I just watched a special on the Biography channel that more or less told the story of Chanukah. All of it was as I remembered learning, except one part: The narrator said that the miracle of the menorah oil lasting eight days was something not recorded at the time, in the Torah or otherwise, and that the legend was fabricated by a Rabbi about 500 years after the event, who felt the story of the rededication of the temple was too unimpressive the way it was.
I do believe that the story of the small band of Maccabees leading and winning the first-ever fight for religious freedom is impressive enough, but it is disappointing to hear that the rest might only be legend. What is your understanding of this?

Firstly, I don't take these "scholars" seriously, since there methods are flawed. They're trying to reconstruct something long ago based on non solid little scraps they put together. Though they say their conclusions as if they're conclusive, but its really no more than a shot in the dark. I see how these scholars try to portray the community that I'm in and seldom do they get too much right, their going to reconstruct conclusively what happened 2500 years ago? Not likely. There are "scholars that say Orthodox Jewry started only 200 years ago (though anyone with the slightest knowledge of Orthodoxy knows that this is a lie. We learn the works of those hundreds (and thousands) of years before us.

Secondly, we also must come to recognize the biases of these "scholars" who are for the most part quite anti-religion, as seen from the views of modern day universities. Thus they probably started with an ax to grind to "disprove" the miracle.

Thirdly, since the miracle was part of the oral Torah, and in those days, as known to all of Orthodoxy, was not written down, but rather was handed over orally, until the Talmud was written, so that's why it wasn't written until 500 years afterwards, when the Talmud was written. (The Torah was finished being written around 200-300 years BC (before Chanukah)

Fourthly, it would take people that have zero background in the Torah and Talmud and the history of them to come up with a ridiculous theory "that the legend was fabricated by a Rabbi about 500 years after the event"

If you have thousands of people learning over the last 500 years about Chanukah, with the most major scholars among them, how can someone fabricate something like that? It wouldn't last five minutes before they would destroy something like that that diverts from the Mesorah that they had. It would be akin to trying to convince the world that Napoleon rode a Pegasus.

Especially, when the 8 days of Chanukah cannot be attributed to anything else in the story and the lighting of the Menorah, that they had from all that time.

Paulette,
This is the reason why the Oral Torah was given to us, so it cannot be abused by goyim as you just witnessed. There are many things about the "Bible" which goyim have got completely wrong because they don't have the benefit of our tradition. Torah (including the rest of Tanach) is learned and transmitted through tradition. So unless whoever the narrator was has any knowledge within the Jewish tradition, he or she cannot possibly know what she is talking about. If it's not within our tradition, it's not true. The Kadosh Baruch Hu designed that way.

Another example is how long our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. You ask any Christian scholar, and you will hear that we were there for 400 years. But if you ask our forebeares who were actually there, it was more like 150 years. (the starting points for reckoning of time are different) Will you believe some Christian scholar or will you believe those who were actually there?

Remember, when it comes to Torah and Tanach, the opinions of goyim are irrelevant for several reasons. Tanach is an extension of Torah, so when I say Torah I include Tanach. When Torah was given at Sinai, it was intended to be organic through tradition. So the sages made Torah a living document and the only form that counts. A goy can come and say "it says this here and there" it's all irrelevant. The Torah is by Jews, to Jews about Jewish things. If goyim want to partake, they can share at the behest of the Jew and the tradition of Torah.....not the other way round.

quote:

Originally posted by Avi d'Israeli:
"...Another example is how long our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. You ask any Christian scholar, and you will hear that we were there for 400 years. But if you ask our forbears who were actually there, it was more like 150 years. (the starting points for reckoning of time are different)..."

Actually, our Midrashic literature, Talmud, and all other rabbinic sources, say that the people of Israel dwelled in Egypt for only 210 years. The 430 years spoken of in the Torah can only be reckoned from the time of the birth of Isaac (Yitzhak), until Israel came up out of Egypt, which great expanse of time fulfilled that prophecy which said Abraham's seed would be "strangers in a land not theirs."

