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Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE. It is also known as the Festival of Lights.
Judah may refer to:
The Pharisees were a social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism.
The Maccabees, also spelled Machabees, were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea, which at the time was part of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 167 BCE to 37 BCE, being a fully independent kingdom from about 110 to 63 BCE. They reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.
The Hasmonean dynasty was a ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity, from c. 140 BCE to 37 BCE. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE the dynasty ruled Judea semi-autonomously from the Seleucid Empire, and from roughly 110 BCE, with the empire disintegrating, Judea gained full independence and expanded into the neighboring regions of Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea. The Hasmonean rulers took the Greek title "basileus,, and some modern scholars refer to this period as an independent kingdom of Israel. The kingdom was ultimately conquered by the Roman Republic and the dynasty was displaced by Herod the Great in 37 BCE.
The Sadducees were a sect or group of Jews who were active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century BCE through the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are often compared to other contemporaneous sects, including the Pharisees and the Essenes.
Yohanan ben Zakkai, sometimes abbreviated as Ribaz for Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, was one of the Tannaim, an important Jewish sage in the era of the Second Temple, and a primary contributor to the core text of Rabbinical Judaism, the Mishnah. His name is often preceded by the honorific title, "Rabban." He is widely regarded as one of the most important Jewish figures of his time and his escape from the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, that allowed him to continue teaching, may have been instrumental in rabbinic Judaism surviving the destruction. His tomb is located in Tiberias, within the Maimonides burial compound.
Tannaim were the rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10–220 CE. The period of the Tannaim, also referred to as the Mishnaic period, lasted about 210 years. It came after the period of the Zugot ("pairs"), and was immediately followed by the period of the Amoraim ("interpreters").
John Hyrcanus was a Hasmonean (Maccabean) leader and Jewish high priest of the 2nd century BCE. In rabbinic literature he is often referred to as Yoḥanan Cohen Gadol, "John the High Priest".
Mattathias ben Johanan was a Kohen whose role in the religion-driven Maccabean Revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire is related in the Books of the Maccabees. Mattathias is accorded a central role in the story of Hanukkah and, as a result, is named in the Al HaNissim prayer Jews add to the Birkat Hamazon and the Amidah during the festival's eight days.
Johanan HaSandlar was a rabbi who lived in the second century.
The Teacher of Righteousness is a figure found in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, most prominently in the Damascus Document. This document speaks briefly of the origins of the sect, probably Essenes, 390 years after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and after 20 years of "groping" blindly for the way. "God... raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart".
Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture. Until the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa region, both founded at the end of the fourth century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists.
The Maccabean Revolt was a Jewish rebellion, lasting from 167 to 160 BCE, led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and the Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The recapture of Jerusalem in 164 BCE from the armies of Antiochus IV was a significant early victory for Judah Maccabee's fighters, who came to be known as the Maccabees. The subsequent cleansing of the temple and rededication of the Altar on the 25th of Kislev, was celebrated in following years as the Hanukkah festival. After Judah's death, and that of his brother Jonathan Apphus, their brother Simon Thassi succeeded in expelling the Syrian Greeks under Diodotus Tryphon from Judea in 140 BCE, and establishing the Second Jewish Commonwealth under the Hasmonean dynasty.
Hasmonean coinage are the coins minted by the Hasmonean kings. Only bronze coins in various denominations have been found; the smallest being a prutah or a half prutah. Two Roman silver denarii are associated with the Hasmoneans; one has the inscription BACCIVS IVDAEAS; with its exact meaning unclear. Both show a man thought to be Yehuda Aristobolus bowing before a camel with a palm branch in his hand.
Johanan, son of Joiada, was the fifth high priest after the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem by the Jews who had returned from the Babylonian captivity. His reign is estimated to have been from c. 410–371 BCE; he was succeeded by his son Jaddua. The Bible gives no details about his life. Johanan lived during the reigns of king Darius II of Persia and his son Artaxerxes II, whose Achaemenid Empire included Judah as a province.
Rabbi Yannai was an amora who lived in the 3rd century, and of the first generation of the Amoraim of the Land of Israel.
Rabbinic Judaism or Rabbinism has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century, after the codification of the Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism gained predominance within the Jewish diaspora between the 2nd to 6th centuries, with the development of the Oral Law to control the interpretation of Jewish scripture and to encourage the practice of Judaism in the absence of Temple sacrifice and other practices no longer possible, since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Impurity of the land of the nations is a rabbinic edict stipulating a specified degree of tumah (impurity) on all lands outside the Land of Israel. The demarcation lines of foreign lands effectually included all those lands not settled by the people of Israel during their return from the Babylonian exile during the Second Temple period, and was meant to dissuade the priests of Aaron's lineage from venturing beyond the Land of Israel where graves were unmarked, and who may inadvertently contract corpse uncleanness and thereby eat their bread-offering (Terumah), unawares, in a state of ritual impurity and becoming liable thereby to kareth. The declaration with respect to foreign lands includes also the "virgin soil" of those lands, and was, therefore, a safeguard meant to prevent the priests from inadvertently transgressing the Law of Moses.
References
- ↑ Hanks, Patrick; Hardcastle, Kate; Hodges, Flavia (2006). A Dictionary of First Names. Oxford Paperback Reference (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-19-861060-1.
- ↑ 1 Chronicles 3:15
- ↑ Jeremiah 42:8–22
- ↑ 2 Kings 25:23–26, Jeremiah 43:5–7
- ↑ Nehemiah 12:22–23
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