An Interesting Dilemma about wanting to write Historical Fiction.

One of my ambitions if I ever get to become a successful Hollywood Film maker or TV show maker or Anime maker or whatever, is to make the first major popular dramatization of the Maccabees Revolt.  I'm amazed it hasn't been done already frankly.

Thing is the purpose of such a depiction would not be just to be a history lesson.  Indeed the main selling point is it as the origin of Hanukkah, a Holiday everyone knows about.  And because of that I feel kind of obligated to depict the Miracle of the cruse of oil even though I personally believe that incident is ahistorical.

Now I want to clarify something.  I don't disbelieve this story because it's a miracle, I am a Christian, and a Continuationist, I don't think God's supernatural interventions in Human History are limited to those directly documented in the Canonical Scriptures.  I don't consider 2 Maccabees Scripture but I am inclined to believe every Supernatural event it records did in fact happen.

But that's just it, 2 Maccabees doesn't record this one.  If it was only 1 Maccabees that failed to mention it then I could observe how that book doesn't record any supernatural events so it's authors(s) must have not wanted to bring them up.  But 2 Maccabees records a few miracles, so if this story already existed when 2 Maccabees was written then 2 Maccabees would absolutely have recorded it.

So that above reasoning has been in my mind for years now.  But recently I noticed something that makes the historicity of this story even more impossible.  I observed recently in posts I made on other Blogs I run that 1 Maccabees 1:21-24 records Antiochus Epiphanes removing the Menorah and other Sacred Treasures from The Temple and taking them back to his "homeland" by which they probably mean Antioch.  Then 1 Maccabees 4:47-49 tells us Judas Maccabeus created all new replacements for the re-dedication of The Temple.  It is this Menorah and Table of Showbread depicted on the Arch of Titus, not the Mosaic or Solomonic ones, the base of that Menorah gives away how it's clearly a Hellenistic era design not the Biblical design.

This detail of the Maccabees narrative renders the Oil Miracle nonsensical.  The notion that it'd be so symbolically tragic for the Menorah to stop burning even for one night is meaningless when you realize the Menorah had flat out not even been in there for three years.  At best wanting to include both this fact and this miracle makes Judas look rather dumb for not having lots of Oil produced while the new Menorah was being made.

This story doesn't show up till the Babylonian Talmud, the younger of the two Talmuds, both well into the AD era.  It's in the Megilat Antiochus but that source is very young with a very bad understanding of the history in-question (it treats all of the Seleucid rulers as one single Antiochus).

Yet it has become what Hanukkah is actually about to most people observing it today.  Likewise if I make a movie about the Nativity Narrative and followed my interpretation of the text that Jesus wasn't born in the stable of an inn because no one was willing to house Mary and Joseph but rather in a nice house that Joseph owned, I'll have removed like 70% of what American Christianity considers the point of the story.

Now my ideas for Historical fiction always adds things, I want to expand what we do know from the sources and add my own creative ideas.  But I hold myself to a standard I don't always hold other historical fiction to in that I generally don't want to depict anything that we can prove didn't happen.

For example.  In this case I'm going to write Lesbians into the story somehow because I can't write anything without Lesbians.  I want to have a woman claiming to be a Meanad play the Exotic Femme Fatale role that is practically a required cliche of this genre.  I want to give Cleopatra II some screen time because I'm just personally a big fan of her, I will be historically accurate in casting an authentic Ginger to play her.  I might write an Amazon into it.  And if anyone is starting to go "you seem oddly more interested in the Greek stuff then Jewish stuff" don't worry I have plenty of ideas for the Jewish side too, like how I'll draw inspiration from The Fiddler On The Roof.

Which is why including the Oil Miracle wasn't really a problem when it was only the lack of reference that had me doubting it's historicity.  But now that I have seen clear evidence it didn't happen I'm truly conflicted about the issue.  Especially as I now want to depict these objects being taken by Antiochus since I see some interesting implications in them winding up at Antioch.

Post Script: On the sources I'd use.

I'd be mainly using both 1 and 2 Maccabees and Josephus and maybe also the book known as 4 Maccabees.  3 Maccabees is confusingly not actually about the Maccabees at all and I have reasons for considering it completely Ahistorical anyway.

While I refereed to a bias I believe 1 Maccabees has, it is the older text and so I will trust it over 2 Maccabees if I come across any truly irreconcilable contradiction between them.  Josephus being seemingly unaware of 2 Maccabees is evidence of how young it is.

However in the case of seeming inconsistencies between the standard version of 1 Maccabees and the version of it Josephus was using as source material for this time period in Antiquities of The Jews, I think Josephus probably had a version closer to the original.  Still some details unique to Josephus could be things he's adding from elsewhere.  

In Antiquities Josephus flat out admits he got some stuff wrong in Wars of The Jews that he is now correcting.

That this history is fulfilling prophecies from Daniel will also be mentioned.  I also like to connect Hanukkah to Haggai 2, Zechariah 4, Leviticus 24 and Numbers 8.

Details we know about Antiochus Epiphanes from Polybus and Livy will also be considered.

I also have some interesting theories about how the Book of Judith might relate to this history.   Of course the defeat of Nicanor is something we probably wouldn't get to till a Sequel.