"Hanukkah - Part 1" - The Traditional Aspect (page 2 of 10)

The Traditional Aspect

Many people will make this kind of argument: “Well, Christmas came from the Roman feast of Saturnalia, the 25th of December; it was a pagan holiday.” Hanukkah was on the 25th of Kislev, the Hebrew month approximating the same time. Virtually all the Hebrew holidays had preexisting Pagan parallels, only the Pagans were giving their thanks following an agricultural cycle, and the Pagans were giving thanks and praise to some other god – for the rain, the sun, the harvest. So the Hebrew holidays would be a polemic against the Pagan’s. God (Yahweh) wanted the Hebrews to thank the true God for the rain, the harvest, and so forth. But when you find people making arguments, “Well, this was a Pagan day and that was a pagan day”, theologically and historically their arguments are very precarious.

The Apostle Paul says to let no one be your judge in regard to a festival or new moon or a Sabbath (Col. 2:16-17). A parallel passage is in Romans 14:4, “Who are you to judge the servant of another? One man esteems one day, one another, let each be convinced in his own mind.” The important thing is that these things be done unto the Lord or else not be done at all.

My main problem with the Christmas celebration is that it is not done unto the Lord. I would rather see it not done at all than done the way it is. We have no idea when Jesus was born. An educated guess might be during the Feast of Tabernacles, but nobody really knows. God didn’t tell us, didn’t see fit to tell us, and obviously it wasn’t that important. He just was.

However, Hanukkah is something different. There is both an historical and a biblical – that is, a New Testament – precedent, for the Feast of Hanukkah. However, most of what we associate with Hanukkah now in Jewish culture – in “Yiddish kiten” – and most of what many Christians who know about it (if they do know about it) comes from something that’s traditional.

Most of the traditions associated with Hanukkah originated not in the ancient world, but in the Middle Ages; even the words of the songs associated with the Feast. The most famous song, “Ma’oz tzur y’shuati” derives from the Hebrew of the Middle Ages, not biblical Hebrew or modern Hebrew.

Hanukkah tradition says that the oil burned for eight days. There was enough oil in the lamp in the menorah in the temple for only one day, but it burned for eight. Again, there is no historical record of that in the book of 1 Macabees or 2 Macabees, and certainly nothing in Scripture; it was developed later. That is not to say it is not true. It may have happened, but it is never recorded in history. It was not mentioned by Josephus in Antiquities in a big way. People wonder how Josephus knew about it, but in his Antiquities much of what is focused on today was not his emphasis.

Hanukkah is the Jewish Feast of Light and the Jewish Feast of Miracles. The miracle was seen not in that the lamp burned eight days, but in that God gave them this incredible victory over this all-powerful enemy. And the light, of course, was when they rededicated the temple and they were able to light the menorah in the temple.

We know from Psalm 119:105:

They Word is a lamp unto my feet
And a light unto my path

So the menorah burning in the temple represented the Word of God to the Hebrews. But the windows of the temple were unique. Normally, windows were built wide on the outside and then going narrow into the inside in order to focus light inside the building. But the shape of the temple where the menorah stood would be wide on the outside and then, to capture as much light as possible from the menorah, focused narrowly so it would shine out over what we call the “Millo” and go from the temple mount onto the City of David below. Hence the idea built into the architecture of the temple was that the light of Yahweh – the light of His Word – would come from the temple. The architecture of the temple illustrated that the Law would go forth from Zion and it would shine out. And so when the temple was rededicated this was the idea, that now we could re-illuminate the menorah.

Today you have things like traditional Hanukkah food. People eat jelly donuts called “sufganiot“. I don’t think they did that in ancient times. They ate “latkas”, potato pancakes, special kinds of knishes, if you like Jewish food.

And then, of course, there’s the “dreidel”: a Yiddish word based on the Hebrew word ” tsvivon”, “to spin” and there’s an acronym on it, “Nes, Gadol, Hya, Po” {A Great Miracle happened here.) They would spin the dreidel and children play the game with the dreidel, the top. What is popularly associated with Hanukkah has little to do with what actually transpired historically, and has little theological significance outside that which the rabbis attributed to it later on.

So there is the historical Hanukkah and the traditional. Another way to look at this is to compare the nativity, as recorded in Luke and Matthew, with the tradition of the church. It’s not just an embellishment; a lot of it is just made up. Tradition says there were three wise men yet you don’t find that in the New Testament. These stories are just made up. So it is with Hanukkah.

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