In a 1956 attempt to establish the existence of a Maccabean-inspired national resistance movement in the first century, William Farmer responded to the question, “Were the Maccabees Remembered?” by appealing to evidence for popular celebrations commemorating the Maccabean revolt:
“We rest the case for our thesis that the Maccabees were remembered by the Jews in Palestine during the first century A.D. on the fact that there were national holidays celebrated annually by the Jews in this period which commemorated certain great events from the time of the Maccabees.” [1]The most important and most widely attested such festival was Hanukkah:
“No one questions the fact that the festival of Hanukkah was instituted in the time of the Maccabees to commemorate the rededication of the temple after it had been recovered and cleansed from the defiling hands of the Seleucids by the victorious Judas and his brothers.” [2] (133).N.T. Wright, who wonders why Farmer’s book was “so long neglected,” goes further: Hanukkah was a “big annual festival” that “was enthusiastically observed in Jesus’ day.” [3] The festival’s popularity is important because it means “a far wider circle than simply the literate few would have known the story; the connection of revolt against the pagans, action in the Temple, and the establishment of a royal house was firmly impressed on the popular mind.” [4]
Because first-century Jews knew the story and had Maccabees on the mind, otherwise obscure similarities take on major significance. Wright endorses Farmer’s brilliant suggestion that Jesus’ triumphal entry and Temple cleansing were “Maccabean actions” that recalled Judas’s purification of the Temple in 164 BCE. [5]
Gerd Theissen argues in much the same way from the celebration of Hanukkah to a precise parallel between the Maccabean revolt and Jesus’ eschatological discourse in Mark 13: “The annual Feast of Dedication … kept alive memories of the Maccabean revolt. … Thanks to the Feast of Dedication, every Jew, whether educated in the law or not, knew (1) what the ‘desolating sacrilege’ was, and (2) that it had already, once before, been the occasion for flight to the mountains.” [6]
I hope to return to Theissen’s and Wright’s proposals in due course. First, let’s examine the evidence. What do we know about the size of the Hanukkah festival in the first century? Can we be confident it was so enthusiastically observed that Jesus’ triumphal entry would have reminded the Passover crowds of Judas’s purification of the temple 200 years earlier?
In this post, I begin with our two most important sources for the Maccabean revolt and the origins of Hanukkah.
Dating 1 and 2 Maccabees
1 Maccabees was written after 134 BCE and almost certainly before 63 BCE. We know that 1 Maccabees was composed during or after the reign of John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE) because 1 Macc 16:24 mentions the annals of John Hyrcanus’s high priesthood. The book’s attempt to legitimate the Hasmonean dynasty through its story of Mattathias and his sons, combined with its positive attitude toward the Romans, secures 63 BCE as the terminus ante quem because that is when the Roman general Pompey brought Judaea under Roman control, ending almost a century of independent Hasmonean rule. [7]
Dating 2 Maccabees is more difficult. A letter attached to the beginning of 2 Maccabees fixes the terminus post quem of the book’s final form to 124 BCE. [8] Although some scholars have proposed dates as late as the mid-first-century CE for the book’s composition, a date before 63 BCE is most likely because (1) as in 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees views the Romans positively (see 2 Macc 4:11); (2) the author would have been unlikely to say that Jerusalem was still “in the possession of the Hebrews” (2 Macc 15:37) after 63 BCE. [9]
Hanukkah in 1 Maccabees
According to 1 Maccabees, there was no initial victory celebration when Judas entered the Temple along with his brothers and the entire Israelite army in 164 BCE:
“There they saw the sanctuary desolate, the altar profaned, and the gates burned. … Then they tore their clothes and mourned with great lamentation; they sprinkled themselves with ashes and fell face down on the ground” (1 Macc 4:38-40a NRSV).After inspecting the desecrated Temple compound, Judas assigned priests to tear down the altar Antiochus had defiled, to build a new altar, and to rebuild the Temple and its furnishings (1 Macc 4:41-51). When this work was finished, the people fell on their faces again, but this time with joy instead of lamentation:
53 [T]hey rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt offering that they had built. 54 At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals. 55 All the people fell on their faces and worshiped and blessed Heaven, who had prospered them. 56 So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and joyfully offered burnt offerings; they offered a sacrifice of well-being and a thanksgiving offering. 57 They decorated the front of the temple with golden crowns and small shields; they restored the gates and the chambers for the priests, and fitted them with doors. 58 There was very great joy among the people, and the disgrace brought by the Gentiles was removed. 59 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, beginning with the twenty-fifth day of the month of Chislev. (1 Macc 4:53-59 NRSV)Hanukkah in 2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees contains three descriptions of Hanukkah:
(1) In the form we have it, 2 Maccabees begins with two letters. The first was sent in 124 BCE to “the Jewish brothers in Egypt” (1:1-9). The letter appears to quote from an earlier letter sent in 143 BCE that describes a period of affliction that began in the years after Jason departed from the land, when the Jews in Judaea prayed, offered sacrifices, “lit the lamps and set out the loaves” (1:7-8). The letter concludes by requesting the addressees to “keep the days of Tabernacles in the month of Chislev” (1:9). Remarkably, the embedded letter from 143 BCE does not refer directly to Antiochus Epiphanes, but dates the beginning of affliction to the departure of Jason—one of the leading Jewish “Hellenizers”—an event that occurred during Antiochus’s reign (175-164 BCE), and that is described in 2 Macc 5. Hanukkah is not mentioned in the quotation from the 143 BCE letter either, although it may be implied in the reference to sacrifices (1:8), especially as the 124 BCE letter concludes by asking the Jews in Egypt to celebrate a festival during the month of Chislev. [10]
