Chisleu and the following days does not point strongly to its occurrence at the time of the winter solstice being, astronomically regarded, anything more than an accident. If we are to infer that the concurrence of the festival and the solstice is more than an accident and that the great festival of Chisleu existed as a solstitial festival before the character of an historical commemoration was superimposed upon it, this must be on the ground of the nature of the celebration. The feature of the celebration that suggests a connexion with the winter solstice is, of course, the rite of 'kindling the lights', a feature prominent and distinctive enough to have given an alternative name to the festival: the name of the feast that suggests an historical origin-the Feast or Days of Dedication-is as old as 1 Macc. (459 μépaι éykaινισμοῦ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου), is familiar from the references to it in the Gospel of St. John (rà ¿ykaívia, 1022), and remains in use to the present day; the alternative title, 'Lights', is vouched for by Josephus, who says 'from that time (viz. 165 B. C.) until now we celebrate the feast, calling it Pora.'1 Unfortunately Josephus says nothing of the ritual of the 'Lights'; and curiously enough offers a merely conjectural explanation of the name; the feast was so termed, he says, 'because, I suppose, of this liberty (égovoía) beyond our hopes had appeared to us'. The explanation is obviously forced, and it need be mentioned merely as a curiosity of exegesis that Grimm in his commentary on 1 Macc. 459 suggested that the custom of kindling the lights at the festival arose from the name! Neither the first nor the second book of the Maccabees nor Josephus, our earliest authorities for the origin of the feast, gives us any direct information as to the manner of its annual celebration. This we have to infer from their accounts of the original celebration. In this way we gather : (1) That it was marked by sacrificial feasts, by sacrifices, that is to say, of which the people ate the flesh at a sacred meal. What I Macc. 456 says of the original festival is that 'they kept the dedication of the altar eight days, and offered burnt offerings with gladness, and sacrificed a sacrifice of deliverance and praise.' The burnt-offerings here spoken of are not offerings special to 1 Ant. xii. 7'. the feast, but the burnt-offerings of the daily offering together with the additional offerings for the Sabbath and new moon which fell within the days of the festival; these, though in a certain sense a matter of course, are especially mentioned, because in the interval between the profanation of the altar by Antiochus and the dedication of the new altar which was now being celebrated the daily offering of burnt-offerings had been interrupted. This point of view is more clearly put in 2 Macc. Iolff. where we read,' Now Maccabaeus and his followers... after cleansing the sanctuary erected another altar of sacrifice, and striking fire out of flints they offered sacrifice after a lapse of two years with incense, lamps, and the presentation of shewbread.' Josephus refers still indirectly, but more explicitly, to what was the distinctive sacrificial character of the days of the annual celebration-viz. the multiplication of animals sacrificed in peaceofferings for the enjoyment of the people: what he says is that 'Judas with his fellow citizens celebrated with a feast the restoration of the Temple sacrifices (τῆς περὶ τὸν ναὸν θυσίας), omitting no form of pleasure and feasting them (Kaτevάxwv avroús) on the sacrifices which were many and splendid.' This point is of some interest, for it differentiates the Feast of Dedication in respect of sacrificial customs from the two other festal weeks of the year, those viz. of Unleavened Bread and Tabernacles. At those festivals the law of Num. 28, 29 provided that additional 'Loc. cit. A survival of this when sacrifices of peace-offerings had ceased to be possible may be seen in the custom of providing during the festival more sumptuous meals than at other times: especially on the Sunday that fell during the festival it was necessary to provide the costliest fare, even though it was necessary in order to do so to sell one's land or inheritance. Schröder, Gebräuche des Talmudisch-Rabbinischen Judenthums, p. 98 f. Cp. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Table Hymn : Fat dainty foods and fine, And bread baked well and white, With pigeons and red wine On this Sabbath Chanukah night. Your chattels and your lands Put money in your hands To feast Chanukah, &c. Abrahams, Jewish Life, 135. offerings should be made of victims that were not to be eaten by the people, but were to be offered as burnt-offerings or sinofferings. Of such additional offerings at the Feast of Dedication we have no evidence, but the reverse. After the destruction of the Temple, in lieu of the additional sacrifices for the festivals mentioned in Lev. 23 called technically Musaph, an additional service of prayers was introduced in the daily liturgy and was also called the Musaph. But the Jewish liturgy has never recognized a Musaph for the Feast of Dedication. (2) In 2 Macc. io' the description of the original festival closes with these words: So bearing Oúpool and fair boughs and palms, they offered praise,' &c. (3) The name 'Lights' which, according to Josephus, attached to the feast, suggests that the feast was already marked by some such ritual of lights as has certainly marked it since Talmudic times. According to the rubric of the Jewish Prayer Book 'The Feast of Dedication lasts eight days. On the first evening a light is kindled, the number of lights being increased by one on each consecutive evening.' Before the kindling of lights the following blessing is said, 'Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by thy commandments and commanded us to kindle the light of Hanukkah. