Judas Maccabeus rededicates the temple: the first Hanukkah
Judas retook Jerusalem, pulled down the defiled altar, built a new one, and rededicated the temple on the 25th of Chislev, three years to the day after the pagan sacrifices began. The eight-day celebration became the Feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah.
It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in Solomon’s porch.
John 10:22–23 (World English Bible)
The priests found the sanctuary desolate, its gates burned, and weeds growing in the courts. They stored the stones of the polluted altar on the temple mount until a prophet should arise to say what to do with them, built a new altar of uncut stones, and relit the lampstand. For eight days the people celebrated with songs, harps, and cymbals, and they decreed that the feast be kept every year.
Daniel had heard that after “two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings” the sanctuary would be “cleansed” (Daniel 8:14). Nearly two centuries later Jesus walked in the temple during this feast, and told the crowd that the Father had “sanctified” him and sent him into the world (John 10:36).
Places
Ancient witnesses outside the Bible
Historical sources, not Scripture.
- 1 Maccabees 4:36–59
- 2 Maccabees 10:1–8
- Antiquities 12.7.6–7 — Josephus says the feast was called Lights
Dating notes
The 25th of Chislev in the 148th Seleucid year (December 164 BC). The date shown is the conventional one. Ussher counts the Seleucid years of 1 Maccabees from autumn 312 BC, which puts it a year earlier; he dates it to December 165 BC. The 2,300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8:14 are read either as 2,300 days (about six and a half years, counted from the troubles that began around 171 BC) or as 1,150 days of missed evening and morning sacrifices (a little over three years). The story of one day's oil burning for eight days comes from the Talmud, centuries later; it isn't in 1 or 2 Maccabees.