of purchases in the open market where the greenback dollar procured only 66 cents’ worth of property. In other words we obligated ourselves for $2,500,000,000 and got $1,630,000,000 in actual value. The difference, $870,000,000, is the unnecessary cost to the taxpayers, caused by the use of a depreciated currency.[4]

    Resorting to legal tender paper money greatly increased the cost of the War. According to Dewey, “The total effect of paper issues in increasing the cost of the war has been estimated at between $528,000,000 and $600,000,000; even this large amount is small when compared with the burdens which inflated prices placed upon the people in the ordinary relations of trade and industry.”[5]
    About resorting to the use of legal tender paper money, Representative Morrill, speaking in opposition said, “It will injure credit; it will increase prices; it will increase many fold the cost of the war.”[6]
    The use of legal tender government notes could have been avoided if:
        1. The Lincoln administration had instilled confidence of the public about the success of Lincoln’s War, which caused depositors to withdraw their money in gold from banks.
        2. The government had used bank checks and clearing houses instead of insisting that banks transfer the principal of government loans immediately in specie instead allowing them to retain the funds temporarily on deposits.
        3. Congress had enacted an extensive system of taxation.[7]

    U.S. notes were like a loan forced on the people. However, unlike real loans, they paid no interest and had no promise of repayment. Actually, the recipient paid the interest, which was the discount to specie. They were imposed on rich and poor, prudent and spendthrift, and speculator and cautious indiscriminately. Nevertheless, the burden fell more heavily on the poor, prudent, and cautious than on the rich, spendthrift, and speculator. As with all fiat monetary systems, a few people win, but most lose. Senator Fessenden, an opponent of legal-tender U.S notes, said that “the loss would fall most heavily on the poor.”[8]
    Besides, if the U.S. government had been willing to pay a higher interest rate, selling its bonds at a discount, it could have obtained sufficient funds. Not wanting to pay higher interest on its bonds had more to do with resorting to the U.S. note than the U.S. note being necessary to finance the War. U.S. notes accounted for less than 17 percent of the cost of the war.[9] The necessity argument was much more palpable and saleable than the stingy, parsimony argument.
    Moreover, once banks stopped redeeming their bank notes, the U.S. government had a choice to make. It could let the banks issue an evermore growing supply of bank notes or the government could issue irredeemable government notes. It could receive the profits from issuing irredeemable currency or let banks reap the profits. Congress chose to take the profits for itself.
    Issuing U.S. notes was a policy decision. Congress had a choice of issuing fiat legal tender paper money, i.e., the U.S. note, or paying a higher interest rate on its bonds. Congress and the Lincoln administration chose the former. Furthermore, Congress preferred receiving the gain from irredeemable paper money instead of letting the banks receive the gain.
    On January 1, 1861, the supply of paper money, bank notes and demand deposits, stood at $459,234,000.[10] (The country had $250 million in gold.[11]) On January 1, 1866, the paper money supply had risen to $1,418,572,000 of which $422,000,000 were U.S. notes.[12] The money supply rose by $959,339,000. In 1860, the quantity of paper money per capita was $14.[13] In 1866, it was $41. During the War, “the money supply rose from $45.5 million to $1.733 billion, an increase of 137.9 percent or 27.69 percent per annum.”[14]
    Although many people suffered from the inflation brought on by the U.S. note, other people gained. The people who benefitted most from the greenback during the inflation years were banks, industrialists, railroad owners, borrowers, and speculators.
    Bankers benefitted greatly from the greenback monetary system. State bank notes and deposits rose from $510 million in 1860 to $743 million in 1863, or an increase of 15.2 percent per year.[15] They could add U.S. notes to the reserves on which they based their loans. Moreover, banks paid out gold deposits made before the legal tender law in depreciated U.S. notes. When the War began, banks were the largest debtors in the country. Inflation generally benefits debtors. Furthermore, the robust war economy gave banks the opportunity to make many profitable loans.
    Another group that benefitted from the greenback was the industrialists, especially the iron and steel manufacturers. Because foreign exchange markets expected further depreciation of the U.S. note, the U.S. note tended to depreciate faster than prices. A falling greenback dollar and a rising gold premium caused domestic prices to be cheaper and the prices of imports to be higher. Thus, the greenback functioned like a protective tariff. Also, the inflationary policy provided manufacturers with easy credit.
    Railroad owners also benefitted from the depreciating greenback because they were large debtors. They could pay their debts with money worth less than what they had borrowed.
    Furthermore, the legal tender U.S. note was a great benefit to debtors who had borrowed gold. Much of the money lent to them had been gold. Now they could repay these gold loans with depreciated U.S. notes and cheat their creditors.
    Speculators saw a way to profit from the difference in values between gold and U.S. notes. When the U.S. note was first issued, the silver in a dollar of silver coins was worth 97 cents in gold. As the U.S. note depreciated, the value of silver in a dollar of silver coins rose above a dollar in U.S. notes. Massey describes one way that speculators profited from depreciating U.S. notes with silver coins:

