Historical Illuminations: Origins of Hanukkah
Explore the historical origins of Hanukkah in this illuminating blog by Dr. Alyssa M. Cady, Director of the Temple Emanu-El Center for Interfaith Dialogue. From the Persian Empire to the Maccabean Revolt, discover how ancient events shaped the Festival of Lights.
Written by Dr. Alyssa M. Cady
Director, Temple Emanu-El Center for Interfaith Dialogue
Revised from a lecture given on December 8, 2023
Spanning some five hundred years, from the 6th to 1st centuries BCE, you’ll note four time periods in Figure 1: the Persian Period to the Hellenistic, followed by the Maccabean Period to the Roman. Each period is marked by the dominant cultural force at the time and is always initiated by the rise of an imperial power in the eastern Mediterranean. The Persian Period begins in the 6th century BCE with the fall of the Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid king, Cyrus the Great. With the rise of Achaemenid Persia came the end of the Babylonian Exile, when King Cyrus allowed the descendants of those forcibly relocated to Babylon to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, known as the Second Temple, thus inaugurating the Second Temple Period in 516 BCE.
For roughly two-hundred years, Judah remained a territory of the Achaemenids until the meteoric rise of a single Macedonian king: Alexander the Great (356 BCE-323 BCE).
One of the greatest military minds in history, Alexander the Great would conquer a swath of land stretching from the Balkans to southern Egypt and eastward to India before his 33rd birthday. It was only when his own soldiers threatened to mutiny on the shores of the Indus River that Alexander turned back toward the west, catching and eventually succumbing to a virus in the ancient city of Babylon along the way. Upon his deathbed, his generals asked to whom his vast empire should go. Alexander is known to have answered, simply: “To the strongest”.[1] Heeding his words, his generals carved up the conquered territories for themselves and competing with one another for the next 300 years. This era is known as the Hellenistic Period. It is characterized by the proliferation of Greek language, culture, and civic structures across the Mediterranean and the Near East by the successors to Alexander’s legacy. The most important successor kingdom for our purposes is Seleucid Persia, the inheritor of the former Achaemenid Empire and ruler of Judah by the 2nd century BCE (Fig. 3).
According to some sources, the Seleucids actively Hellenized – or Greek-ified – the territory of Judah. Indeed, it is only in the Hellenistic Period that we see the name “Judah” come to be replaced by “Judea”.
2nd Maccabees, a source that we will discuss shortly, portrays the Seleucids as persecutors of Judea, hellbent on eradicating the customs outlined in the Torah. Such were the conditions, the author of 2nd Maccabees contends, that led to the rise of a minor priestly family known as the Hasmoneans against the more far powerful Seleucids. The text describes the High Priest, Jason Onias, in bleak terms, and understands his cooperation with the Seleucid government as blasphemy and betrayal. On the other hand, 2nd Maccabees depicts the Hasmoneans as the righteous restorers of the cult of Israel, as even models them upon biblical figures such as Phinehas and Hezekiah. This view put forward by 2nd Maccabees should be balanced against its pro-Hasmonean agenda. While the Hasmoneans condemned the High Priest for cooperating with the Seleucids, the success of the Maccabean Revolt – and thus Judean independence – depended in large part upon the support of the Roman Empire, who began expanding into the eastern Mediterranean at this time. The situation on the ground was far more complicated than our sources might indicate. Rather than a united Israel standing against the hegemony of a regional superpower, even the author of 2nd Maccabees acknowledges that many Judeans did not passively submit to Greek culture but rather wholeheartedly adopted it, especially in Jerusalem.
Thus, the Maccabean Revolt seems rooted in a rigorist understanding of Torah that was incompatible with certain Greek customs such as, say, participation in the gymnasium or sponsoring the Olympic games. Indeed, modern scholarship tends to view the Maccabean Revolt as a civil war fought between rigorists and moderates, where both sides enlisted larger empires such as Rome, Seleucia, and Egypt for aid. The crux of the conflict hinges upon the monolatry of Torah – centered upon the sole worship of the God of Israel – and the polytheism of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Indeed, the temples of most ancient cities found space for multiple gods and incorporated regional iterations of major deities as well. This is why we find Zeus in Greece appear as Jupiter in Rome. This plurality of worship led the Seleucid kings to establish a cult of Zeus Olympios at the Jerusalem Temple – for from the Seleucid perspective, Zeus Olympios would have been yet another iteration of the God of Israel. On the flip side, the monolatry of the Maccabean interpretation of Torah led the Hasmonean Dynasty to lead a guerilla force of so-called Hasideans – or “zealous ones” – against the Seleucids. By the winter of 164 BCE, the Hasmonean militia had taken Judea and asserted control over the Jerusalem Temple – thus initiating the Hasmonean Period and a century of Judean semi-independence. One of the first acts of the Maccabees was to cleanse the Temple; over the span of eight days, the Maccabees – as self-appointed high priests of the Jerusalem Temple – purified the altar and rededicated the temple. To commemorate their victory over the Seleucids as well as the rededication of the temple, the Maccabees officially inaugurated the celebration of Hanukkah into the Judean festal calendar on the 25th day of Kislev.
