Last year for Hannukah, we talked about the oppressive “traditions of men” vs ordinary traditions that Yeshua/Jesus spoke of in light of the Feast of Dedication mentioned in John 10. This year I am delving deep into the scholarly materials to explore the Zadokite controversy—which purports that the Hasmoneans were illegitimate priests and which has been used to discredit Hannukah. I will also go into the works of Josephus and Megillat Ta’anit to try and figure out where the legend of the “miracle of the oil” came from.
Transcript Below:
Hello out there! Happy Hannukah! Or is it? It seems that this time of year many people are obsessed and stressed with finding reasons why everything under the sun that is not mentioned in the Bible is pagan or illegitimate (check out the podcast I did with Ryan White on the subject this week) and last year we talked about whether we could celebrate Hannukah because it isn’t in Leviticus 23 and the difference between traditions on one hand and the rebuked traditions of men, on the other hand. AKA which traditions honor God while not supplanting His Word and which traditions are oppressive. Hannukah falls squarely into the camp of celebrations that were intended to honor God for His great act of deliverance from Seleucid oppression and which doesn’t oppress anyone. This year we are going to cover two more objections to Hannukah—namely, the legend of the miracle of the oil and the charge that the entire celebration is illegitimate because the Hasmoneans who led the battle against the Seleucids and in later generations took both priestly and ruling leadership over Judea, Galilee, Idumea, and Samaria didn’t descend from the line of Zadok and were therefore illegitimate priests. Where do these charges come from, are they supported by primary sources, and do they even matter when deciding whether or not one should celebrate Hannukah.
I will be consulting two scholarly articles—the first is a Brill article written by Michael O Wise (https://www.unwsp.edu/bio/michael-o-wise) and you have to have some serious chops to write for Brill, let me tell you—it is called 4Q245 (aka the third scroll of the Vision of Daniel) and the High Priesthood of Judas Maccabaeus. It’s a whopping fifty pages long and if you are not familiar with Michael Wise, he is a big name in Dead Sea Scroll research and is one of the authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation which is my go-to reference on the subject. The second article is by Alison Schofield and James Vanderkam and is called “Were the Hasmoneans Zadokites?” from the Journal of Biblical literature aka the JBL. Both of these articles were published in 2005, so this is fairly recent research. These three are all heavy hitters in this area of research. So, let’s talk about this controversy—is it legit or is it much ado about nothing?
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want.
Now, of the two articles I referenced, I recommend reading the Schofield/Vanderkam article because it tackles the controversy over whether or not the Hasmoneans were Zadokites in a very objective and constructive way. First, a bit of history. Our history comes from I Maccabees, as this is our most reliable ancient source, written during the reign of John Hyrcanus, the son of Simon Thassi, the last surviving son of Matthias Hasmoneus and brother of Judas Maccabeus. This extra-biblical document covers roughly 35 years (if you don’t count the first nine verses) from the beginning of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes to the death of Simon Thassi, second High Priest of the Hasmonean line, so the earliest date would be roughly 130 BCE. II Maccabees is our second oldest surviving document, which claims to be an abridged version of a five-volume account of the Maccabean revolt from a man named Jason of Cyrene but the original document is lost so we really have no idea how faithful II Macc was to the original. It was written sometime in the first half of the first century BCE.
BTW, why do I use BCE and CE? Contrary to some rumors, BCE and CE, meaning “before the common era” and “common era” are actually no less Biblical than BC and AD (and certainly no more Biblical either), which never came into any sort of real use until the time of Charlemagne. During the 6th century, church scholars wanted to calculate the precise year of the resurrection because, up to that point, there were no formal year designations. It was always something like, “In the 14th year of the reign of such and such emperor.” Well, Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor took it upon himself to calculate backward to the birth of Yeshua and he did pretty darned well but was off by about four or five years based on what we know about the death of Herod the Great and Yeshua being born sometime during the previous two years. Dionysius named his new system AD “Anno Domini” meaning the Year of our Lord, to replace AD—Anno Diocletiani which gave the number of years since the emperor Diocletian began his reign (for some reason they stopped counting with individual emperors when they got to him). It wasn’t until the 8th century that the Venerable Bede invented the BC, “Before Christ” system for counting backward from the calculated birth. In the 9th century, Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne adopted the system. It would not gain supremacy in Western Europe, however, until the 15th century. However, there are some complications because Herod The Great died in 4 BCE, and it was confusing to people who assumed that Yeshua was born in the year 1 AD or BC, while others assumed that there was a magical 0 year, which there was not—because the idea of zero would not exist in Europe until a few hundred years later. Because of this discrepancy, scholars (including Bible scholars) now use CE and BCE—not to erase Yeshua from history but to clear up the discrepancy. I mean, after all, there are no BC’s or AD’s in the Bible, right? Which, I might add, is exactly why it took so long to come into popular usage. They are all manmade designations of time and not Biblical. As our understanding of history evolves, so must our designations. Dionysius made a worthy effort but we have way more documentary evidence now than he did. Sometimes, things that seem ancient and untouchable and Biblical are, in fact, not.
