"... While the Festival of Dedication is an essential component of 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Gospel of John, it is not mentioned elsewhere in either the Septuagint or the New Testament. The unique focus on this festival points to a distinctive cluster of concerns for the Temple in Jerusalem that places these texts in conversation and debate with each other. 1 and 2 Maccabees celebrate the purification and dedication of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus in late 164 BCE as a highpoint of Jewish history in the Hellenistic era (1 Macc 4:36–59; 2 Macc 10:1–8). By contrast, the Gospel of John depicts the festal commemoration of this event as the occasion when the differences between Jesus and the Temple authorities reach a crescendo in the Roman era (John 10:22–39). The dissonances between the Maccabean literature and John are accentuated by the dating of the texts. The authors of 1 and 2 Maccabees, who completed their respective works perhaps late in the second century BCE, contemplated the Temple as the vibrant center of Jewish life. By contrast, the final editor who completed the Fourth Gospel around 100 CE viewed the Temple as a memory, the terminus of an era that had ended some three decades earlier in 70 CE, when the armies of Rome invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the sacred precincts ..."