We will discuss the earliest days of Hanukkah in part three of this article. For now, however, let us note the transition from the Maccabean Period to the Roman in 63 BCE, when Pompeii the Great formally annexed the Hasmonean Kingdom into the Roman Empire and thus ended a century of Judaic home rule. Within a century and a half, Judea would stage yet another revolt against its rulers – this time with disastrous consequences. Beginning in 66 CE, after decades of incompetence and oppression at the hands of the Herodians and Roman governors, the people of Judea rebelled against Rome in a move towards political independence. Unlike the Maccabean Revolt and the subsequent rededication of the Temple, this act of rebellion would lead to the Roman conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Second Temple. While we know that Hanukkah continued in private homes, the Roman sack of Jerusalem destabilized the celebration that was previously centered on the Temple. Over the next two-thousand years, the festival would continue to evolve until reaching the form we celebrate here today.
Sources and Methods
In part two, we will explore the earliest surviving evidence for the inauguration of Hanukkah. There are seven such sources that shed light upon the origins of the festival. Beginning with the near-contemporary texts of 1 and 2 Maccabees and ending with the speculations of early Medieval commentators, these sources span some 12 hundred years and range greatly in their historical value. Some resemble flashes of light, granting mere glimpses of the ancient past; others paint more colorful pictures of the Hasmonean Dynasty, but do so only from the imaginative lens of rabbis writing seven centuries after the first hanukkiya was lit.
We begin with 1 and 2 Maccabees, our closest sources to the inauguration of Hanukkah. The earliest, 1 Maccabees, was likely composed sometime at the end of the 2nd century BCE. Although the Hebrew original no longer survives, we may turn to its Greek copy for a recounting of Judea’s revolt against Seleucid Persia and the rise of the Hasmonean Dynasty. Likewise composed in Greek at the end of the 2nd century, 2 Maccabees is an independent account of the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucids. This text is far more elaborate and moralizing than its earlier counterpart and focuses upon the persecution of Judea by the Persian government, emphasizing the power of God in overcoming tyranny as well as Judea’s resistance to external corruption. Both 1 and 2 Maccabees describe the inauguration of Hanukkah as a celebration of the purification and rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, though they differ greatly in the details.
Following 1 and 2 Maccabees is the Megillat Taanit or Scroll of Fasting, a list of several dozen holidays celebrated in Judea near the end of the Second Temple Period. Written in Aramaic by the Pharisees at the turn of the first century CE, the list commemorates those festivals marked by some kind of miracle during which fasting was forbidden. Although Chanukah features as the 25th entry, very little information may be gleaned from it. A more elaborate description comes from the commentary that accompanies the Scroll of Fasting. Called the Scholion, this text is in fact an amalgamation of various traditions – a hybrid of multiple sources providing their own, independent reasoning for the festivals listed in the Scroll. This Scholion – or, more acurately, Scholia – likely originated in the 9th or 10th century, albeit with much more ancient material woven throughout. Its usefulness in understanding the origins of Hanukkah therefore remains unclear.
Active at the same time as the Pharisees, however, is the Greco-Roman-Jewish historian, Josephus (b. 37 CE).
A first-hand witness to the conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, Josephus is one of our best sources for life in the Levant following the end of the Hasmonean regime. A true scholar, Josephus pursued his own investigation of the origins of Hanukkah in his two major works, Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish War. Heavily indebted to 1 and 2 Maccabees, Josephus follows the general structure of his sources while adapting them to his own times. With the smoke from the wreckage of the Temple still smoldering, Josephus incorporates the principle of religious freedom for Jews into his sources while simultaneously censoring the more inflammatory call for Judea’s sovereignty. Thus, Josephus’ account more accurately reflects the lived experience of Jews in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple, rather than record the celebration of its festivals two hundred years earlier. For example, the notion of Hanukkah as the Festival of Lights does not actually appear in the sources until Josephus, who uses the notion of light symbolically to advocate for the freedom of religious expression for the Jews of Judea, newly conquered by the Roman Empire and acutely vulnerable to the violence of colonialism and the religious hegemony of a polytheistic empire.
Our final source from the end of the Second Temple Period comes from a community of sectarian Jews who identified Israel’s messiah with a prophet executed by the Romans in the early 30’s CE, Jesus of Nazareth. Known to scholars as the Johannine community – so named for the texts ascribed to the disciple, John, in the New Testament – this group produced one of four canonical gospels used by Christians to this day. Yet while the Gospel of John does reference the celebration of Hanukkah, the festival itself sets the scene for an episode from Jesus’ ministry, rather than take center stage in the narrative. Like the Scroll of Fasting, the Gospel of John references the festival of Hanukkah in passing as part of a larger political and theological agenda.