Now II Macc has a lot of sketchy material in it. Some stuff flat out doesn’t line up with the more reliable I Macc, and a lot of it is legendary. However, when we look at the purpose of II Macc, the reasons become clear—it was a propaganda letter written by Judean loyalists to the Hasmoneans, or at least Hannukah lovers, to the Jews of Alexandra during the years where pretty much everyone hated the later generations of Hasmonean priest-kings, who were a piece of work, lemme tell ya. II Macc is a Hannukah apologetic and thus is loaded with heart-wrenching stories of martyrdom and dazzling accounts of signs in the sky and divine retribution against Antiochus Epiphanes. Some of it sounds like it was inspired by Samuel’s accounts of David and other parts by Daniel. But as this was not scripture but instead a plea for the Egyptian Jews to keep Hannukah, we shouldn’t be shocked to see such creative embellishments.
Strabo, a Roman historian, would date to after II Macc and he was a serious historian used as source material for Josephus, who wrote at the cusp of the first and second centuries CE. In between those, we have the Gospel of John, chapter 10, which directly mentions Hannukah aka the Feast of Dedication. So, these are our sources.
From the Hebrew scriptures, we know that after the exile, Yeshua (Aramaic form of Yehoshua/Joshua) son of Yehotsedaq, served as the first High Priest of the Second Temple period during the times of Haggai, Zerubbabel, and Zechariah. He was of the line of Zadok, whose family was given the High Priesthood after Abiathar supported Adonijah as David’s heir in an attempted coup instead of David’s choice in Solomon. Zadok was given the high priesthood and was the first high priest to preside over the first Temple in Jerusalem. His descendant, High Priest Yeshua, presided over the Second Temple, as did his descendants over the next 350 years until one really bad seed entered the picture during the Seleucid drama of the Second century BCE.
The last priest of Yeshua’s line was also named Yeshua before he Hellenized it to Jason. And he actually paid Antiochus Epiphanes, the big bad guy of the Hannukah story, to give him the High Priesthood over his brother Onias (who was already High Priest) and then, when he was given that authority he began to Hellenize Jerusalem. He even put a gymnasium in the city where men competed with each other in the nude. He completely undid the work of Antiochus III, who allowed the Jews to be ruled according to their own Torah laws and to run the Temple without interference and he even lowered their taxes. Damage done politically and religiously, Antiochus Epiphanes was not unwilling to be bought a second time and sold the High Priesthood to a man named Menelaus, of unknown family origin. There are two stories—II Maccabees said that he was from the tribe of Benjamin, which would be a big no-no while Josephus says that he was another brother of Jason and Onias. Josephus is probably in error. In fact, there are several instances in his Antiquities of the Jews where he makes some pretty big mistakes about facts related to this time period. Sometimes, he corrects them in later volumes, and sometimes he doesn’t. But then, he was writing on parchment and had no white out so we can forgive him.
Menelaus was one of those guys who seemed to have good intentions at first, wanting to get rid of Jason the jerk, but he overspent himself and was robbing the Temple of sacred vessels in order to pay off Antiochus Epiphanes for making him High Priest. Oh, and he also had Onias III murdered because Onias was going to rat him out for encroachment and Temple desecration. It’s after this where things get complicated. So, let’s skip ahead. As you can see, the priesthood was quite possibly in the hands of a Benjamite until a man named Alcimus, who is called a son of Aaron but nothing more, is made High Priest after Menelaus’s death in 162 BCE. He remains in office until the first Hasmonean High Priest, Jonathan, is given the position by popular demand. Now, there are rumors that his brother Judah was the high priest for three years but I and II Macc say nothing about it and it does seem unlikely. Let’s just assume that Jonathan, Judas’s brother, was the first High Priest of the restored and rededicated Temple. It’s a safe bet and doesn’t change the argument at all.
