For a video based on the Book of Esther, scroll to the bottom of this article.
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Excerpted with permission from The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther published by the Jewish Publication Society.
Megillat Esther, The Book of Esther in the form that we have it in the Hebrew Bible, provides the story of the origin of Purim, the blueprint for its celebration, and the authorization for its observance in perpetuity.
The story itself is implausible as history and, as many scholars now agree, it is better viewed as imaginative storytelling, not unlike others that circulated in the Persian and Hellenistic periods among Jews of the Land of Israel and of the Diaspora. This story seems to have been known in several different versions, or to have gone through a number of different stages in its development, before it was linked with Purim and incorporated into the Bible.
Diaspora Story
As a Diaspora story–a story about, and presumably for, Jews in the Diaspora during the Persian period–it provides an optimistic picture of Jewish survival and success in a foreign land. In this it resembles other Diaspora stories such as the biblical Book of Daniel (chapters 1-6) and the apocryphal books of Judith and Tobit. But unlike those books, Esther lacks overtly pious characters and does not model a religious lifestyle.