Addition C · The prayers of Mordecai and Esther · Greek after 4:17 · unit 8
She humbles her body and disorders her hair.
Rahlfs 4:17h (lettering not yet checked against Rahlfs) · Swete, Esther 4.1a–30a · .txt · .json
καὶ τὸ σῶμα ἐταπείνωσεν σφόδρα, καὶ πάντα τόπον κόσμου ἀγαλλιάματος αὐτῆς ἔπλησε στρεπτῶν τριχῶν αὐτῆς·
and she humbled her body greatly, and every place that had adorned her rejoicing she filled with her disheveled hair;draft English
What the rabbinic bench shows
1 verbatim · 2 motif · 1 flagged · 3 candidates examined and rejected.
- Medieval retranslation: the Additions re-entered Hebrew from Latin (Sefer Yosippon, c. 953; ben Makhir), so this is not ancient reception
- Aramaic: carried by a targum; how the targum came by it is open
- Lost intermediary: an earlier written aggadic source, no longer extant, stands between
Verbatim
'ותפרע שער ראשה' (she let her hair down) is part of the same densely-matching sentence as the robes/sackcloth/ashes clause, corresponding to Addition C's 'ἔπλησε στρεπτῶν τριχῶν αὐτῆς' (filled with her disheveled hair).
Show the witness text (298 words)
Motif — candidate parallels
Unverified at pair level: in a seeded sample of forty motif pairs, 58% failed the study's own test. Read each as a candidate.
She rises 'bent over and not upright' from the three fasts -- the specific bodily posture matching Addition C's 'she humbled her body greatly.' One of the parallels the scholarly literature already records (control P05).
Show the witness text (112 words)
Hegai's recurring question, 'why do you not adorn yourself like all the women,' establishes Esther's habitual disowning of adornment -- matching Addition C's 'she humbled her body greatly' as a specific refusal of beautification.
Show the witness text (30 words)
Flagged for further study (1)
The mourning assembly includes women with hair loosed and unbound ('nashim se'aran satur') -- the rare, concrete detail of disheveled hair as a mourning gesture that MT never supplies, matching Addition C's Esther filling with disheveled hair 'every place that had adorned her rejoicing.'
Show the witness text (440 words)
Hebrew retroversions
Machine-assisted reconstructions of a Hebrew the Greek might render, made under Tov's principles and used only as search queries. They are hypotheses, not evidence.
ותענה את נפשה מאד וכל מקום עדי משושה מלאה בפרע שערה
ותשפל את גופה עד מאד וכל מקום אשר התקשטה בו לשמחתה כסתה בשער ראשה הפרוע