After Jonathan’s murder, his brother Simon became High Priest, and after him, John Hyrcanus I, Aristobulus I, Alexander Janneus, Hyrcanus I, Aristobulus II, Hyrcanus II and Antigonus, bringing us to the end of the line because the Romans stepped in and overhauled the mess. The ruler they chose, Herod the Great, wasn’t a better person, but the bloody civil war ended that existed within the Hasmonean family between brothers fighting for supremacy. Now, the first three—Jonathan, Simon, and John Hyrcanus—were worthy priests and rulers. None called themselves king although the people gave them the title of “prince.” Starting with Aristobulus I, the men were flat out monsters and took on the title of King and High Priest starting in roughly 104 BCE. This was totally not cool but the three generations before them were not guilty in this regard. However, when you study the times, you can see why Hannukah fell into such horrible disrepute as the deeds of the ancestors loomed large over the legends of their ancestor’s deeds. Hence, II Macc was written largely as a propaganda piece.
Here’s where the controversy comes in. High Priests were supposed to come from the line of Zadok as a reward for his faithful service to David when Abiathar supported Adonijah instead of Solomon to replace him—anointing him king while David was still alive. So not cool. And many scholars have assumed that the Hasmoneans were not of the line of Zadok simply because they were not descended from Onias’s family. But Zadok’s lineage was not limited to the family of Onias, or, for that matter High Priest Yeshua who was the first priest over the Second Temple period. In fact, if you look at the priest list of I Chron 24, you will see that we have zero idea which of the priestly families descended from who. We don’t even know which descended from Eleazar and which from Ithamar! We know how many houses from each but not which ones. So that’s no help at all. We do know from I Macc that the Hasmoneans descend from the first name listed, Yehoiarib. Now, there is a verse in I Macc 2:54 where Matthias, the patriarch, calls Phineas, the son of Eleazar, “their father” and if that is literal then it really narrows down the likelihood that the Hasmoneans were Zadokites because Zadok was also a descendant of Phineas through Eleazar. But so were a heck of a lot of other priestly lines. In the end, neither the Biblical or extra-biblical record anywhere says, “The Hasmoneans were Zadokites.” So, what we need to do is look at the writings that come from the enemies to the Hasmoneans—namely the Essenes and the Pharisees. Both of which had a lot of legitimate reasons to hate the later Hasmonean rulers. The things they wrote about them were brutal, and not unfair, and so certainly if the Hasmoneans were not legitimate by right of birth to the correct priestly line, someone would say something.
Thing is, they never do. Oh, the Essenes and Pharisees call them as wicked as the day is long. The Essenes called John Hyrcanus “the wicked priest” and “the angry lion” and the “priest who rebelled” because he opposed their Teacher of Righteousness and the Pharisees hated Alexander Jannaeus who slaughtered them wholesale along with their wives and children. But there was only one objection seemingly raised as per their legitimacy (and not the legitimacy of the entire line but just Simon and John Hyrcanus) and for this one, we need to go to Josephus to hear about the sordid tale of John and his falling out with the Pharisees. Sordid because you just don’t talk about someone’s mom like this:
However, this prosperous state of affairs moved the Jews to envy Hyrcanus; but they that were the worst disposed to him were the Pharisees, who were one of the sects of the Jews, as we have informed you already. These have so great a power over the multitude, that when they say any thing against the king, or against the high priest, they are presently believed. Now Hyrcanus was a disciple of theirs, and greatly beloved by them. And when he once invited them to a feast, and entertained them very kindly, when he saw them in a good humor, he began to say to them, that they knew he was desirous to be a righteous man, and to do all things whereby he might please God, which was the profession of the Pharisees also. However, he desired, that if they observed him offending in any point, and going out of the right way, they would call him back and correct him. On which occasion they attested to his being entirely virtuous; with which commendation he was well pleased. But still there was one of his guests there, whose name was Eleazar, a man of an ill temper, and delighting in seditious practices. This man said,” Since thou desirest to know the truth, if thou wilt be righteous in earnest, lay down the high priesthood, and content thyself with the civil government of the people,” And when he desired to know for what cause he ought to lay down the high priesthood, the other replied, “We have heard it from old men, that thy mother had been a captive under the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. “This story was false, and Hyrcanus was provoked against him; and all the Pharisees had a very great indignation against him. (Ant. 13. 288-98)
Okay, so Eleazar was an idiot, and a jerk, and if it isn’t obvious—he was saying that John’s mom, Simon’s wife, was probably sexually violated when she was a captive. What does Lev 21:14-15 say?