    A broker in New York, for example, would buy up quantities of silver coins, offering a premium in paper money to get them. These coins were taken to Canada, where they were accepted as the equivalent of gold. The broker brought back the gold to the United States and sold it at a large profit for more paper money.[16]

    The biggest winner was the U.S. government. It got to spend the U.S. notes first before they depreciated.
    Inflation also brings losers. One big loser during the inflation of 1863 to 1865 was the wager earner. During the War, the cost of living closely followed the gold premium. As with all inflations, wages lagged behind the rise in prices. Thus, workers suffered from the issue of U.S. notes as their standard of living declined. “In 1865, when price index stood at 217 as compared to 100 in 1860, wages had only touched 143.”[17] Salaries and wages of soldiers and governmental employees rose even slower than wages of private employees. Wages of soldiers were $13 per month from the beginning of the War until May 1864 when Congress raised their pay to $16. By the time of their pay raise, prices had about doubled.[18] Unfortunately for them, the U.S. note continued to depreciate.
    Perhaps the people who lost the most during the inflation were those who lived on fixed incomes. They ranged from widows, pensioners, college professors, and clergymen to affluent lenders of capital.
    Bondholders, with one exception, lost. The exception was bondholders who had bought U.S. government bonds with U.S. notes and were paid interest and principal in gold and were not taxed on this income.
    Landlords also lost because rents failed to rise as fast as commodity prices.[19] The poor lost as many necessities were priced beyond their reach.
    When the government ceased expanding U.S. notes and other legal-tender currency and began contracting them, deflation followed. During the deflationary period, the winners during inflation typically became losers, and losers during inflation typically became winners.
    One big winner during the deflationary period was the lender. The exception was loans to borrowers who failed to pay off their loans. Therefore, the more conservative investors, such as banks and trustees for widows and orphans, preferred government bonds since the government was less likely to default. Unlike during inflation when lenders were paid with money worth less than what they had lent, during deflation, they were paid with money worth more. Thus, borrowers were big losers during deflation.
    Falling gold prices in terms of U.S. notes hurt domestic manufacturers because it made foreign goods from Great Britain and other countries on the gold standard cheaper in U.S. notes. Foreign goods were bought with gold.
    Importers also suffered; they lost money on their goods if the premium on gold fell between the time that they bought their goods and the time they sold them. They also suffered during the inflationary years when the gold premium fell.
    However, speculators could profit from a fluctuating gold premium if they bought and sold while the premium was rising as occurred during both the inflationary era and deflationary era. Moreover, any good speculator could profit from the fluctuation in the U.S. note price of gold no matter whether the gold premium was rising or falling. All they needed were fluctuating prices.
    Regardless of inflation or deflation, which is caused by inflation, the U.S. note transferred wealth from most people to a few wealthy people.

Endnotes
1. Davis Rich Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 8th edition. (1922, Rpt. Adamant Media Corp., 2005), p. 287.

2.  Murray N. Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II (Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2005), pp. 131-132.

3. Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance 1865-1879 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 16.

4. Horace White, Money and Banking (Boston, Massachusetts: Ginn & Company, 1896), p. 162.

 5. Dewey, p. 293.

6. Dewey, p. 286.

7. Dewey, pp. 282-283.

8. White, p. 163.

9. Robert P. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins Press, 1959), p. 16.

10. Henry V. Poor, Resumption and the Silver Question: A Handbook for the Times (1878 Rpt. New York, New York: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1969), p. 197.

11. Joseph French Johnson, Money and Currency in Relation to Industry, Pieces, and the Rate of Interest, Revised Edition (Boston, Massachusetts: Ginn and Company, 1905), p. 278.

12. Poor, pp. 197-198.

13. Poor, p. 199.

14. Rothbard, p. 130.

15. Rothbard, p, 129.

16. J. Earl Massey, America’s Money: The Story of Our Coins and Currency (New York, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968), p. 159-160.

17. White, p. 163.

18. Dewey, p. 294.

19. Unger, p. 23.

Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

Part 2

More articles on money. 

 

good luck, boy

GOOD LUCK, BOY
By J. O. Allen

I remember — for it was only yesterday —
I saw you sprawled upon the bed at play
With toy soldiers. Your cardboard men
Marched bravely on the counterpane.

