A Festival the Hebrew Bible Never Mentions

Hanukkah begins the twenty fifth of Kislev and runs eight days, a span this rule notes will run past the end of Kislev into Tevet depending on how many days that particular Kislev carries, since the Hebrew calendar's months vary between twenty nine and thirty days. Unlike Passover or Sukkot, Hanukkah has no basis in the Torah itself. Its historical basis is the Maccabean revolt against Seleucid Greek rule in the second century BCE, an armed rebellion provoked by the imposition of Hellenistic religious practice on the Jerusalem Temple, and the festival marks the Temple's rededication after the revolt's success, an event recorded in the Books of Maccabees, texts that were never included in the Hebrew Bible's canon though they remain part of the Old Testament in Catholic and Orthodox Christian tradition.

The lighting of the menorah and the specific story of a single day's oil miraculously lasting eight days does not appear in the Books of Maccabees at all, and enters Jewish tradition later, through the Talmud, centuries after the events themselves. The eight day length of the festival therefore rests on two distinct layers of tradition, the Maccabean history that gives the festival its occasion and the later rabbinic oil narrative that gives the specific practice of lighting its shape.