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who wroughtest miracles for our Fathers in the days of old, at this season.' By the age of the Talmud the ritual of the lights had already given rise to a good deal of casuistry, e. g. if a house had two doors, must a light be placed at each (Shab. 23a)? Is the duty of pronouncing a blessing on the light incumbent on the person who kindles the light only, or also on those who see it? How many times must the blessing be said? On whom was the duty of lighting incumbent ? 2 on women as well as men? (Ib.) In one point of ritual there was a noticeable difference of theory: whereas the House of Hillel defined as the correct practice that which has subsequently prevailed, according to which the number of lights is increased each night, the House of Shammai held that the greatest illumination should take place 1 ועוד מדקא מברכינן אשר קדשנו at top כג .Cp. T. B. Schab. 23a, p .במצותיו וצונו להדליק נר של חנכה .א' ר' יהשוע ב' לוי נשים חייבות בנר שאף היו באותו הנם 2 on the first night, and the number of lights should be decreased by one on each consecutive night. (Shab. 21b.) The sumptuous meals, the fair boughs and palms, the lights, may together suggest an analogy with European Christmas rites, the ultimate connexion of which with solstitial festivals is commonly allowed. In particular the custom of lighting an increasing number of lights as the days of the festival increase might well be one of those symbolic or sympathetic rites which mark or, in the original intention, perhaps, assist the recovery of the Sun's light when the days have been contracted to their shortest and have begun or promise to lengthen, a fit rite for the 'dies natalis Solis invicti'. I say this combination of rites might be derived from a solstitial festival. But the question is: Are they? And in considering this it is certainly important to note how closely they are paralleled, not to say repeated, at other Jewish festivals. The Hanukkah fare may have been the most sumptuous of the year, yet 'good cheer' was characteristic of all the great annual festivals: we would recall that, in Deuteronomy, 'to eat before Yahweh' is virtually a synonym for 'to observe one of the great annual festivals'. The bearing of fair boughs is more conspicuous in the history and modern observance of the Feast of Booths in October than it is of Ḥanukkah in December. It is true that the words of Lev. 2340, 'Ye shall take you on the first day (of the Feast of Booths) the fruit of goodly trees, fronds of palm trees and boughs of thick trees and willows of the brook', may have originally referred to the boughs used in the construction of the festal booths: so it is understood in Neh. 815; but at least as early as the Book of Jubilees they were understood to refer to greenery carried in the hands. Jubilees carries back the Feast of Booths to the age of Abraham, and of Abraham's observation of it says (163) that he took branches of palms and the fruit of goodly trees, and every day going round the altar with the branches seven times a day he prayed and gave thanks to God.' Again Josephus says, 'we keep the festival . . . carrying in our hands branches of myrtle and willow, and a branch of the palm tree, and also a citron'; and the Mishnah tractate Sukkah, c. 3, contains elaborate regulations concerning the lulab, as this arrangement of greenery carried in the hands was termed, and in particular cites Rabbi Yohanan b. Zakkai1 (c. A.D. 70) for his decision after the fall of the Temple that henceforward the lulab should be everywhere carried on every day of the festival, whereas formerly this regulation applied only to Jerusalem, those who were outside Jerusalem carrying the lulab only on the first day. Again the kindling of lights was not peculiar to Ḥanukkah. For example, of the Feast of Booths we read in the Mishnah : 'At the end of the first day of the Feast (of Booths) a descent was made into the court of the women and great preparations were made there. There were golden lamp stands with four golden saucers apiece at the top of their stems, and four youths of priestly lineage with pitchers of oil containing 120 logs in their hands, which they were pouring into the saucers. Out of the rags of the breeches of the priests were wicks made: these were lighted and there was not a house in Jerusalem which was not illuminated by the light in the Temple-Courts (nax n'a) (Sukkah 52). And there is an interesting passage in Josephus that refers to lighted lamps as characteristic of Jewish festivals generally this occurs in the Cont. Ap. ii. 9. Apion says Josephus quotes a fable that ' while the Jews were once at war with the Idumaeans there came a man out of one of the cities of the Idumaeans, that are called Dorians, who then had worshipped Apollo. This man, whose name is said to have been Zabidus, came to the Jews, and promised that he would deliver Apollo the god of Dora into their hands, and that he would come to our Temple, if they would, all depart thence. The whole multitude of the Jews believed this: Zabidus made him a certain wooden instrument, and put it round about him and set three rows of lamps thereon, and walked after such a manner that he appeared to those who stood a great way off him to be a kind of star walking upon the earth; so that the Jews were terribly frightened at so surprising an appearance, and stood very quiet at a distance: and Zabidus, while they remained very quiet, went into the holy house, and carried off that golden head of an ass (for so politely does he write), and then went his way back to Dora in great haste. Very well then we also might say that on that ass, to wit himself, Apion puts a load, and indeed a heavy load of fooleries and lies.' Then after criticizing the geographical follies of the fable, Josephus [' Suk. 31o.] |