I saw you — it was only yestermorn —
In your toy soldier suit and tooting horn
Charge gaily — yet with grim intent —
To crush the foeman in his tent.

And I remember — it was not so long ago —
I saw you lead your men against the foe;
Your army was but three small boys,
Your arms — assorted Christmas toys.

*************************************

And yet — it seems so far away —
But still I know it was today —
I saw you standing, khaki clad —
And, oh! — I loved you, lad!

More poems

Esther -- Part 5

Evidence of Warning

Thomas Allen

    Although the Jewish purpose of Esther may be to justify Purim, to the Christian its purpose is, or should be, entirely different. Its purpose must be much deeper than the surface justification for Purim, a celebration of vengeance.

    Why would God have a book placed in the Bible whose purpose appears to be a justification of a holiday void of any religious substance and that glorifies man’s vengeance? (God reserves vengeance to Himself [Deut. 32:35, Ps. 94:1, Rom. 12:19, Heb. 10:30].) Why would God have a book placed in the Bible that ignores Him? Could Esther be a warning to Christians about Pharisaism, which is now called Judaism? The book presents much evidence that it is a warning.

    The writer of Esther hints at this purpose by giving the main characters the names of pagan gods and goddess. Esther’s Jewish name is Hadassah (2:7), which is Babylonian for bride and a title of a goddess. Esther is a variant of Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love. Mordecai, Esther’s cousin and father by adoption, is a variant of Marduk, the chief Babylonian god.

    The book contains other hints that it should be treated as a warning and not like other books of the Old Testament. It has fasting without prayer (4:16). When Mordecai learns of Haman’s plan to kill the Jews, he tears his cloths, puts on sackcloth, and scatters ashes on his head. He mourns and cries out loudly (4:1). Other Jews begin wailing and weeping and fasting (4:3). Noticeably lacking from the mourning of Mordecai and the other Jews is prayer for Divine deliverance or pity. Later, Esther asks the Jews to fast for her (4:16), but she does not ask them to pray for her. (Although some commentators claim that prayer is implied, the writer of Esther has deliberately avoided any suggestion that the fasting serves any religious purpose.)

    Though verse 4:14 implies providence, it does not suggest that the providence be Jehovah God. Based on the way that the book is written, deliverance of “the Jews from another place” is a vague reference to some human entity and not to God. The book relies on human cunning and resourcefulness rather than Jehovah God to deliver the Jews. Salvation is through human ingenuity instead of Divine intervention.

    Although it lacks reverence toward God, the book does give preeminence to financial consideration (3:9), mammon. No Messianic hope is given. It is man-centered and glorifies vengeance.

    Esther shows the ability and skills of Jews to deceive. Mordecai is so proud of being a Jew that he flaunts his Jewishness (3:2, 4; 4:1). Yet he forbids Esther to reveal that she is a Jewess (2:10). He wants her to deceive the king by not revealing her real identity. However, Haman, who hates Jews, knows that Mordecai is a Jew (3:4-6; 6:13). Most likely, Mordecai is known to be a relative of Esther, who visits and inquires about her every day (2:11). Obviously, he has a close relationship with her. Apparently, Esther and Mordecai have so deceived Xerxes and Haman that they cannot figure out that Esther is a Jewess. (Even if the relationship between Esther and Mordecai were not fully known to Xerxes and Haman, courtiers must have known that Esther was a Jewess. They would have surely told the king and especially Haman.) Moreover, Xerxes has been so deceived that even after he has given Haman permission to slay the Jews (3:9-11), he honors Mordecai (6:10-11), a known Jew. He also seems surprised that Haman plans to kill the Jews when Esther explains Haman’s plot to the king (7:5-6). (If the king does not know that Haman plans to kill the Jews, then he is senile.)

    Esther certainly is an enchanter. She has the king under her spell from the first time he sees her to the end of the story. He does just about everything that she asks him to do. He even allows her to violate protocol without penalty. Even Haman at times seems to be under her spell.

    While queen and before revealing that she is a Jewess, Esther has to violate many Old Testament and Jewish laws. To maintain her non-Jewish deception, she has to have eaten unclean foods and, worse, to have bowed to the king and, by that, acknowledge his deity, a violation of the first commandment. In this respect, she stands in sharp contrast to Daniel. Daniel risks death to obey the Old Testament laws. (Perhaps by Esther’s time the rabbis had concocted outs for disobedience.) She places glory above obedience. Thus, a Jew will abandon religious scruples if necessary to deceive a Gentile.

