Here is a piece of great archeological news, as it relates to Hanukkah!
While the Feast of Hanukkah is mentioned in the Gospel of John in chapter 10:22, the main source of information concerning this feast comes from the Book of Maccabees. These are included in the Apocrypha, but while they are not inspired in and of themselves, they do contain much historical information of the times, of which the event of Hanukkah takes the central spot.
And it is interesting that it is only this year that they found hard proof of the validity of this book. They discovered a 2,200-year-old box filled with silver coins near the Dead Sea which archeologists say is the first physical proof that Jews fled to the Judean Desert during the upheaval and persecution as related in the Book of Maccabees during the times of Hanukkah.
There in chapter 2:29 of 1Maccabees, the Jews were told to flee to the wilderness to avoid being forced to transgress the law of God and to be killed. There we read: Then many who were seeking righteousness and justice went down to the wilderness to dwell there. And so, when they fled, they carried as much as they could with them and one of them carried some 15 silver coins worth two month’s salary. The coins found were minted by Ptolemy VI, King of Egypt, and dates up to 170 BCE, which is just before Antiochus IV Epiphanes began handing down harsh measures against Jewish freedom of worship.
This then is a very timely archeological discovery as the information from this book is becoming so important especially when we study the prophecies of Daniel, Paul, John and mainly those of Yeshua.