David

Thanks David,
You are correct, of course. 210 is the correct figure, I realized it, after the fact.
Moshe

Paulette:

To answer to your question:

1) I am not so sure about the claim that it was 500 years later is inaccurate. Chanukka was about 165 BCE, and Ravina II helped Rav Ashi redact the Talmud is 475 CE. However, where that Talmud cites it, it introduces it as Tno Rabanan, used for (usually) Tanaaitic sources, and the source in this case is Megillat Taanit, which seems to have had a composition date of 1st century CE. So it is less than 500 years. Even so, not necessarily was everything written, and not necessarily was everything written preserved.

2) That said, there are approaches that answer this question of how come the miracle was not recorded. One such answer is by Rabbi Dr. David Berger, who notes that ... well, why not read him inside, excerpted from this post hosted at hirhurim:
http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2006/11/human-initiative-a...vine-providence.html

"This question has disturbed many religious Jews. In 1969, a student at Yeshiva University asked me whether the miracle was attested outside of the famous Talmudic account, and I replied that it was not. At the time, I did not have a satisfying explanation for this, and one individual took my response as a denial that the miracle occurred. This was not my intention, but this episode along with questions over the years from other Jews perplexed by the problem led me to struggle with it more than might otherwise have been the case. I now believe that I can propose an explanation that is absolutely convincing with respect to I Maccabees and reasonably satisfying with respect to II Maccabees.

1. A perusal of II Maccabees demonstrates that miracle stories regarding the Hasmonean revolt and the Temple circulated widely. It is virtually beyond question that the author of I Maccabees heard such accounts, and yet he records none at all. This means either that he did not believe them or that he excluded them as a matter of policy. In either case, the absence of a reference to the cruse of oil--which is troubling only because of the inference that the author never heard the story--poses no challenge to one who believes the account of the miracle on the authority of Hazal. Given the author's consistent historiographic approach, we can be almost certain that he would not have recorded this miracle even if he knew about it.

2. In the case of II Maccabees, the argument proceeds not from the absence of miracles but from their prominence. Here the author presents various miracle stories so public and so impressive (including, for example, the public appearance of angels) that the miracle of the cruse of oil, which was witnessed by relatively few observers, pales into near insignificance, and he may well have chosen to omit it along with other "minor" miracles. II Maccabees is an abridgment of a five-part work by Jason of Cyrene which has been lost. The full work almost certainly contained miracle stories that were omitted from the abridgment. To us, the story of the oil looms very large. To Jason--or to the man who abridged his work--it may have seemed trivial, particularly since he had an alternate explanation for the decision to celebrate for eight days.

In sum, there are plausible grounds to argue that the authors of both I and II Maccabees could have known the story and nonetheless omitted it from their histories. The absence of a reference in Al ha-Nissim, which is a thanksgiving prayer, need not trouble anyone. The miracle of victory requires thanksgiving; the miracle of the oil does not, and it is appropriately omitted."

Hope this helps,
Josh

I'd like to add an update/partial retraction to what I wrote above. While the gemara does start Tno Rabbanan and has the same text as Megillat Taanit, apparently many date the Hebrew gloss on Megillat Taanit to be post-Talmudic. In which case the Aramaic portion which states what time of year Chanukka is would be the subject of Tno Rabanan, and the explanation could even date to the time of the redaction of the gemara. (The Hebrew gloss would then be drawing the explanation from the gemara rather than vice versa.) So then 600 years would be an accurate accounting.

Rabbi Dr. David Berger's point still stands, however.

If I may. The reason why the athesits and non-Jews reject the miracle of the Light is that they cannot conceive of the possibility of it. Yet Rambam says that the miracle is not in the impossibility (for G-d, everything is possible), but in the timing of the rare event.

Here's an argument against a physicist who would deny the possibility of the miracle in question.