    The writer also shows the cold-heartedness of a Jewess. After Esther reveals Haman’s plan to kill the Jews including her, the king leaves the room in shock. While the king is gone, Haman throws himself at the feet of Esther, who is reclining on her couch, and begs for mercy. The king returns and sees Haman on Esther and concludes that he is making sexual advances on the queen — hence, more proof of his impaired mental faculties. So, he orders Haman executed. Esther remains silent and lets Haman die for a crime that he does not commit (7:3-10).

    Esther also shows a bitter hatred of Gentiles (Christians are Gentiles) and a desire for their destruction. She asks for a second day of killing and the hanging of Haman’s ten sons (9:13). The king grants the request. In stark contrast to Jesus’s teachings, it teaches hatred of one’s enemies and bloody vengeance.

    Not only is Esther’s vindictiveness shown, but also that of the Jews in general. They revel in their bloodletting. They rejoice with “fasting and gladness” (9:19) in their carnage. No remorse on their part is displayed.

    Perhaps most important, Esther shows how easily Jews can manipulate Gentiles. In Esther the manipulation is mostly with guile and fear. With ease she maneuvers the king and the Persians to do Mordecai’s bidding.

    Once Mordecai becomes prime minister, provincial rulers and other officers of the king aid the Jews in their slaughter of the Gentiles because of the fear of the Jews (9:3). Many fear the Jews so much that they convert to Judaism (8:17). Thus, through terror, Jews get Gentiles to kill other Gentiles for them. Esther warns Gentiles about Jews using Gentiles to kill Gentiles for the benefit of Jews. History shows that this warning is frequently ignored.

    One puzzling aspect of the story is that the king offers the Jews the property of those whom they kill. Uncharacteristically of Jews, the Jews refuse to take the property of their victims. Perhaps the reason that the Jews decline their rapine is that they use it to buy the favor of the king. Much of this property probably escheats to the king. The lesson maybe “beware of Jews acting altruistically — especially when connected with destructive acts.”

    According to Halley, Esther describes a Jewish take over of a great empire. He writes:

Mordecai was great in the king’s house, next unto the king; he waxed greater and greater; his fame went forth throughout all the provinces (9:4; 10:3). This was in the reign of Xerxes, the mighty monarch of the Persian Empire: Xerxes’ prime minister, a Jew; his favorite wife, a Jewess: Mordecai and Esther, the brains and heart of palace![38]

    Esther 6:13 gives a stern warning to Christians. If Gentiles begin falling before Jews, they will have an extremely difficult time prevailing against the Jews. Most likely, the Jews will destroy them. The history of the Western world since the mid eighteenth century illustrates this fact.

    As suggested above, the primary purpose of Esther is to warn Christians of the leaven of the Pharisees (Matt. 16:6, 11), Judaism. God foresaw times when Jews would seek to gain power over Christians and use that power to pillage and destroy them. He had this book inserted into the Old Testament to warn Christians against the guile of the Jews and the destruction that it brings.

    Many see Esther as the most pro-Jewish book in the Bible. In reality, it is the most anti-Jewish book in the Old Testament.

    Christians have failed to heed this warning of Esther. The result is that Christianity has been in a state of decline in the United States and Europe as the power of Jews have grown.

    The above discussion is not an indictment of all Jews. Some Jews are not ready to sacrifice humanity to the Jews. However, far too many Jews are the children of the devil (John 8:44) and vipers (Matt. 12:34, 23:33) and lust after such sacrifice. There is an old lawyer joke: 98 percent of the lawyers give the other 2 percent a bad name. So it is with Jews: 90 percent of the Jewish leaders give the other Jews a bad name.

    Although Esther is about Jews, its warning extends beyond Jews and Judaism. It is a general warning against all religions that have descended from the Mysteries and their practitioners. These religions include Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Hinduism, Islam, human secularism, Theosophy, and the New Age religions.

    Most, if not all, writers of Biblical commentaries, dictionaries, and handbooks believe that the Jews are God’s chosen people. They are not. At least, if John is correct, they are not. John writes (1 John 2:22, 4:3) that Jews and all others (Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Hindus, Muslims, human secularists, Theosophist, atheists, etc.) who deny that Jesus is Christ and do not confess Jesus Christ are the antichrist. Jews and their allied antichrists have been successfully suppressing and destroying Christianity for decades. The question is this: Are the writers of these commentaries, dictionaries, and handbooks ignorant, are they deceived with fear of the Jews, or are they among the antichrists?

    “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth” (Gal. 4:16)?
    “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6a).

Endnote
38. R. Pfeiffer, p. 477.

