Some of you asked me (well, challenged me, really) to show the problems with the historical claims made by the Book of Esther.
I waited until Purim was almost over, in order not to spoil your fun.
Here goes:
The following chart is taken from Daat Emet, and shows what the Sages claimed, what the book itself claimed, and what we know to be the truth based on many contemporaneous documents and histories, all of which largely agree.
In other words, Esther cannot be historically correct:
[Please click to enlarge.]