A Dedication that Left Its Mark in History.

The festival of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Dedication or Lights, is a solemnity designed by Jewish leaders a hundred years before Jesus to commemorate and recall divine intervention in preserving their people against the oppression of the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. As part of the articles in this series on Hanukkah, let’s look at the historical background that gave rise to it:

Long before and after Alexander the Great passed through Judea, relations between Greeks and Israelites were favorable. Their strategy of imperial expansion did not include exterminating other cultures or peoples. They merely required the nations they conquered to join the empire. It was relatively easy to impose Greek culture on these pagan nations, as they viewed the Greeks and their gods as superior after the war. So, where did all this hatred from Antiochus towards Hebrew culture come from? The issue lay in the fact that Greek annexation of conquered nations typically involved an exchange of cultures and religions. Greece offered images of their gods and their worldview, expecting reciprocal gestures from the conquered nations. This mutual cultural exchange was epitomized by the famous Pantheon in Athens. However, when it came to the monotheistic Jews and their God, whom Antiochus didn’t understand and barely acknowledged existed, cognitive dissonance led him to a singular solution: to exterminate this culture from the face of the earth and impose Hellenization through military force.

Antiochus forbade circumcision, the study and teaching of the Bible, Sabbath rest, the mere mention of God, and worship at the Temple. He not only issued edicts but also desecrated the Temple itself, reaching the peak of social discontent in the region. While these restrictions targeted details of worship, people covertly continued their daily lives to avoid detection by Greek soldiers or by those Hellenized Jews (later forming the Sadducee perspective) who maintained their status quo by collaborating with the Greeks. However, when Antiochus began imposing his deities on the Jews, he desecrated the Temple to convert it into the Judean seat of his cult, even sacrificing a pig on the very altar to Zeus Olympios. This act ignited a Jewish uprising on such a scale that they not only defeated him but also gained independence from the Greeks until the Romans arrived.

The revolt was led by a family nicknamed the Maccabees, who spearheaded the resistance. It all began when Matathias ben Johanan, a temple priest and devout man (a perspective that later formed Pharisaism), in a small town called Modi’im, could no longer tolerate the hypocrisy of the situation. Sensing imminent danger from the offense, he killed the Greek envoy, who astonishingly was also Jewish, as he brought the king’s decree to sacrifice a pig there. From that moment on, his sons, led by the eldest Judah, who earned the nickname “the Hammer” (Maccabee), organized a highly successful guerrilla warfare that gained the support of the majority of the Jewish population. Despite the disproportionate numbers (10 Greeks for every Jew), indicating a seemingly doomed struggle unless God granted them victory, several battles later, Antiochus’ forces were finally expelled from the region, achieving the incredible liberation of Jerusalem and all of Judea in 165 BC.

After the Jews, led by the Maccabees, triumphed and were certain that God had given them victory, they entered Jerusalem triumphantly. They then set about resuming Temple service, necessitating its complete dedication (Hanukkah). They ritually cleansed the entire building and reinstated the priestly orders and their rotations. However, something happened that marked the central point of the future celebration of Hanukkah. They found that the menorah (seven-branched candelabrum) inside the Holy Place of the Temple was extinguished and needed to be lit. The dilemma was that Jewish law forbade extinguishing the lights once lit, even to relight them, and there was only enough consecrated oil to keep it burning for one day, while it would take eight days for new oil to be prepared. They chose to obey the command to light it, trusting that if it went out on its own, they would be exempt from violating the commandment. Meanwhile, they put the most experienced people to work on producing the oil.

However, a miracle occurred that resonated throughout the nation. While everyone waited anxiously for the light to go out so they could pray and fast with great supplication and lamentation before God, as a testimony that this was not their intention, the small amount of oil continued to burn miraculously. Each day, the people sang, rejoiced, and praised God as the lights did not go out. It was like a suspenseful real-life drama. On one hand, there was the anticipation of being ready to call on God if the lights went out; on the other, there was joy and surprise that they did not. Thus, instituting a new celebration to commemorate this miracle was not difficult for the Maccabees, as every year that same generation awaited, celebrated, and passed down to future generations this tremendous event.

The book of First Maccabees tells us: “For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar… Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that the dedication of the altar should be celebrated with joy and gladness at the same time each year, for eight days beginning on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev” (1 Maccabees 4:56-59). And in Second Maccabees, it also says: “they celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of Booths… the whole congregation decreed and published a decree that all the Jewish people should celebrate these days every year” (2 Maccabees 10:6-8).

Although this is the general history, there were other events that marked that moment, and all together they grouped and formed a set of meanings for the new celebration of Hanukkah. But we will discuss these in the next article, where I will tell you how Hanukkah is celebrated as we continue to narrate them.

Author: Dr. Liber Aguiar