Generations of Sunday school teachers have turned Hanukkah into the story of unified Jewish bravery against an anti-Semitic Hellenic empire. Settlers in the West Bank tell it as a story of how the Jewish hard-core defeated the corrupt, assimilated Jewish masses. Rabbis later added the lamp miracle to give God at least a bit part in the proceedings.
But there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.
A very thoughtful, poignant piece by David Brooks. It is indeed one of the bitter ironies of history that so often revolutionaries like the Maccabees throw off the yoke of a brutal oppressor, only to become corrupted by power and wealth themselves and then turn into harsh repressors of dissent in order to protect their hard-won, privileged stake in the new status quo.
Thus, about 40 years after the Maccabees almost miraculously won independence from mighty Syria (the Seleucid Empire), their descendant, John Hyrcanus, trying to regain all the territory that King David had ruled hundreds of years before, annexed Samaria by force, burning down the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim in the process (part of what fed the bitter feud between Jews and Samartians). And although the Maccabees had campainged on a platform of restoring Jewish tradition after Antiochus IV had abolished the practice of it, they soon perverted that tradition by usurping the office of High Priest for themselves. They weren’t content to be political rulers, they had to be top dog in the religious realm too.
Still, I’m glad for this reminder that Hannukah starts tonight. It’s a good time to read (or reread) 1 and 2 Maccabees (which are independent accounts that overlap). And its worth remembering that whereas 1 Maccabees is a propaganda piece that liionizes and idealizes the Maccabees as the liberators of their people, the contemporary book of Daniel completely ignores their attempt to take matters into their own hands and win freedom through human means and instead urges trust in God to deliver the Jews supernaturally. That is, if you understand Daniel as most scholars do, as a pseudonymous work written about 165 BC, rather than coming from the 6th century, as it claims on the surface to have been written). Daniel and 1 Maccabees thus represent polar opposite approaches to the same terrible crisis, when Judaism was facing annihilation in their homeland.
David Handy+
I know we are narrow minded, but all LCMS scholars believe Daniel was written in the time of Daniel in the 6th century BC.
I too support a 6th century time with a prophetic underpinning. I think the scholars have it wrong, in part because they dismiss the supernatural. Nevertheless Fr. Handy recognizes the issue. Pax.
Br. Michael – Fr. Handy does indeed recognize the issue. The O.T. is a constant history of God saving His people followed by His people mucking it up again – and usually very quickly after their deliverance. Unfortunately the history of the N.T. Church is not much better. Thankfully we have a gracious and compassionate God, otherwise none of us would be here.
Chuckle, we can mess it up in a heartbeat can’t we. If there is one thing we can do well, it’s sin. It comes so naturally.
Pax, and Happy Advent and a Merry Christmas.
This is a thread about Hanukkah, not Daniel, but perhaps it’s appropriate for me to acknowledge that I don’t think people who reject the standard scholarly view of Daniel are all ignorant, narrow-minded fundamentalists. I certainly wouldn’t say that about Harry Edmon or Br. Michael, both of whom I’ve come to respect a great deal from all their astute blogging comments here and at Stand Firm.
But going back to Brooks’ essay, I think he may actually be a little too hard on the messiness, brutality, and general ugliness of the Jewish Revolt under the Maccabees and the liberation it led to that’s glorified in the Hanukkah celebration. For it seems to me that there is another Jewish festival that is even more problematic from the standpoint of being an “adult” feast that glorifies violence, namely the Feast of Purim, based on the story of Esther. For at least the Maccabees were mostly fighting and killing enemy soldiers, and protecting their right to practice the Law when it had been banned (although they also harrassed and slaughtered Jewish sympathizers who aided and abetted their persecutors). But it was clearly a “Just War,” if there ever was one (by the standards of Augustine and the classical Christian tradition).
However, the ending of Esther (see chapter 9) describes a massive Jewwish pre-emptive strike against their anti-Semitic foes, which appear to have been mostly civilians, not soldiers. And according to Esther 9:16, the Jews wiped out some “75,000” pagan enemies throughout the Persian Empire. That sounds worse to me, a reverse pogrom, if you will. And in that sense, Purim is even more of an “adult” festival than Hanukkah.
Finally, it should be noted that according to John 10, Jesus himself observed Hanukkah as a faithful Jew. Nothing wrong with that.
David Handy+