“... The connection between the banquet and the debate is superficial, and the king’s banquet was added under the influence of similar stories, perhaps specifically the story of Esther. [...] 3:1–3. King Darius held Darius’s banquet is dated to his second year, and the opening of the story lays emphasis on the large gathering of every official and person of distinction in Darius’s empire. The only information about the banquet itself is that “they ate and drank and . . . departed”—in contrast to the elaborate description in Esther 1:3–9. The description of Darius’s empire as comprising 127 provinces is anachronistic, for at that time the empire did not reach these extreme boundaries and Darius had not yet organized the empire along these lines; it is clearly influenced by Esther 1:1. ...”