Did the Rabbis Think the Maccabees Were Too Militaristic?

This time of year we light our Hanukkah candles, spin dreidels, fry fattening food, and tell our children the story of the miracle of the oil in the recaptured Temple in Jerusalem that should have burned for only one day but lasted for eight. Great story, right?

Let’s go back a little.

As has often been pointed out, the origins of this story are a bit murky. It appears nowhere in the first and second books of Maccabees, which in any event were excluded from the canon by the rabbis—even though they appear in the ancient Greek translation of the Jewish Bible known as the Septuagint, and in many Christian Bibles. The main source for the story is the Babylonian Talmud’s tractate on the Sabbath, since there is no tractate for Hanukkah.