I had originally written this as an answer to someone who had claimed that Esther was the first book to refer to a non-Judahite as a Jew (specifically, Mordecai the Benjamite). While trying to nit-pick at a few minor errors, I found that Esther may be the latest book in the Hebrew Tanakh- later even than Daniel!
The Esther known to Protestants and Jews derives from a version in biblical Hebrew. There's a reference to "the days of Esther and Haman" in the third-century Apostolic Constitutions 7.38.3(2) (ibid. p. 685), which may reflect an older tradition of Greek synagogual prayers. As the tractace Megillah in the Mishnah (200 CE?) states, Esther is now used as the basis for the feast of Purim. How much further back can one stretch the attestation?
It has been long noted that Esther is almost self-consciously atheistic, especially compared to other Jewish writings; and, since it does not contain the Sacred Name, it does not defile the hands as do other canonical books.
However, this only applies to the Masoretic recension, which is the only surviving Hebrew text. Esther exists in two other versions in Greek. One is the canonical "Septuagintal" recension, and the other, more obscure, is the so-called Alpha- Text, also in Greek. The Cambridge Companion to the Bible claims that the Alpha-Text derives from a Hebrew recension prior to that of the MT, but they're probably wrong.
The Greek alterations serve to make Esther a genuinely religious text. To begin with, the additional prologue refers to Exodus 19:16.
Both the Alpha-Text and the canonical Greek text (I'll abbreviate them AT and LXX) share six major additions to the Hebrew. Karen Jobes has recently proven that A, B, C, E and F are all earlier in the AT than the LXX - the AT is NOT a revision of the LXX. Moreover, B and E were composed in Greek (they're not translations of Hebrew additions!), and the other four cannot be determined just yet.
This begs the question, where did the LXX get its variants of B and E? Did the Greek Alpha-Text expand in a parallel fashion to the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX - but independently? It seems from this vantage point more likely that the LXX was a recension of a prior form of the AT, which is itself a translation and expansion of the Hebrew Esther.
Her other conclusions were apparently not so convincing. Note the review.
At any rate, it does not appear that the AT comes from a prior version of the MT. The MT is as far back as we can trace the book's development.
The Cambridge Companion to the Bible claimed that Purim was first attested in documents from the first century BCE (p. 269) but unfortunately it did not cite a source for this.
Josephus paraphrased the whole of Esther as if it were a history: Jewish Antiquities XI.184-296. Uncharacteristically, Joe seems to have used the Greek version instead of the proto-Masoretic recension, but that's another topic...
The New Testament does not quote Esther as scripture, but it does mine it for thematic parallels. Once. The Death of John the Baptist runs from Mark 6:17-29; it appears as a parenthesis to Mark 6:14-16 and may derive from another source. Mark 6:21-23 reads as follows in the NIV:
Compare with Greek Esther 5:3 and 7:2: "And said the King, 'what do you want (ti qeleiV), Esther? And what is your request? Up to half of my kingdom (ewV tou hmisouV thV basileaV mou), and it will be yours (kai estai soi). And they say men are insensitive :^)
Esther's repetition of the same verse betrays an oral source - probably a ballad. But Mark (or whoever) is not paraphrasing a Hebrew ballad; his John story is word-for-word from the existing Greek translation of Esther.
More trivially, Esth. 4:1 and Q/Luke 10:13 == Matt 11:21 concur on "sackcloth and ash", or sakkwi kai spodwi. This is more likely to be shared use of Jonah 3:6, though. It's Q. Q likes Jonah. Q/Luke 11:29-32 == Matt 12:39-41 repeat Jonah's name four times each. This is similar to what you get in John's Apocalypse; it appears to quote from the prologue of the Greek Esther (four times), but then you realize it's all coming from Ex 19:16.
As for the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, there's a first-century BCE Greek wanna-be Classical romance called 3 Maccabees. It has some literary relationship with Esther: a foreign tyrant plans the destruction of the Jews in his realm, but the plot is thwarted and the Jews are allowed to take it out on their enemies. (Old Testament Pseudepigrapha II p. 515)
Esther shares much with the pre-Masoretic Daniel cycle, which reached its modern Masoretic form 164 BCE. Note especially how the gentiles plot against Mordecai, as they plotted against Daniel and his buddies in Daniel 3 and 6; and that Esther is chosen from all the non-Jews for her beauty. Also Esther 2:5 calls Nabu-kudurri-utzur "NebuchadNezzar", a mistake which Daniel also made but Jeremiah didn't.
Beyond that, Esther generally avoids using the Bible but it will, on a rare occasion, use a stock Biblical allusion. Esther 4:1 uses the sackcloth and ash of Jonah 3:6, with the same words in both Greek and Hebrew (sakkoV / saq[im] and spodoV / [ha-]'epar).
That's basically it for Jewish literature, though. The remaining parallels (listed in the index of OT Pseud. under 3 Enoch and Joseph&Asenath) turn out to be very minor parallel uses of language.
The first users of Esther I could dig up were Josephus and the Gospel of Mark, both in the late first century. Further back, there are disputable thematic parallels between Esther and 3 Maccabees, and between Esther and Daniel 3, 6. That is Esther's entire literary footprint in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Christian literature, in Rabbinic literature, and in Jewish pseudepigrapha until 200 CE.
I didn't check to see if Philo of Alexandria used Esther. But if he had, that would only push Esther's upper bound a few years before Josephus and Mark.
What if Esther were originally written in Greek, and then later translated into Hebrew for inclusion in the emerging religious canon? There's a thought...
Whenever and however Esther was written, it did not make a great impact upon Jewish thought until Purim became a national holiday. Compared with Tobit - another canonical novel of the day - Esther was late in date and decidedly non-Yahwistic. As a result it was Tobit, not Esther, which ended up in Qumran.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^) zimriel@sbcglobal.net
14 Nov: I merged two UseNet posts and did some clean-up. The off- the-cuff style remains. 18 Nov: checked the Masoretic Esther against the Masoretic Jonah.