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen.


Part 4

 More articles on religion.

 

Esther -- Part 4

Interpretations

Thomas Allen

    The traditional interpretation, as expressed by the Zionist Scofield, is that Esther shows God secretly watching over the dispersed Jews. Demaray, Fausset, Halley, Martin, C. Pfeiffer, Unger, and others also hold this view. Although the book no where suggests that God be working through Esther or Mordecai to save the Jews from persecution, this interpretation claims such provincial care exists. Many go as far as to insert numerous references to God in their commentaries, which are completely missing in the book of Esther (for example, C. Pfeiffer). Unger remarks, “The purpose of the book is to demonstrate God’s providential care of His people in their trials and persecutions. . . .”[32] Davis declares, “The great lesson of the book is, in fact, the overruling power of Providence.”[33]

    Unfortunately for the providential care argument, the book only weakly suggests it. It does not identify, or even imply, that the source of this providential care is Jehovah God. The source may just as well be a god of Freemasonry, Islam, Hinduism, or some New Age religion. Satan had won the hearts and souls of most Jews. Could he have been using them to feed his lust for blood? Based on the book as a whole, this providential care is human in origin and not divine.

    Some believe that the purpose of Esther is to justify the Feast of Purim. No other Scripture sanctions this feast. This feast celebrates the triumph of the Jews over anti-Semitism. (Today, it would be a celebration of Jews over anti-Jews as few Jews are Semites or, perhaps more correctly, over Gentiles.)

    Those who believe that Esther is a historical romance book generally view it as justification for Purim. Esther was written to glorify the Jews at a time when they were envied and hated.

    One problem with the Purim interpretation is that Purim is not a Hebrew word. It is highly unlikely that Jews would use a foreign name for one of their great commemorative celebrations. Another is that Ezra did not include it in the Priestly Code.

    Another interpretation is that Purim is a foreign holiday adopted by the Jews. It justifies the celebration of a festival that had no religious significance or basis in the Law but that had become popular with the Jews. Purim is possibly the New Year Feast of Marduk, the Ishtar feast, or the Babylonian observance in the month of Adar.

    Others believe that Esther is describing a conflict between the gods of Babylonia and Elam. On one side are Esther (Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess) and Mordecai (Marduk, chief god of Babylonia). On the other side are Haman (Hamman, chief god of the Elamites), Vashti (an Elamite deity), and Zeresh (Kirisha, an Elamite goddess and presumably Hamman’s consort). Jews learned this story during their captivity. Esther is a Judaized version of this conflict that Jews have converted to their own use.

    A criticism of this interpretation is that many names and characters in Esther do not fit neatly into the myth. Identifying Zeresh with Kirisha presents another problem. Moreover, Haman is identified as the son of Hammedatha and an Agagite. (That the Jewish writer of Esther would identify the chief villain of the story with Israel’s arch-enemy, the Amalekites, is not surprising.)

    Another possibility is that Esther is a fiction describing in allegorical terms the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids. Under this interpretation, the writer is using the events around Phaedymia, Esther of the story, who is the wife of Darius-Hystaspis and mother of Xerxes. She saves her people from the Magi, as Esther saves hers from Haman and his rabble. Purim may come from the Persian festival of Magophonia, which celebrates the Persian massacre of the Magi. However, it celebrates the Maccabean victory. Moreover, Esther’s Jewish name is Hadassah, i.e., Myrtle, which is the same as Adasah in Judea where the Maccabeans defeated Nicanor in 161 B.C. Under this interpretation, Mordecai represents Judas Maccabeus and Haman represents Antiochus Epiphanes and particularly Nicanor. Thus, Esther explains the origins of Purim, which is a celebration of the Maccabean victory over the Seleucids, Syrians, commanded by Nicanor.

    According to C. Pfeiffer, the purpose of Esther “was an invitation to a war of conquest and revenge.”[34] He adds, “the story leads up to a wholesale massacre of non-Jews and the yearly celebration of that carnage.”[35] The moral that Esther teaches is “love your kindred, hate your enemies.”[36] “[T]he might of the Jews and the destruction of their enemies are the supreme moral ideals of the book.”[37]

    A combination of several of the above interpretations leads to a better understanding of Esther. Jewish religious leaders used a Babylonian or Persian holiday that Jews had become accustomed to celebrating. This holiday they converted to a Jewish holiday to celebrate the victory of the Jews over the Gentiles. (The Christian church did the same thing with Easter. It converted a pagan holiday to a holiday commemorating Christ’s resurrection.) For this holiday, they overlaid a Judaized version of a Babylonian story about the Babylonian victory over the Elamites. The gods of Babylon defeat the gods of Elam. The Jewish writer changes the Babylonian gods to Jews and Elamite gods to Agagites and Elamites, who represent Gentiles in general. Instead of a mystical war, the writer of Esther could have used the Persian slaughter of the Magi and converted the Persian holiday celebrating that event to the Jewish holiday Purim. Here the Persians become Jews, and the Magi become Gentiles. Whichever story that the writer uses, he greatly embellishes it to make it more exciting and relevant to his Jewish audience.

