The Brit Chadasha (New Testament) does not say that Yahshua KEPT the feast of Hanukkah.

Lets look at the KJV to see where all the confusion is. John 10 ²²And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. ²³And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.

You can see that this text does not say that Yahshua KEPT anything, but simply says that he “walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.”

Also, do some research and you will find that the words “the feast of” do not actually appear in the Greek text from which this verse is translated.

Here is an actual word for word translation of the Greek text: John 10:22-23 And occurred the dedication in Jerusalem and it was winter. And walked Yahshua in the temple in the porch of Solomon.

People assume that this dedication is the Feast of Hanukkah, but as the text indicates this was not a feast.

The Tanakh lists several dedications, none of which are the Feast of Hanukkah. See Numbers 7:84-88, 2 Chronicles 7:9, Ezra 6:16-17 and Nehemiah 12:27.

We have 2 clues to help us discover which dedication is being referred to in John 10:22-23. The first clue is that the text tells us that it was WINTER. The second clue is in the next chapter in John 11:55 when it tells us that “PASSOVER was nigh at hand.”

With these 2 clues we can now narrow this DEDICATION down to the one referred to in Ezra Chapter 6 when the Second Temple was dedicated: Ezra 6 ¹⁵And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar (WINTER), which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. ¹⁶And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the DEDICATION of this house of God with joy.    ¹⁷And offered at the dedication of this house of God an hundred bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs; and for a sin offering for all Israel, twelve he goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel.    ¹⁸And they set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses, for the service of God, which is at Jerusalem; as it is written in the book of Moses.    ¹⁹And the children of the captivity kept the PASSOVER upon the fourteenth day of the first month.    ²⁰For the priests and the Levites were purified together, all of them were pure, and killed the passover for all the children of the captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves.    ²¹And the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land, to seek the LORD God of Israel, did eat,    ²²And kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy: for the LORD had made them joyful, and turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

Also, Herod had his Dedication in the same month, Adar, as Ezra did:

Adar 12 marks the dedication of Herod’s renovations on the second Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 11 BCE. Herod was king of Judea in the first century BCE who constructed grand projects like the fortresses at Masada and Herodium, the city of Caesarea, and fortifications around the old city of Jerusalem. The most ambitious of Herod’s projects was the re-building of the Temple, which was in disrepair after standing over 300 years. Herod’s renovations included a huge man-made platform that remains today the largest man-made platform in the world. It took 10,000 men 10 years just to build the retaining walls around the Temple Mount; the Western Wall that we know today is part of that retaining wall. The Temple itself was a phenomenal site, covered in gold and marble. As the Talmud says, “He who has not seen Herod’s building, has never in his life seen a truly grand building.”

May Yahweh bless your understanding.

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