Esther 9:26

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME FOR THE FEAST OF PURIM

"Wherefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur. Therefore because of all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and that which had come unto them, the Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so that it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to the writing thereof, and according to the appointed time thereof, every year; and that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the remembrance of them perish from their seed."

The feast of Purim is today observed by the Jews; and it has been continually observed throughout history, from the times of Xerxes (who was assassinated in the year 465 B.C.) until the present day, for almost twenty-five centuries; and, to this writer, it appears as an absolute impossiblity that such a sequence of observances could have been initiated, or kicked off, by some unknown writer's fictitious yarn. It takes twenty times as much faith to believe that allegation as it takes to believe the Bible.

"They called these days Purim, after the name of Pur" (Esther 9:26). The word Pur is the Persian word for "lot." which is a reference to Haman's casting lots to decide the day when the Jews would be destroyed. "The Jews took the Persian word Pur, and gave it a Hebrew plural Purim, either because the Persian method of casting involved several lots, or because Haman cast Pur several times (Esther 3:7)."[16]