Hanukkah – The Hebrew word meaning consecration or dedication.
This word never appears in Scripture.
In 1864 the Jewish holiday was referred to as the “Festival of Lamps”, but by the end of the 19th century it was changed to the “Festival of Lights”, which has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah isn’t any better or worse than the Christian celebration of Christmas.
The story of Hanukkah is found in the books of the First and Second Maccabees, which describe in detail the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem and the lighting of the menorah. However, these books are not Scripture.
The books of Maccabees were included among the deuterocanonical books added to the Septuagint, a transliteration of the Hebrew Bible, that was originally compiled in the mid-3rd century BCE. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches consider the books of Maccabees as a canonical part of their version of Israel’s Old Testament.
Hanukkah it is an invention by the Jews during the Maccabean age; the 400-year period of God’s silence between Israel’s Masoretic Text Old Testament book of Malachi and Israel’s Koine Greek Old Testament book of Matthew.
During God’s 400 years of silence, the Jews, refusing to believe God, invented a holiday, which if true, in fact means that God lied; God really was not being silent as he stated. They claim, according to The Al HaNissim prayer that is recited on Hanukkah, as an addition to the Amidah prayer:
In the days of Mattiyahu ben Yohanan, high priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the evil Greek kingdom stood up against Your people Israel, to cause them to forget Your Torah and abandon the ways You desire. You, in Your great mercy, stood up for them in their time of trouble; You fought their fight, You judged their judgment, You took their revenge; You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the evil into the hands of the righteous, the sinners into the hands of those who engaged in Your Torah; You made yourself a great and holy name in Your world, and for Your people Israel You made great redemption and salvation as this very day. And then Your sons came to the inner chamber of Your house, and cleared Your Temple, and purified Your sanctuary, and lit candles in Your holy courtyards, and established eight days of Hanukkah for thanksgiving and praise to Your holy name.
This Jewish prayer was formalized in the late 1st century CE, after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; it is not Scripture.
It is interesting to note that the battle, wherein they claim Divine Intervention, was actually a civil war between rival Jewish factions: What began as a Jewish civil war escalated when the king of Syria sided with the Hellenized Jews. The gentile king was intervening in an internal civil war between the Maccabean Jews and the Hellenized Jews, in Jerusalem, over who would be the High Priest.
The second fabrication by the Jews is the claim of a miracle. Again, if God was doing miracles during His stated 400-years of silence, then He lied. We know that someone is lying, and it not God.
The miracle of the one-day supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days is described in the Talmud (a compilation of rabbinical opinions and Jewish laws, not Scripture or Levitican Law), that was committed to writing in the 2nd century CE, about 600 years after the supposed events, described in the books of Maccabees. The Talmud says that after the forces of Antiochus IV had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the former Jewish High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight-days (the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready).
The miracle of the oil does not appear in their corrupt bible book of 1 Maccabees, but a similar story is alluded to in their corrupt bible book of 2 Maccabees, according to which the relighting of the altar fire by Nehemiah was due to a miracle which occurred on the 25th of Kislev, which appears to be given as the reason for the selection of the same date for the rededication of the altar by Judah Maccabee. The account in 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees portrays the feast as a delayed observation of the eight-day Feast of Booths (Sukkot), aka Tabernacles; similarly, 2 Maccabees explains the length of the feast as “in the manner of the Feast of Booths”.
The miracle of the oil is widely regarded as a legend by the Jews and its authenticity has been questioned since the Middle Ages, yet it remains part of Jewish tradition.
See also Bible, Christian, Christmas, Corrupt, Jew, Miracle, Septuagint, Tradition, Transliteration