    Even if Esther is an accurate account of actual historical events, the conclusion of this article does not change. In fact, an actual historical account is more supportive of the conclusion than a mystical story or historical fiction.

Endnotes
32. Unger, Dictionary, p. 325.

33. John D. Davis, A Dictionary of the Bible, 4th rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Michigan: Baker Book House: 1957), p. 218.

34.  R. Pfeiffer, p. 477.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

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Esther -- Part 3

Problems with the Story

Thomas Allen

    The story occurs during the reign of Xerxes I (486-465 B.C.), who is called Ahasuerus in Esther. No historical records show that Xerxes ever had a queen named Esther or a Jewish queen. Moreover, Xerxes’s marriage to Esther would have been contrary to the law. According to Persian law, the king could only marry a wife belonging to one of the seven great Persian families.[25] (Likewise, Ahasuerus’s marriage to Vashti, if Vashti were her real name, would also have been illegal. Vashti is an Elamite name.) Between the seventh year and twelfth year of Xerxes’s reign (2:16; 3:7), when Esther is supposed to be his queen, his queen is Amestris, the daughter of a Persian general, Otanes.[26] Furthermore, at that time for a Jewess to marry voluntarily a Gentile was unthinkable.

    No historical record shows Haman, Mordecai, or Vashti. That a Persian king would appoint a foreigner to be his prime minister, grand vizier, is highly unlikely. Haman is an Agagite (3:1, 10), i.e., an Amalekite (Agags were kings of Amalek, Israel’s bitter enemy). Mordecai, of coarse, is a Jew.

    Neither Ezra nor Nehemiah mentions them. Sirach, who wrote about 180 B.C., does not include Esther, who supposedly saved the Jewish people, or Mordecai among the Hebrew notables (Sir. chap. 44-49).

    Moreover, no historical record shows a massacre in Susa. A lack of any historical record independent of the Bible does not mean that the event described in the Bible did not happen as described.

    Another conflict in the book is Ahasuerus (Xerxes) ordering Vashti to appear before his party unveiled. Such an act was contrary to custom and Persian law.[27] (If Vashti were a real person, violating the custom and law accounts for her refusal to obey the king.) Some scholars doubt such custom and believe that the king’s command was not improper.[28]

    The explanation commonly offered to all these violations of Persian laws and customs is that the king just ignored them. If true, why did he not ignore the Persian law against rescinding a royal decree? If he were in the habit of ignoring Persian law, why did he not merely revoke the decree that authorized Haman to kill the Jews and take their property?

    Esther did ask him to revoke it (8:5). Was she saying one thing with her lips and another with her body language? Did her body language say do not revoke the decree instead grant us Jews the right of revenge? If so, the king obeyed her body language instead of her lips.

    Many scholars believe that the kings of Persia could revoke their decrees. Historical evidence does not support Persian royal decrees being irrevocable.[29]

    A major problem with Esther is its lack of any religious substance. It does not mention God. No direct reference is made to worship. Although it alludes to fasting (4:16) and the “cry” of the people (9:31), they appear to have no religious connection.

    To explain away Esther’s lack of religious content, Martin offers, “A possible explanation is that the book was written at a time when the mention of the name or religion of the God of Israel was either unwise or dangerous or both.”[30] A problem with this excuse is that believing God would sanction such cowardice is difficult. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not shy away from mentioning the God of Israel although it meant their lives. For the most part the Persians were friendly enough with the Jews to allow them to rebuild the Temple and to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

    C. Pfeiffer rejects Martin’s excuse and quotes Edward Young to explain away the lack of religious substance. Young writes:

 . . . since these Jews were no longer in the theocratic line, so to speak, the Name of the Covenant God is not associated with them. The Book of Esther, then, serves the purpose of showing how Divine Providence overrules all things; even in a distant, far country, God’s people are yet in His hands. But since they are in this distant, far country, and not in the land of Promise, His Name is not mentioned.[31]

Nehemiah and Malachi came after Esther if the earlier date is correct, and they are filled with religious substance. Moreover, why would God excuse “His people” ignoring Him when they are not around Jerusalem? Abraham, Joseph, and Moses did not ignore Him when they were in Egypt. Jacob did not stop worshiping God when he went to a far country. David did not stop worshiping Him when he entered a foreign country. Living in a foreign country is no excuse. However, the Jews in Esther show no reverence to God. Like Martin’s excuse, Young’s excuse is extremely poor.