The location of the Kodesh Kodashim (Holy of Holies) is very precise, and for a reason. It is at the "The Place" - "HaMakom" that Jacob experienced firsthand when he saw the ladder in his dream. This was the place where, as the physicists and atheists would say, there was (is?) an irregularity of magnetic and gravitational fields: a higher density of the field forces. As a physicist would further explain, strange things are possible in such places, including the slowing-down of time (Einstein's General Relativity Theory). Of course Judah Maccabee could not know anything about physics and the general relativity theory. But when he came into the Temple, he found the exact place (maybe he had a Nevu'ah moment? or maybe he simpy found the cleanest point spot in the Temple?), and at that spot, for the Menorah, time was running 8 times slower than for the rest of the world.

quote:

Originally posted by Paulette:
"I just watched a special on the Biography channel that more or less told the story of Chanukah. All of it was as I remembered learning, except one part: The narrator said that the miracle of the menorah oil lasting eight days was something not recorded at the time, in the Torah or otherwise, and that the legend was fabricated by a Rabbi about 500 years after the event..."

Paulette,

Nothing could be further from the truth! Rabbi Saadia Gaon wrote in his introduction to the book "Eggaron," that, both, the elders of the school of Shammai and the elders of the school of Hillel wrote the "Scroll of Antiochus" in the Chaldean language (Aramaic), and that it was originally called
"Megillath Benei Hashmonai." Even today, we have an extant copy of the Aramaic script left by them, called "Megillath Benei Hashmonai." I browsed through a microfilm of this ancient work, today, at the Hebrew University library. (It is classified under microfilm # 26787).

As you know, the schools of Shammai and Hillel existed during the latter years of the second temple, long before the didaction of the Talmud.

While perusing through the microfilm, I discovered that the miracle of the oil lasting eight days was, indeed, mentioned! The flask had only carried enough oil to last for one day, but by G-d's providence, it lasted eight days!

The original of that work begins as follows:

מגלת בני חשמנאי. והוה ביומי אנטיוכס מלכא דיון מלך רב ותקיף הוה וחסין בשלטנותיה וכל מלכיא ישתמעון ליה. הוא כבש מדינן סגיאן ומלכין תקיפין אסר ואצדי בירניתהון והיכליהון אוקיד בנורא וגבריהון באיסור אסר

And then, at the end of the same manuscript, we find the following:

בתר דנא עלו בני ישראל לבית מקדשא ובנו תרעיא ודכיאו בית מקדשא מן קטיליא ומן סאובתא. ובעו צלוחית משחא דזיתא דכיא לאדלקא בוציניא ולא אשכחו אלא צלוחית חדא והות חתימא בעזקת כהנא רבא מיומי שמואל נביא וידעו דהיא דכיא. כאדלקות יומא חד הוה בה ואלה שמיא די שכין שמיה תמן יהב בה ברכתיה ואדליקו מנה תמניא יומין. על כן קיימו בני חשמנאי הדין קימא ואסרו הדין אסרא אנון ובני ישראל כלהון. להודעא לבני ישראל למעבד הדין תמניא יומין חדוא ויקר כיומי מועדיא דכתיבין באוריתא לאדלקא בהון להודעא למן דייתי מבתריהון ארי עבד להון אלההון פרקנא מן שמיא. בהון לא למספד ולא למגזר צומא וכל גבר דיהי עלוהי נדרא ישלמנה. ברם חשמנאי ובנוהי ואחוהי לא גזרו בהון למשבק עבידתא ופלחנא ומן עדנא דנן לא הוה שום למלכות יון. וקבילו מלכותא בני חשמנאי ובני בניהון מן עדנא דנן ועד חרבן בית אלהא דין מאתן ושית שנין. על כן בני ישראל נטרין ליומיא האלין בכל גלותהון וקרן להון יומי חדוא מעסרין וחמשה יומין לירח כסלו. ועד עלמא לא עדיין מנהון די בבית מקדשיהון כהניא וליואי וכל חכימיהון קיימו עליהון ועל בניהון ועל בני בניהון עד עלמא


David

Great Al Hanasim doesn't mention the miracle of the lamp because we don't need to thank hashem for it. This is opposed to the theory that the Rabbis didn't like the Hasmonaiim (especially after they crucified four hundred rabbis) and therefore didn't want to mention their victories. By the middle ages when Josephoon became popular, the Jews were more enthusiastic that Jews could fight and win rather than old internective warfare so it became prominent in al hanisim.
So who is Matityahu ben Yonathan the Cohen Gadol. This error goes back to Talmudic times and certainly does agree with any written text we have prior to that time.