13 And he shall take a wife in her virginity. 14 A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, 15 that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him.”
Of course, the Torah tells us that a rape victim is as blameless as a murder victim—but she cannot become the wife of the High Priest. And the reason is not worthiness but appearances. She can still eat of the tithe, the terumah, and all that. She can marry anyone but the High Priest. But this dude Eleazar is saying some old men are gossiping that his mom was raped by soldiers. That is not something you say about anyone’s mom. And you certainly don’t make it out to sound like everyone is out there talking smack about her. So, the implication is that according to Leviticus, John is ineligible and so was his father Simon for marrying her. However, and here is the important thing—no objections were raised because of genealogy. If this cantankerous old coot had a better argument against John Hyrcanus than the gossip of old men, certainly he would have used it. Not being descended from Zadok would be a deal-breaker but it never came up. Not with the Pharisees, the Essenes, and not with anyone. So, as far as the controversy goes, this one is a big fat zero as far as evidentiary support goes.
But beyond this, remember that Hannukah isn’t a celebration of the Hasmoneans but of God’s great deliverance of His people and His Temple from the Seleucid oppressors. The story of Judas Maccabeus is told in conjunction with the celebration just as Moses is talked about in conjunction with the Exodus and the Passover, but really these stories are a celebration of God and His salvation. What shameful things were done over fifty years later by their descendants is of zero importance. It would be like refusing to celebrate Passover because of what happened during the time of the Judges, or at Ba’al Peor. Celebrations are about God’s deliverance, not about the people. So, there is no reason not to celebrate Hannukah on that account, if you want to celebrate it. Matthias and his sons, by all accounts, were all righteous and courageous and trusting in our God and God used them to bring about His deliverance.
So how about the “Festival of Lights” and the “Miracle of the Oil” because I hear those used as condemnations of Hannukah as well.
First of all, the first person I can see recording the name “Festival of Lights” is Josephus and he claimed in Ant. 12.6.6-7 that it was his opinion that the name derived from the fact that the right to worship had been given to them during a time of great darkness when they had lost hope. I am paraphrasing but that is the gist of the passage. Josephus wrote that at the very end of the first century CE. Now, he might very well have been downplaying the revolutionary ties to the Festival because he was writing for his Roman patron and the Romans hated insurrection and had a very complex series of laws devoted to making sure not enough people could legally gather to make starting one easy. But as this was long after the destruction of the Temple, I am not entirely convinced that this wasn’t the popular understanding at the time.