    Their peculiar laws (3:8) seem to be the only thing that distinguished the Jews from the Gentile in the story. However, they quickly abandon their peculiar laws when it suits their purpose (2:9). Thus, Esther can easily conceal that she is a Jewess (2:10).

    While Mordecai convinces Esther to conceal that she is a Jewess and causes her to violate Jewish laws, he practically boasts of being a Jew. (To conceal her Jewishness, Esther would have to eat unclean foods and bow to the king, who was considered a deity — thus, violating the first commandment.) Yet Mordecai risks exposing her as a Jewess by his daily visits and inquiries (2:11).

    The moral height of the book is Esther’s resolve to risk her life by going to the king and pleading for her people (5:1-8). However, if she believes Mordecai’s argument, she has everything to gain and nothing to lose. He claims that if Haman’s decree were executed, she would be killed (4:13). Apparently, Mordecai convinces her that Haman would not make an exception for the queen, and the king would allow her execution. Moreover, if she does not intervene to save the Jews, someone else will (4:14). Therefore, if she does not act, she will not receive the glory. She does not ask why she should risk her life to intercede for the Jews if they will be saved without her intercession.

Endnotes
 25. Fausset, p. 213.

26. Davis, Westminster, p. 172. Fausset, p. 213. Paton, p. 230.

27. Fausset, p. 213.

28. Archibald Duff, “Esther,” in A Commentary on the Bible, ed. Arthur S. Peake and A.J. Grieve (New York, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, n.d.), p. 337.

29. Richardson, pp. 233-234.

30. Martin, p. 919.

31. C. Pfeiffer, p. 447.

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Ester -- Part 2

The Story

Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

    Esther is a Jewess of the tribe of Benjamin. Her Jewish name is Hadassah (2:7).

    Mordecai is also of the tribe of Benjamin (2:5). He is Esther’s foster father and cousin (2:7, 15). As he is closely connected with the harem (2:11, 19, 21), he may have been a eunuch gatekeeper.[15] After learning of a conspiracy to kill the king, he warns the king through Esther and thus saves the king’s life (2:21-23).

    Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, who is Xerxes, deposes his queen Vashti for refusing to reveal her beauty to the revelers at his royal feast (1:10-19). Vashti is disposed in 482 B.C.[16] or 483 B.C.[17]

    Then the king orders that the fairest virgins of the land be presented to him. From them he selects his new queen (2:1-4). Esther is among those presented, and Ahasuerus picks her (2:8-18). She becomes queen of Persia in 478 B.C.[18] or 479 B.C.[19] He does not know that she is a Jewess (2:10, 20).

    Mordecai offends Haman, the prime minister (or grand vizier), by not bowing or paying homage to him (3:2). Haman seeks the king’s permission to kill all Jews because of Mordecai’s irreverence. The king grants permission to Haman to kill them and seize their property (3:4-15). To obtain this decree, Haman offers the king a bribe of 10,000 talents (3:9), which according to some, the king refuses, but according to others, he accepts. Ahasuerus grants this decree in the twelfth year of his reign (3:10-11), five years after his marriage to Esther.

    Mordecai urges Esther to intercede with the king for her people (4:7-9). Uninvited, Esther enters the king’s presence (5:1-2). She requests that the king and Haman attend a banquet, a drinking-feast, that she prepares (5:4). At the banquet she invites the king and Haman to meet the next day for another feast when she promises to reveal her request (5:7). (Between the two feasts, the king orders Haman to honor Mordecai. Mordecai is honored for earlier exposing a plot to assassinate the king [ch. 6].) As the second feast begins, she informs the king of Haman’s plot to kill the Jews and pleads for her people. Because she is a Jewess, Haman will kill her (7:3-6).

    After recovering from this shocking news, Ahasuerus orders Haman hung on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai (7:9-10). Then he gives Mordecai Haman’s post of prime minister and Esther Haman’s wealth, who in turn gives it to Mordecai (8:1,2).

