on celebrating hanukkah
shamash the sun god
shamash in hebrew scripture
the shamash puzzle
chemosh and shamash
I am indebted to Nehemiah Gordon, whose original research with verifiable sources laid a solid foundation for this history of Hanukkah documentation.
Hanukkah Fact and Fiction – Nehemiah Gordon
Ancient Hebrew Roots of Hanukkah – Nehemiah Gordon
Hanukkah Timeline (h/t Nehemiah Gordon)
-332; Alexander the Great Conquers Persian Empire
-312; Year 1 of the “Seleucid Era”
-301; Egyptian Ptolemy Greeks Conquer Israel
-200; Syrian Seleucid Greeks Conquers Israel under Antiochus III
-168; Desecration of the Temple by Seleucid King Antiochus IV
-167; “Hellenization” Decrees of Antiochus IV
-165; Liberation of Temple by Judah the Maccabee;First Hanukkah
-130; 1 Maccabees: Hanukkah celebrates the Dedication of the Altar
-100; 2 Maccabees: Hanukkah celebrates a Second Sukkot and Puros
-90; First Historical Reference to Pharisees
-63; Beginning of Roman Rule
-37; Herod the Great
70; Destruction of Second Temple
93; Josephus: “Festival of Lights” (phota)
132; Bar Kochba Revolt Against Rome
200; Talmud: Story of Eight Days of Miraculous Oil
The original history of the Maccabees and the First Hanukkah is found in 1st Maccabees and 2nd Maccabees.
The only reference to what became known as Hanukkah in Scripture is:
It was the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in Solomon’s porch. Joh 10:22-23
The miracle of the oil is first mentioned in a commentary of the Babylonian Talmud according to every source I checked. Nehemiah in the above articles lists its first appearance at 200 AD; My Jewish Learning lists its first appearance at approximately 600 years after the events of the Maccabees, so about twice as long as Nehemiah. At any rate, 350 years to 600 years after the event is a long time to remain silent on such a fantastic miracle, if it happened. This is why I now believe the miracle of the oil is a fiction.
The Hanukkah menorah with nine branches is a relatively modern invention beginning with European Jewish families in the 1880s, according to The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel by historian Steven Fine.
The dreidel game is also of late origin, perhaps the 16th century according to Time.
My Jewish Learning goes even further, connecting the dreidel to Christmas traditions:
As a matter of fact, all of these elaborate explanations were invented after the fact. The dreidel game originally had nothing to do with Hanukkah; it has been played by various people in various languages for many centuries.
And The Kabbalah of the Dreidel does not even hide it’s occult connection, but proclaims it.
Please use these links and resources as a springboard for your own studies. Thank you, Nehemiah Gordon, and Kraig and Anne Elliott, for sharing this information with me.
I had heard some of this same information last year – the late addition of the “miracle of the oil”, but that was news about the dreidel!
Still… there is a difference in “worshiping YHVH as the nations do” and playing a children’s game (as the one article stated.)
I was rather shocked, myself, when I read Maccabees for the first time this year to discover the only mention of the dedication of the temple is in Ch 4, no mention of oil whatsoever.
Kind of reminds me a little of the other traditions we have followed for years, not realizing the origins.
Yes, it was a shock to me as well. I encourage everyone to take this information as a starting point and do your own research. Let YHVH lead us into all truth! <3
The above scripture from John led me to believe that it was not what we consider as the modern celebration of Chanukah. The fact that this was a continuous discussion of Messiahs time in Jerusalem during Sukkot and the Eighth day. There is no redirection it is a continuation. We look at the word winter with a Greek mindset and assume this is talking about what we know to be Chanukah. (Two seasons in Israel are summer and winter.) I believed that the Messiah celebrated or memorialized Chanukah because of that equivocation with winter. One day while I was reading it a light went off! We were in Jerusalem during the seventh month not the tenth…. it is continuous. I then did a search for dedication/Chanukah first mention is dedication of the alter in Numbers. Then I saw 2 Chronicles 7:9 Bam the light went on! Yeshua was standing on Solomon’s Porch of the Herods Temple on The Eighth Day, the day of dedication according to 2 Chronicles 7:9. What an awesome event that took place in Solomon’s Temple that day! Perhaps He was not thinking about Maccabees or celebrating the later invention of Chanukah. Perhaps he was meditating on the eighth day! The prophetic timing and the past occurrences are very deep here. I praise YHVH for letting me see this. I do not light a false menorah for a made up festival. I do however light up the Menorah (7 Branch) on the evening of the 25th of Kislev to remember how YHVH preserved his Torah and his people by raising up the Maccabees to fight for his caus in those days. All things work towards his will! Praise his glorious name!!!