On the other hand, we have Megillat Ta’anit—the scroll of fasting. If you think this is a scroll about fasting, you would be wrong. It is actually a scroll that details thirty-five great days historically on the Biblical calendar, on which fasting is outright forbidden, and on fourteen of them, you cannot publicly mourn either. In Chapter 9, pertaining to the 9th month of Kislev on the Biblical Calendar:
On the twenty fifth of the month is Channuka, eight days on which one does not eulogize because when the Greeks entered the Temple they defiled all the oil there. When the hand of the Hasmoneans was made strong and they defeat the Greeks, they checked (in the Temple) and only found one jar of oil sealed with the mark of the High Priest which remained undefiled. Though there was only enough in it to light for one day, a miracle occurred through it and they lit the Temple lamps from it for eight days. The following year they decreed these to be eight days of celebration. And what justification did they see for making Channuka eight days? Wasn’t the dedication (channuka) which Moshe did in the wilderness only seven days? As it says “And you shall not leave the entrance of the Tent of Meeting for seven days…” (Vayikra 8:33) And it says “The one who brought his offering on the first day was…” (Bamidbar 7:12) and on the seventh day Ephraim made his offering. So too we find at the dedication which Shlomo made that it only lasted seven days, as it says “…for the inauguration of the altar they made seven days, and the feast seven days.” (Divre HaYamim II 7:9) So what reason did they see to make this dedication eight days? In the days of the kingdom of Greece the Hasmoneans entered the Temple, built the altar, plastered it with plaster and for seven days they were preparing the vessels for service. The re-dedication done by the Hasmoneans is to be marked for all generations. And why is it a practice for all generations? They fixed it when they came out from a narrow place into broad spaces, and they said praises and thanksgiving, lighting lamps in purity. Since the Greeks had gone into the Temple and defiled all the vessels, there was nothing with which to light. When the Hasmoneans were victorious, they brought seven skewers of iron, covered them with tin and began to light. (retrieved from https://www.sefaria.org/Megillat_Taanit)
Although the claim among some is that it was written sometime between 40 and 70 CE, Josephus, a priest during the latter of these years, was either unaware of this story or maybe didn’t feel he should tell it. However, the explanatory note to Megillat Taanit claims that it was written by zealots during the years right before the destruction of the Second Temple. If this was the case, and this was zealot propaganda, then Josephus would likely know nothing about it. As II Macc has a lot of legendary material but says nothing about this account, it likely it is indeed fictional zealot propaganda composed sometime between 66 and 70 as the note claims. Certainly, I or II Macc would have included this account were it original and not wartime propaganda designed to give hope that God would once more eject the invaders from both Jerusalem and the Temple precincts.
Now, last year I talked about the difference between traditions of men which are oppressive, the ones that Yeshua condemned, and the traditions that are good, which we see Yeshua engaging in like the blessing over the bread, and the traditions which he neither condemned nor seemed to observe. There seems to be a lot of leeway in what we do as long as we are not harming anyone or breaking actual commandments because, let’s face it, the commandments are given with few details to help us out in keeping them. So someone else’s interpretation of a commandment can be called “adding or taking away” if we don’t like their interpretation but then they can do the same to us. We’re kind of ridiculous that way sometimes. We’re not going to rehash all that.
What I do want to talk about is the purpose of Hannukah and the Biblical celebrations. They are all about celebrating God’s great deliverances and protections and provisions. They are how ancient peoples honored God, through festivals—totally for the honor of whatever god was in question. People talk a lot about the “Hebraic mindset” and it kinda drives me crazy because they are really talking about the general ancient mindset, which was also shared by the Hebrews but was not exclusive to them. Torah was exclusive to the Hebrews but not the overall ancient mindset of how things worked and how you celebrated and honored and served your deity. Yahweh tweaked their understanding and their methods but didn’t entirely overturn it. They were still given a portable and then later a permanent Temple, like the nations. They were given a spring barley festival, but it wasn’t like the Babylonian barley festival—the Akitu (meaning “barley cutting”)—which combined their barley harvest with their kingship festival. For Israel, their kingship festival was six months away, in the fall, with coronations falling on Yom Teruah/Rosh HaShanah. Babylonian years began in the spring in Nisan but Biblical years began in Tishri, although the Biblical months began in Nisan. The nations around them sacrificed in order to feed their gods and care for them. Israel’s God didn’t need to be fed because He had no corporeal form in need of sustenance. The gods of the nations created people to be slaves on the earth that they didn’t even create themselves, whereas Yahweh served humanity by creating the earth to perfectly suit their needs. I could go on and on with things that are like but also unlike as Yahweh revamped their way of thinking about things in some ways and left it entirely alone in other ways.
What many don’t seem to understand today is that festivals are for joyously proclaiming the works of Yahweh. When we say, “that feast isn’t Biblical and so it is pagan and adding to Torah” we are missing the point entirely of what the festivals meant to Bible people, the people to whom the Bible was written and actually made more sense to. To them, if God did something worthy of praise, you celebrated it. You didn’t wait until Passover, Shavuot, or the Fall Feasts. If God did something overwhelmingly amazing in saving an entire people from extinction, as in Esther and during the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Greeks where the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes were slaughtering people on the Sabbath and killing anyone found keeping the Torah—then it becomes a yearly remembrance because genocide is pretty serious business. This isn’t about wanting to add to scripture, it is about recognizing the great works of God.
