Maccabees: Hebrew, makkabah, (a Hammer)
Chanukah is the feast of the Re-dedication of the Holy Temple Altar after the successful Maccabean revolt against Syrian-Greek Antiochus Epiphanes king of Syria and his successors who had usurped authority over the Hebrews, conquered Jerusalem, and strove to introduce idolatrous worship oppression and had destroyed it, and the HOLY Altar was defiled. In order to reuse the HOLY altar, it had to be rededicated to Yehovah. (YHVH).
The name Maccabeus was first applied to Judas, one of the sons of Mattathias generally called in English the Maccabees, a celebrated family, who defended Jewish rights and customs in the 2nd century B.C. (1 Maccabees 2:1-3).
*http://biblehub.com/topical/m/maccabees.htm
Thus the REAL Chanukah story.
You can read of this in the 1611 Bible, and in the Apocrypha. It is found in the original 5 books of Maccabees.
After the expulsion of Antiochus Epiphanes from Egypt by the Romans, he gave vent to his indignation on the Jews, great numbers of whom he mercilessly put to death in Jerusalem. He oppressed them in every way, and tried to abolish altogether the Hebrew worship of their Elohim. Mattathias, an aged HOLY Priest, then residing at Modin, a city to the west of Jerusalem, became now the courageous and wise leader of the national party; and having fled to the mountains, rallied round him a large band of men prepared to fight and die for their country and for their religion, which was now violently suppressed.
In 1 Macc. 2:60 it is recorded in his dying counsels to his sons with reference to the war they were now to carry on. His son Judas, “the Maccabees,” succeeded him (B.C. 166) as the leader in directing the war of independence, which was carried on with great heroism on the part of the Jews, and was terminated in the defeat of the Syrians Antiochus Epiphanes king of Syria and his successors who had usurped authority over the Jews, conquered Jerusalem, and strove to introduce idolatrous worship.
http://biblehub.com/topical/m/maccabees.htm
http://www.usccb.org/bible/1maccabees/0
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/2-Maccabees-Chapter-1/
Modern bibles, Christian bibles, have removed this from their covers.
John makes a statement of about the feast of dedication. This is what he was referencing, what is now called Chanukah.
It was much later after the Maccabee conquest that saved Israel, that the Jewish Priests made Chanukah into a manmade feast, and where a story evolved about a miracle of oil where menorah candles burned for 8 days on one days oil. The HOLY altar olive oil had also been defiled in this Greek war, and so it took 8 days to press and purify fresh holy oil. This is where the origin of a 9 branch candle became a “chanikiah”, now widely used in place of the 7 lighted candle that was mounted to the Holy altar as instructed by MOSES in Exodus 25:31-40.
Exodus 25:31-40 CJB
From Watcher