Toni thank you so much for visiting today and for sharing your insight. Please do come back again!
I read through your series of posts about Hanukkah and I have some information that it seems you have missed. With regard to the word “shamash,” although it is related to the root Sh-M-Sh which can mean “sun,” it is also related to words meaning to use or to utilize (lehiShtaMeSh = to use, ShiMuShi = useful, hiShtaMaShti = I used, meShuMaSh = used, etc.), and it is from these words that the shamash candle got its name; because it is used/utilized to light the other candles. If you want to argue that the root for the word is from Aramaic, that’s fine as well, given that that was the lingua franca at the time (it was the lingua franca even after the times of Jesus, and Jesus himself spoke Aramaic; “E-li E-li, lama sabachtani?”). All that is to say that the name of the 9th candle does not imply a foreign/pagan root to the practice.
With regard to the late textual reference to the miracle of the oil, one must understand the composition of the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud (called Babylonian because it was written by the rabbis who lived in Babylon; modern day Iraq, not because of pagan Babylonian influence) was put together around the year 500 as a compilation of many arguments, discussions, and stories about the Mishnah. This is where you get the latest date. The Mishnah, however, was compiled in Israel at around the year 200; 300 years before the completion of the Talmud (the talmud being a commentary on Mishnah). The Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince who sought to preserve the oral law of the Bible in written form. As such, the contents of the Mishnah are actually much older than 200AD. The Mishnah is structured in such a way that every statement is attributed to one of the rabbis of the second temple period, and the statements about lighting the candles was attributed to rabbis Hillel the Elder and Shammai. The Mishnah states various traditions regarding the lighting of the candles, but the clear answer is that lighting the candles was already seen as a tradition and a religious obligation by the time of Hillel, who was born in the year 110BC. This means that the miracle of the oil was known and the tradition of lighting a 9-branched menorah was practiced before the year 110BC (Hillel would have mentioned had the practice only emerged some time within his lifetime), and therefore would have been practiced by Jesus as well (seeing as nowhere in John does Jesus state any opposition to this practice).
With regard to the Hanukkah menorah, it is true that the version we have nowadays is relatively new (the oldest archeological depiction dating to the 6th century, I believe), but this is because of economics. Originally, small cups of oil were lit, just like in the Temple Menorah, although they could be arrayed in various ways (unlike the Temple Menorah). In medieval times, oil became more expensive and people started replacing oil with wax candles. This does not discredit the tradition of lighting lamps, however.
With regard to the dreidel game, it is obvious that the game itself is of very late origin, however the toy is likely much older, and regardless is not mentioned in any of the ancient Jewish sources. It became a tradition attached to the holiday, but it is not part of the religious observance of Hanukkah. The letters on the dreidel are used to allude to the Hanukkah miracle. The chabad.org article you attached is actually kind of clickbait. It doesn’t include any Kabbalah, but rather gives some ethical teachings and biblical and numerological connections relating to the letters on the dreidel.
As a side note, Kabbalah (literally meaning “that which is received”) is not the occult. It is the mystical tradition of the Bible. The fact that many witches, Wiccans, and Satanists have appropriated and used Kabbalistic imagery and ideas has no bearing on what Kabbalah truly is. At its core, Kabbalah relates to and explains the order/process of creation in Genesis 1 (Maaseh Bereshit) and the vision of the divine chariot in Ezekiel (Maaseh Merkava).
G-d be with you,
Snow