"Hanukkah - Part 2"
How does the celebration of Hanukkah, a festival NOT found in the Old Testament, provide greater insight into biblical themes such as the Messiah? How is Hanukkah handled in the New Testament?
Go to "Hanukkah - Part 2".
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The Jewish Holiday Season
In John 9, Jesus does a messianic miracle: He gives sight to a blind person, blind from birth.
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” (John 9:1-2)
“Who sinned, him or his parents?”
There were three pilgrim feasts described in Leviticus 23 when the Jews had to come from all over to Jerusalem to celebrate. The Spring feasts were “Pesach” and “Ha Shavu’ot” (Weeks, Pentecost), and in the Autumn the Feast of Taberhacles, “Ha Sukkot”. However, by Jesus’ day, Hannukah became a fourth festival when a lot of Jews (although it was not mandatory by the Torah), would have come to Jerusalem for Hanukkah.
Instead of walking all the way down from Galilee just to turn around and go back, and then having to come back again several weeks later for Hanukkah, it is possible that Jesus would have hung out in Jerusalem. It was a long journey then by foot.
So this became the Jewish holiday season, that lasts from Autumn into early Winter. We have a lot of holidays together.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.