Okay, so some legendary stuff crept in and is believed by some. Who cares? It has zero impact on the original intent of Hannukah in celebrating the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple after it was defiled by the Greeks. So later Hasmoneans became kings and priests and were monsters. Again, who cares? If the focus of the feast is to honor God’s mighty works, then what came many decades later is irrelevant. No one is having a parade for Alexander Jannaeus. But, do we allow the mighty deliverances of God to fall into an ocean of forgetfulness because we disapprove of some legendary material and later bad acts? Do they override our joy over such a great salvation?
Christmas came about in a similar way, despite a whole lot of propaganda over the last two hundred years and some outright made up stories. Now, I gave up Christmas, I think, back in 2004 and I don’t like what it has become. But we have to remember that during the heyday of the Roman Empire, the birthdays of emperors, past and present, and often their family members, were treated as public holidays. The emperors, in particular, called themselves “son of god” on their coins because they believed that their predecessors were divine, having been declared so by the Senate after the death of Julius Caesar. I look at that environment and, to me, it is no shock that the Christians would want to know and celebrate the birthdate of the true, one, and only Son of God. Around 200 CE, Clement of Alexandria wrote:
“There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar] … And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”
So, where did December 25th come from anyway? There are a lot of claims of pagan origins but those claims never emerge until the 12th century. It is very probable that it is tied to the date set for the crucifixion by Tertullian:
“Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.” (retrieved from https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/how-december-25-became-christmas/)
Are some elements of the Christmas celebration linked to Roman and Western European observances? Perhaps, but there is no concrete evidence—only much speculation and some outright fiction. A lot of the ”pagan origins of everything” come from Alexander Hislop’s anti-catholic propaganda, which has been flat out discredited by archaeology—which supports none of his claims, and some more modern works of fiction in this century by Lew White, Richard Rives, and Ralph Woodrow (who when challenged actually studied out what he was claiming and had to recant). I have studied Babylonian, Hittite, Canaanite, Egyptian, and Assyrian religion and the stories are just absolutely ludicrous. And it is really too bad because I have seen families divided over the content of these books which is fictional and found its way into way too many books and teachings within the Hebrew Roots Movement and Messianic Judaism and some sects of Christianity as well. I am not a fan of Christmas as it exists today for certain. My family celebrates the birth of Yeshua on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. I do love the hymns in the stores, however. But the fact that I don’t celebrate it doesn’t mean I am going to undermine it with made-up stories, no matter how many people are teaching them and people who are observant will notice that a lot of ministries have backed far away from these teachings since I first started publishing my research based on actual archaeology in 2015. None of my teaching group teaches this anymore because we can’t—we only teach what we can prove from history and archaeology. We can’t afford to be so adamantly against Christmas and Easter that we become compromised into believing whatever we hear about it. For those of you unfamiliar with my research, all of it based on legitimate scholars, with my references provided and not just, as many do, claiming ”it’s obvious” or “everyone knows” when come to find out, no one outside of the western world “knows” these claims at all because they originated here fairly recently. But, like the fruit of any poisonous tree, the racist and incendiary material designed by a 19th-century Protestant reverend (not a historian as many claim) to discredit Catholics and engender hatred against them, has backfired and is now being used by people who want to discredit Protestants. That’s how the fruit of the poisonous tree always works—it comes back to bite whoever planted it in the first place.
if you are interested in that research, you can find it on my website theancientbridge.com under the category “challenging the memes.” I didn’t go out planning to discredit this stuff—hey, I taught it myself for a short while before accidentally stumbling on the evidence that discredited it while studying the Temple defilement in Ezekiel—but truth is truth and I actually had to rewrite my first book to eliminate the one paragraph where I made those claims of paganism and “how easy it was to verify online.” So embarrassing. But, I was just passing on the claims of those who had claimed they did the research—by claiming I had done it too. Lesson learned. Don’t say you have studied something when all you have done was listened to YouTube videos and read salacious googled pages not written by experts in the field. It’s why I give you guys my references. Happy Hannukah or Merry Christmas if you celebrate that. I am no longer a card-carrying member of the holiday police. I was never qualified to begin with.
