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Throwing light on the Hanukkah story |
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Written by James Linville
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Friday, December 18 2009, 9:11 PM |
Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival that ends at sunset today, commemorates the rededication of the second Jerusalem temple in 165 BCE (“Before the Common Era”, i.e., BC) , after its defiling by the Seleucid emperor, Antiochus IV. According to a legend found in the great compendium of Jewish law and lore, the Babylonian Talmud (5-6th century), the rebels found only one day’s supply of holy oil with which to relight the temple’s lamp stand. Miraculously, it burned for eight days, time to prepare more. The story of the rebellion is too recent to have been mentioned in Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, whose contents make up the Christian Old Testament. Oddly, however, some (but not all!) Christian Bibles contain stories of the war.
The best source for the rebellion is the book of First Maccabees, which was composed 60 to 70 years after Judas Maccabeus (“Judah the Hammer”) of the Hasmonean family retook the temple and started the tradition of celebrating the rededication. No explanation for why he celebrated for exactly eight days is given, however.
Second Maccabees, written around the same time (exactly when is uncertain), opens with two letters purportedly sent from Jerusalem to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt, encouraging them to celebrate Judah’s victory. The first tells how Jews building the second temple in 538 BCE could not find the concealed sacred fire from the first Temple. Instead, they found what looked like muddy water that burst into flame when sprinkled on the altar. This is construed as a sign that the more recent rededication of the temple was divinely ordained. The letter’s addressees are instructed to observe the week-long festival of Sukkot (“Booths” or “Tabernacles”) that is usually celebrated in September or October. This feast is traditionally followed by another day of rejoicing, so perhaps this is where the accent on eight days of Hanukkah began. Perhaps building on this legend, the first century CE Jewish historian, Josephus, calls the feast in honour of the Maccabean actions “Lights.”
First and Second Maccabees enjoyed popularity among Jews until the first centuries of the Common Era (AD). They were included among Greek translations of Jewish religious books commonly called the Septuagint, which includes all the books now found in Tanakh and the Old Testament along with a host of others. After the ill-fated rebellions against Rome that ended in 73 and 135 CE, these extra books lost favour among Jews for reasons that are not entirely clear.
At the same time, however, large amounts of Jewish oral tradition and teachings were developing and being recorded. The second-century CE collection of this material, the Mishnah, mentions Hanukkah only in passing. It is not until the early sixth-century Babylonian Talmud that the legend of the oil is in evidence.
The first generations of Christians however, were more kindly disposed to the Septuagint’s extra books. Its entire contents were canonized (classified as sacred) by the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the West, there was some ambivalence, but the extra documents were often transmitted as an appendix to the Bible called the Apocrypha. Many apocryphal books, including Second Maccabees, affirmed important Christian practices and values, including prayer for the dead and the importance of martyrdom. Some of these doctrines were repudiated by Protestant reformers and the Apocypha was excluded from many bibles made for Protestants. Some denominations retain it but it plays no role in matters of doctrine. The Catholic Church, however, affirms its biblical status, labelling these books the Deuterocanonical Books (“secondarily canonized”). And so, is the story of the Judas’ rededication in the Bible? It depends whose Bible!
James Linville teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge.
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