While these more ancient texts provide evidence of the importance of Hanukkah in the Maccabean and early Roman periods, it appears that the festival failed to garner much rabbinic interest until the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, otherwise known as the Bavli, which not reach stable form until the 7th century CE. Indeed, while holidays such as Purim receive whole Tractates devoted to their laws and procedures, Tannaitic literature glosses over Hanukkah almost entirely. Neither Mishnah nor Midrash dedicate more than a few passing references to the holiday, nor can such a lacuna be explained by the post-Pentateuchal origins of Hanukkah (since Purim itself comes from the Book of Esther, composed in the same century as 1 and 2 Maccabees). Speculative explanations for this silence abound but remain simply that – speculation. Regardless, it is not until the Amoraic commentators responsible for the Bavli that we begin to learn of legends and traditions that we might recognize today. For example, the familiar story of the miracle of the oil does not appear in any source until the Babylonian Talmud; that is, until around the 5th century – roughly seven hundred years after the events of the Hasmonean Revolt and celebration of the first Hanukkah.
What we learn from our survey of the ancient sources is that the work of “doing history” is grounded in sporadic sources whose context may be difficult to parse. Oftentimes, the end-product of such labor more closely resembles a patchwork quilt than a photo-realistic image of the past, leaving an impression of what “actually happened” but not a complete picture. In part three, we will try to put these pieces together and answer the following questions. What did the first Hanukkah look like? Why was it celebrated for eight days, and what did it celebrate? Finally, what light can the contexts of the sources shed upon the various portrayals of Hanukkah – as a festival of lights, as one of rededication, or even as a would-be Sukkot?
Hanukkah and the Hasmoneans
As I discussed in part one of this article, the Maccabean Revolt initiated a century of Judean home-rule known as the Hasmonean or Maccabean Period. Named for the progenitor of the Hasmonean Dynasty, Mattathias, and his son, Judas Maccabeus – the so-called “Hammer” – the Hasmonean Period witnessed a program of reforms throughout Judea and its neighboring territories. Characterized by a rigorist interpretation of the Torah and the cult of the Jerusalem Temple, the Maccabees dramatically expanded the borders of the Hasmonean Kingdom in the years after the revolt (Fig. 5).
Along with this expansion came a series of hegemonic policies intended to unify the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In practice, these reforms involved the forcible conversion of newly conquered territories to the cult of the Jerusalem Temple and the destruction of indigenous cultic spaces like the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim, as well as an emphasis on circumcision, kosher, and other aspects of Torah not seen before the Maccabees. Such reforms likewise placed the Hasmoneans at the helm of both civic and cultic power. Eventually, the regime adopted both the title of “king” and “high priest”, even though it had neither Davidic nor Zadokite ancestry. One may see this agenda directly when looking at coinage from the Maccabean Period. For example, one prutah (the smallest denomination of bronze coin) reads in Hebrew: “Yehohanan the High Priest and the Council of the Jews” (Fig. 6).
Yet as controversial as these claims were, the Maccabees remained in control of the Jerusalem Temple and its cultic functions until the Roman annexation of 63 BCE. The purification of the altar was one of the first acts of the new Hasmonean regime. In 164 BCE, on heels of victory, the Maccabees took to purifying the altar and rededicating the Temple in honor of the God of Israel. Our two earliest sources record the event. Here I quote 1st Maccabees chapter 4, which is the more straightforward of the two accounts:
Then Judas [Maccabeus] and his brothers said, “See, our enemies are crushed; let us go up to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it.” So all the army assembled and went up to Mount Zion. There they saw the sanctuary desolate, the altar profaned, and the gates burned…[Judas] chose blameless priests devoted to the law, and they cleansed the sanctuary and removed the defiled stones…Then they took unhewn stones, as the law directs, and built a new altar like the former one. They also rebuilt the sanctuary and the interior of the temple, and consecrated the courts….
