Feast of Dedication

The Feast of Dedication appears once in the New Testament: it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple courts in Solomon’s Colonnade (John 10:22–23). The feast recalled events of the 2nd century BC told in 1 Maccabees, a book found in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had banned Jewish practice and in 167 BC had the temple altar used for pagan sacrifice. When Judas Maccabeus and his followers retook Jerusalem, the priests cleansed the temple, built a new altar of burnt offering and restored the lampstand, the table and the incense altar.

On the 25th of Kislev, about December 164 BC, three years after the desecration, sacrifice was offered again, and the dedication of the altar was celebrated for eight days with songs, harps and cymbals (1 Maccabees 4:52–56). Judas and the assembly decided to keep these eight days every year. The Jewish historian Josephus, in the 1st century AD, calls the feast “Lights”. Later Jewish tradition tells of a small jar of oil that burned for eight days, and lamps or candles are lit at home, one more each night.