Rereading Ahasuerus: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty

You’re undoubtedly familiar with the Book of Esther, but you probably haven’t thought much about what happened after the Purim story. For the first time in the history of the Jewish Diaspora, Jews enjoyed an unparalleled degree of political power. In Ezra 7:11-28, King Artaxerxes wrote a letter to Ezra expressing unprecedented support for the Jews. This obscure passage has remained largely forgotten in the quagmire of biblical chronology. But it served as a surprisingly significant touchstone in debates about the relationship between church and state in colonial America. Most notably, Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, invoked Artaxerxes as a model for religious liberty, challenging the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts.

Before delving into this history, it’s worth taking a closer look at the biblical text. In his letter, Artaxerxes begins, “I hereby issue an order that anyone in my kingdom who is of the people of Israel and its priests and Levites who feels impelled to go to Jerusalem may go with you. For you are commissioned by the king and his seven advisers to regulate Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of your God, which is in your care” (7:13-14). He also expresses his support for rebuilding the Holy Temple and authorizes funds to fulfill Ezra’s requests. “Whatever is by order of the God of Heaven must be carried out diligently for the House of the God of Heaven, else wrath will come upon the king and his sons” (7:23).

Additionally, Artaxerxes provides a litany of legal protections for the Jewish clergy: “We further advise you that it is not permissible to impose tribute, poll tax, or land tax on any priest, Levite, singer, gatekeeper, temple servant, or other servant of this House of God” (7:24). Finally, and most shockingly, the king grants the Jews an autonomous legal system with the power to enforce capital punishment:

And you, Ezra, by the divine wisdom you possess, appoint magistrates and judges to judge all the people in the province of Beyond the River who know the laws of your God, and to teach those who do not know them. Let anyone who does not obey the law of your God and the law of the king be punished with dispatch, whether by death, corporal punishment, confiscation of possessions, or imprisonment. (7:25-26)

There were essentially two ways of extracting political theory from this passage. Mainstream Puritans, such as theologian John Cotton, argued that Artaxerxes’ involvement with Jewish affairs indicated that the state should intersect with the church and advance the cause of religion. Cotton cited the “King of Persia” in Ezra 7:23 to argue that civil law has the authority to “punish spiritual offenses” since they “provoke wrath against a civil state.”

In contrast, Roger Williams opposed state compulsion of religious practice, one of the reasons why Massachusetts banished him from the colony in 1636. Williams reinterpreted Artaxerxes to argue for religious liberty. The king’s “acts of favor…[did] not amount to a positive command, that any of the Jews should go up to build the Temple, nor that any of them should practice his own worship.” Rather, Artaxerxes “freely permits them, and exercises a bounteous assistance to them.” Instead of commanding the Jews—or any other community—to follow a particular religion, Artaxerxes merely allowed and assisted them to do so.

Williams also dismissed Artaxerxes as an idolatrous tyrant and likened the state of the Jews to “sheep in the jaws of the lion.” Why, then, did Artaxerxes act so kindly to the Jews? Williams pointed to the wrath of God that Artaxerxes invoked in Ezra 7:23. Sometimes, he surmised, “it pleases God to open the hearts of Tyrants greatly to favor and further his people.” But did God move Artaxerxes to enact a wider enforcement of religion, “to restrain upon pain of Death all the millions of men under his Dominion from the idolatries of their several and respective Countries? To constrain them all upon the like penalty to conform to the Worship of the God of Israel?” Surely not. Artaxerxes’ order was not state enforcement of religion per se, but rather creating the liberty of political autonomy within a religious community.

But what, you may wonder, does any of this have to do with Esther? The answer, though not suggested by Williams himself, appeared several decades earlier in the work of English explorer Walter Raleigh. In his History of the World (1614), Raleigh identified Ahasuerus as the Artaxerxes of Ezra 7: “His favor was exceedingly great to the Jews, as appears by the Histories of Ezra and Nehemiah, which fell in his time…. This was likewise that King Ahasuerus who mar­ried Esther.” Raleigh’s emphasis on the monarch’s affin­ity for Jews paralleled his own tolerant attitude toward other religions.

Around a century later, Puritan theologian Cotton Mather surveyed the various scholarly theories about Ahasuerus’ identity in his Biblia Americana (1693-1728), reaching the same conclusion: “And the extraordinary favors…unto the Jews, beyond any former Kings of Persia, sending first Ezra, and after­wards Nehemiah, for the restoring of their ancient Prosperity, agree well in their having in his bosom such a powerful Advocate as Q. Esther for them.” While Mather did not agree with Williams’ and Raleigh’s approach to religious liberty, and he had little tolerance for real-life Jews, he shared their understanding of Esther’s husband.

For early modern readers, who often conflated Artaxerxes with Ahasuerus, a new redemptive perspective emerges on the biblical character. The once-tyrannical king who nearly allowed the annihilation of Jewry becomes a model for benevolent governance and, in a sense, religious liberty. As the Purim story concludes, “For Mordecai the Jew ranked next to King Ahasuerus and was highly regarded by the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brethren; he sought the good of his people and interceded for the welfare of all his kindred” (Esther 10:3). With this extraordinary degree of political influence, the exceedingly pro-Jewish events of Ezra 7 fell into place.

Regardless of the historicity of this early modern reading—most modern scholars identify Ahasuerus as Xerxes I—Artaxerxes’ letter and its American afterlife holds great significance. Roger Williams’ reading of Ezra 7 may have inspired the lack of religious coercion in colonial Rhode Island. And the arguments of Raleigh and Mather suggest that a king capable of great evil can still have the possibility of redemption.

Jewish tradition, which identifies Artaxerxes as the son of Ahasuerus, states that the Jews reaccepted the Torah during Esther’s time (Shabbat 88b). But it is also significant that Artaxerxes gave us the liberty to follow Jewish law, granting a degree of freedom to pursue our faith perhaps never repeated in Jewish history until the modern State of Israel.

This essay is adapted from my chapter in Stuart Halpern’s edited volume Esther in America (2020). Biblical quotations are from Sefaria, and early modern quotations have been modernized for clarity.

Yisroel Ben-Porat is a PhD candidate in early American history at CUNY Graduate Center and Managing Editor of Lehrhaus.