Chanukah Ends

Chanukah/Feast of Dedication/Festival of Lights.

The Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday  commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. Today is the last day.

Chanukah was not in the original nor is in the modern Hebrew Scriptures or Protestant Bibles. It comes from a group of eleven books which were added to the Scriptures during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 BC.) when he brought 70 Jewish Scholars/Rabbis to Alexandria, Egypt, to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. The two books of Macabees tell of the uprising of the Jewish people under Antiochus of Assyria who desecrated the Temple and ordered the Jews to worship him. The uprising began in the small town of Modin when a priest name Mattithias killed another Jew who had come forth to worship the idol put by the Assyrian soldiers in the center of town. It ended with the rededication of the Temple in 165 BC. It is a festival that celebrates God’s protection and provision.

We know that Jesus celebrated Chanukah because He was in the temple in Jerusalem during the Feast of Dedication when He declared that unbelief of those in the temple was caused, despite His miracles, because those there were not His sheep, that His sheep know His voice and follow it, and that He and the Father are both separate and one. (John 10:23-30)

There are two curious things about the celebration of Chanukah that point to Christ. First is not so much the celebration of Chanukah as the celebration of Christmas. We know that for the shepherds to be out as they are described in Luke (2:8-15), it had to be spring. Yet, in 325 AD, when the Council of Nicaea decided to set a date to celebrate Christ’s birth, a celebration that is not commanded or even alluded to in the Bible, they picked December 25. The curious thing is that our month of December roughly corresponds to the Hebrew month Kislev and that Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication, begins on Kislev 25. How appropriate to tie the remembrance of our own fallen state, God’s victory and our ability to dedicate ourselves to Him to the fallen state of the Jews under Antiochus, God’s victory and their being able to rededicate the temple and themselves to Him.

The other curious thing is in the celebration of Chanukah itself. The regular lampstand used in Jewish ceremonies is called a menorah and has seven branches, symbolizing the seven days of creation. Seven branches for seven days, all branches equally sized and spaced. The lampstand used for Chanukah is called a Chanukiah, but is often referred to just as a menorah. Chanukah lasts eight days, but the chanukiah does not have eight branches. It has nine. Where the standard, everyday menorah as branches of equal height and spacing, eight of the branches of the Chanukiah are of equal height and are equally spaced and the ninth is set apart, usually higher. This candle that is set above is called the shammash, the title given to a helper in a synagogue, like a combination of a deacon and secretary. This elevated candle, this shammash, is lit first and from it’s light the other eight candles are lit. The shammash, of course, Christians say is the light of the Messiah that enables the rest us to become lights in a dark world. Each night of Chanukah, as we light first the shammash then the number of candles corresponding to the day of Chanukah, we remember that it is His light that lights us.

The Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus narrates in his book, Jewish Antiquities XII, how the victorious Judas Maccabeus ordered lavish yearly eight-day festivities after rededicating the Temple in Jerusalem that had been profaned by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Josephus does not say the festival was called Hanukkah but rather the "Festival of Lights":

"Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored God, and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when, after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura, that it might serve as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies."

The eight-day rededication of the temple is described in 1 Maccabees 4:36 et seq, though the name of the festival and the miracle of the lights do not appear here. A story similar in character, and obviously older in date, is the one alluded to in 2 Maccabees 1:18 according to which the relighting of the altar fire by Nehemiah was due to a miracle which occurred on the 25th of Kislev, and which appears to be given as the reason for the selection of the same date for the rededication of the altar by Judah Maccabee.