(2) A much longer second letter (1:10-2:18) of dubious authenticity counts Judas among its authors and claims to have been sent to “the Jews in Egypt,” presumably on the occasion of the first celebration of Hanukkah in 164 BCE. [11]
Unlike the first letter, this letter makes the connection between the rededication of the Temple and the celebration of Hanukkah explicit:
“1:18 Since on the twenty-fifth day of Chislev we shall celebrate the purification of the temple, we thought it necessary to notify you, in order that you also may celebrate the festival of booths and the festival of the fire given when Nehemiah, who built the temple and the altar, offered sacrifices. … 2:16 Since, therefore, we are about to celebrate the purification, we write to you. Will you therefore please keep the days? 17 It is God who has saved all his people, and has returned the inheritance to all, and the kingship and the priesthood and the consecration, 18 as he promised through the law. We have hope in God that he will soon have mercy on us and will gather us from everywhere under heaven into his holy place, for he has rescued us from great evils and has purified the place.” (2 Macc 1:18, 2:16-17 NRSV)(3) The longest description of the rededication of the Temple and its accompanying festival appears in the body of the book. As it is difficult to excerpt, I quote the passage in full:
“1 Now Maccabeus and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple and the city; 2 they tore down the altars that had been built in the public square by the foreigners, and also destroyed the sacred precincts. 3 They purified the sanctuary, and made another altar of sacrifice; then, striking fire out of flint, they offered sacrifices, after a lapse of two years, and they offered incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the Presence. 4 When they had done this, 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 by him with forbearance and not be handed over to blasphemous and barbarous nations. 5 It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Chislev. 6 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. 7 Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. 8 They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.” (2 Macc 10:1-8 NRSV)The final form of 2 Maccabees, with its two appended letters urging the celebration of Hanukkah, shows that the festival was important to an author in the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE. But the very fact that letters had to be sent to Egypt repeatedly shows that, at least in the Diaspora, it was not universally observed at this time.
Evaluation
Our two earliest sources for the celebration of Hanukkah describe the origin of the festival, and confirm that it originated in connection with the rededication of the Temple in 164 BCE. But they are not actually evidence for first-century CE memories of the Maccabean revolt. For one thing, both books were almost certainly composed before the Roman invasion that brought independent Hasmonean rule to an end in 63 BCE. For another, the books themselves do not prove that the stories they tell about the Maccabees were well known in the first century, since, as I mentioned in the previous post, we have very little concrete evidence for the circulation of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the first century CE.
More on first-century evidence for the celebration of Hanukkah in a subsequent post.
Other Posts in This Series
Part 1: First-Century Memories of the Maccabees -- A Footnote with Footnotes
Part 3: First-Century Memories of the Maccabees Part 3: Hanukkah in the First Century
Part 4: Memories of the Maccabees in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Part 5: The Maccabean Revolt and the Success of Hasmonean Propaganda
Footnotes
[1] William Reuben Farmer, Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: An Inquiry into Jewish Nationalism in the Greco-Roman Period (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1956), 132.
[2] Ibid., 133.
[3] Nicholas Thomas Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 582, 492, emphasis added.
[4] Ibid., 492.
[5] “Maccabean actions” is Wright’s phrase (Ibid., 493). For Farmer’s proposal, see William Reuben Farmer, “Palm Branches in John 12:13,” JTS 3.1 (1952): 62–66; Farmer, Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus, vii–viii, 198–200.
[6] Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 158 note 66, emphasis added.
[7] Uriel Rappaport, “Maccabees, First Book Of,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 904, dates the book during John Hyrcanus’s reign (134-104 BCE). According to George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 106, “a date between 104 and 63 BCE is probable.” Michael Tilly, 1 Makkabäer, HTKAT (Freiburg: Herder, 2015), 48, opts “für die Zeit vor oder kurz nach seinem Tod.”
[8] See 2 Macc 1:9 and the discussion in Robert Doran, 2 Maccabees: A Critical Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 33. For an alternative dating of the letter to 143/142 BCE see Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, CEJL (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 11–15, 519–29.
[9] See Frank Shaw, “2 Maccabees,” in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint, ed. James K. Aitken (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2015), 275–77. Doran, 2 Maccabees, 14–15, refuses to assign a date, but agrees with John R. Bartlett, The First and Second Books of the Maccabees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 215, that the main body of “the book may belong almost anywhere in the last 150 years B.C.”
[10] My interpretation of the letter follows Doran, 2 Maccabees, 23–38, closely. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 11–15, 143, 519–29, argues that the letter should be dated to 143 BCE (following 2 Macc 1:7), and that the date in 1:9 should read “the 148th year” (=164 BCE) instead of “the 188th year” (=124 BCE). I find Doran’s response compelling (2 Maccabees, 28–33).
[11] Doran, 2 Maccabees, 62–63 concludes that the attribution to Judas is a forgery because the letter’s worldview seems to presuppose Judaea’s complete independence. According to Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 144, “it cannot be excluded that it is based upon an original going back to Judas himself …. However, if there was such an authentic kernel, it grew.”
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