Both 1st and 2nd Maccabees agree that Judas and his brothers cleansed the temple on the 25th day of Chislev, immediately after retaking Jerusalem. 2nd Maccabees agrees with the events of its textual counterpart, but adds the following information:
The Lord leading them on…[Maccabeus and his brothers] purified the sanctuary and made another altar of sacrifice…they offered sacrifices, after a lapse of two years, and they offered incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the Presence. [Afterward], they fell prostrate and implored the Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortunes, but that, if they should ever sin, they might be disciplined with forbearance…but not be handed over to blasphemous and barbarous nations. It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the [Seleucid] foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place…
Along with 1st Maccabees, this account stresses that the purification of the Temple took place on the anniversary of when the Seleucids first defiled it. Thus, the rededication ceremony takes on a ritualized tone that commemorates the failings and triumphs of not only the Hasmoneans, but also past and future Judeans. It is no accident that the prayer in 2nd Maccabees recalls the past and nods toward the future by equating divine punishment with dispossession by foreigners; for 2nd Maccabees, God’s favor and political sovereignty are mutually inclusive conditions that hinge upon the purity of the Jerusalem Temple – a purity, sovereignty, and favor maintained by the Maccabees, of course. In contrast to 1 Maccabees, however, this source emphasizes the Hasmoneans’ intimacy with God, who presides over them in battle and who leads them to recover the Temple. Note that there is no mention of “blameless priests” as there was in the earlier account; rather, it is Judas and his brothers who cleanse the Temple, oversee the resumption of sacrifices, and beseech the Lord on behalf of Judea – all actions typically ascribed to the high priest.
The process of cleansing and rededication receives further description in our sources and informs our understanding of the earliest Hanukkah celebrations:
At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, [the altar] was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals. All the people fell on their faces and worshiped and blessed Heaven…So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and joyfully offered…a sacrifice of well-being and a thanksgiving offering. They decorated the front of the temple with golden crowns and small shields…
There was very great joy among the people, and the disgrace brought by the Gentiles was removed. Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year at that season the days of dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness for eight days…
1st Maccabees describes the original Hanukkah as an eight-day celebration full of music, prayer, offerings of thanksgiving, and decorations. Held in honor of the Hasmonean victory over the Seleucids, the festival more broadly celebrates the rededication of the altar while recalling the “disgrace” of foreign rule and religion. How does this source compare with its slightly later counterpart? For its part, 2nd Maccabees gives a similar account but with one major difference: a description of the first Hanukkah by appealing to the festival of Sukkot, otherwise known as the Fest of Booth or Tabernacles. The account reads:
They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, remembering how not long before, during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and fronds of palm, as well; they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.
Much scholarly ink has been spilled to explain the connection between Hanukkah and Sukkot, but I think this is an overcomplication of the text. 2nd Maccabees does not claim that Hanukkah is Sukkot, but rather that it is celebrated like Sukkot. That is, Chanukah is a joyful festival featuring branches of palm and other natural elements, as well as music and the giving of thanks – just like Sukkot. Even the reference to caves and wilderness may be explained when considering the context of the Chanukah festival, which recalls a time when the “assembly of Israel” was forced to worship without a functioning Temple and yet was guided by God to better times – again, just like Sukkot.
A similar approach might be taken to the later sources discussed earlier. Before concluding, I’d like to briefly highlight one ancient source whose account has shaped the modern understanding of Hanukkah: the writing of Josephus, penned in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple. What makes his report special is that Josephus is the first author to describe Chanukah as the festival of lights.
Suffice it to say that when Vespasian, the future emperor of Rome, finally broke through the fortifications of Yodfat before moving on to destroy the Second Temple in Jerusalem, he probably did not expect to stumble upon one of the most important writers of the early empire. Once a general fighting against the Romans in the Great Jewish Revolt, Josephus is better known today as historian of the late Second Temple Period. Though heavily indebted to the accounts of 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Josephus contributes the following:
Judah and his fellow citizens celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the Temple for eight days…and everyone feasted upon rich and splendid sacrifices; and they honored God, and delighted themselves with psalms of praise and the playing of harps. Indeed, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs and, after so long a time, having unexpectedly regained their right to worship, that [the citizens] made it a law for their posterity that they should keep a festival celebrating the restoration of their Temple worship for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this, which we call the Festival of Lights [phôta], because, I imagine, beyond our hopes this right was brought to light [phanênai], and so this name was placed on the festival.
While the contours remain approximately the same, Josephus dubs the celebration “the Festival of Lights”. An explanation for this move may be found in the historical context of Josephus’ writing; indeed, when Vespasian encountered Josephus at the siege of Yodfat, the future emperor almost had him killed along with the rest of the Jewish resistance. Thinking quickly, Josephus claimed that his god – the God of Israel – had sent him a prophetic vision in which Vespasian would become the next emperor of Rome. Vespasian not only decided to spare Josephus’ life, but also kept him as a personal historian to document his triumphant conquest of Judea. The rest, as they say, is history. In this context though, Josephus could not follow the claims of his sources – 1st and 2nd Maccabees – which viewed Hanukkah as a celebration of Judea’s independence from foreign powers emblematized by the Jerusalem Temple. Rather, Josephus describes Hanukkah as a popular festival amongst the Jewish citizens of Rome, emphasizing the Jews’ “right to worship” their own god, alone, amidst the wider polytheistic cults of the Roman Empire. Here, light serves as a metaphor for religious freedom, the menorah serving as the focal point of worship over the altar. The celebration evolves to this day.
[1] Diodorus Siculus 1989, XVII, 117.