    Although Esther asks the king to rescind Haman’s decree (8:5), he does not because it is irrevocable. Instead he authorized Mordecai to issue a decree in the king’s name allowing the Jews to do whatever Mordecai deems appropriate (8:8). Mordecai grants permission to the Jews to destroy, slay, and cause to perish all the people who would assault them, including women and children (8:11). (Mordecai’s decree goes beyond merely self-defense. It authorizes preempted strikes and allows Jews to initiate action [8:11, 9:2, 13].) The language of Mordecai’s decree (8:11) is almost identical to the language of Haman’s decree (3:13).

    Moreover, Mordecai’s decree allows the Jews to take the property of their victims (8:11). However, they do not take the spoils (9:10, 15, 16). This decree pleases the Jews so much that they have a feast to celebrate the upcoming slaughter (8:17).

    Apparently, the Persians do not interfere with the Jewish slaughter of the Gentiles since the victims are not Persians. To the contrary, Persians aid the Jews in their massacre because they feared Mordecai and the Jews (9:3). For fear of the Jews, many became Jews (8:17). These events occur in 473 B.C.[20] or 474 B.C.[21]

    On the day that Haman had set for the roundup and execution of the Jews, the Jews in turned slaughter Haman’s family and many others. The killing lasted two days. According to the story, 800 were killed in Shushan, Susa, and 75,000 were killed in the provinces (9:6, 15, 16).

    To commemorate this great Jewish victory over the Gentiles, the Jews establish the feast of Purim (9:20-32). It is on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar (February and March). Purim is a day of “feasting and joy, and of sending portions to one another, and gifts to the poor” (9:22).

    According to Paton, the book is completely void of noble characters:

    Xerxes is a sensual despot. E[sther], for the chance of winning wealth and power, takes her place in the herd of maidens who become concubines of the king. She wins her victories not by skill or by character, but by her beauty. She conceals her origin, is relentless toward a fallen enemy (7:8-10), secures not merely that the Jews escape from danger, but that they fall upon their enemies, slay their wives and children, and plunder their property (8:11, 9:2-10). Not satisfied with this slaughter, she asks that Haman’s ten sons may be hanged, and that the Jews may be allowed another day for killing their enemies in Susa (9:13-15). The only redeeming traits in her character are her loyalty to her people, and her bravery in attempting to save them (4:16). Mordecai sacrifices his cousin to advance his interests, advises her to conceal her religion, displays wanton insolence in his refusal to bow to Haman, and helps E[sther] in carrying out her schemes of vengeance. All this the author narrates with interest and approval. He gloats over the wealth and the triumph of his heroes, and is oblivious to their moral shortcomings.[22]

    Conversely, Fausset sees Esther as a highly noble character although humanly flawed:

    E[sther]’s own character is in the main attractive: dutiful to her adoptive father, and regardful of his counsels though a queen; having faith in the high destiny of her nation, and believing with Mordecai than even “if she held peace at the crisis deliverance would arise to the Jews from another place" and that providentially she had “come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (iv. 14); brave, yet not foolhardy, but fully conscious of her peril, not having received the king’s call for 30 days, with pious preparation seeking aid from above in her patriotic venture; “obtaining favour in the sight of all them that looked upon her” (ii. 15). At the same time Scripture does not hide from us the fact of her not being above the vindictiveness of the age and the country, in her requesting that Haman’s ten sons should be hanged, and a second day given the Jews to take vengeance on the enemies who had sought to kill them.[23]

    Quoting McCurdy, Unger also describes Esther as a highly noble woman:

    The character of Esther, as she appears in the Bible, is that of a woman of deep piety, faith, courage, patriotism, and caution, combined with resolution; a dutiful daughter to her adopted father, docile and obedient to his counsels, and anxious to share the king’s favor with him for the good of the Jewish people. That she was a virtuous woman, and, as far as her situation made it possible, a good wife to the king, her continued influence over him for so long a time warrants us to infer. There must have been a singular charm in her aspect and manners since she obtained favor in the sight of all that looked upon her (Esth. 2:15).[24]

    Whereas, Fausset acknowledges Esther’s flaws, Unger does not. Whereas Fausset downplays her attributes of being a conniving, lying, deceiving, vengeful, manipulative, irreligious woman, Unger ignores them.

Endnotes
15. Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Handbook: An Essential Guide to Understanding the Bible (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1966), p. 265.

16. Henry H. Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965), p. 238.

17. How, p. 305. Unger, Handbook, p. 264.

18. Halley, p. 237. Unger, Dictionary, p. 325.

19. Pfeiffer and Harrison, p. 449.

20. Halley, p. 237. Pfeiffer and Harrison, p. 455.

21. Pfeiffer and Harrison, p. 455.

22. Paton, pp. 231-232.

23. A.R Fausset, Fausset’s Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1949), p. 214.

24. Unger, Dictionary, p. 325.

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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