Pardon the interruption

Since I was not raised in Judaism in any meaningful sense, much of that liturgy is opaque to me. But as we have lectionaries in Christianity, so they have analogues in Judaism; and as our priests have guidebooks and calendars and the Synaxarion, the Jews have analogues. So: Pesikta de-Rav Kahana.

This "Pesikta" is a Midrash... sort of. Arnon Atzmon warns it's not organised like a commentary on Numbers. It's a commentary on a lectionary, best I can tell; on the Biblical readings that get read throughout the Jewish (lunar-solar) year. The sections are termed "pisqa'ôt": a "pisqa'ah" seems to mean "interruption". The notion was to interrupt the usual weekly Shabbos reading on the occasion of certain holidays. Rosh Hashana the new year, Chanukkah, stuff like that.

Atzmon is trying to figure out when this liturgical calendar starts. Rosh Hashana would be a decent choice, for sure. There's manuscript support: MS Oxford Bodleian Library Opp. Add. Qu 128 1ℵ. Bernard Mandelbaum, who generally knew what he was talking about, offered some decent third-party witnesses especially in the Sephardic West. So that's the critical text... presently.

But - Atzmon points out - 1ℵ is the only direct support. Other MSS (plural) start with Chanukkah; still more with the haftarôt. Atzmon comes around to seeing the Chanukkah-starting version as the original. One of these MSS derive from Egypt, another AD 13th-century "Germany" which I'm guessing means Rheinland. (Good job dodging the Crusade.)

If so, the next question has to be - why, since Chanukkah is not the new year. It's not the new year for saecular calendars either, like the Seleucid reckoning. Being November / December Hanukkah usually strikes in the Christian Advent which is when we start our liturgical year. Verhelst for his part had looked to the Georgians, never straying far from Greek Dyotheletism, whose Mravaltavi starts with "Mary's holy day". I have little idea what that is, for old Iberia; Atzmon is vague. But for us Latins that can mean either the Immaculate Conception (8 December); or the Octave of Christmastide (1 January) which date although marking Jesus' circumcision is consecrated to Mary.

Atzmon further notes that the Chanukkah-first order agrees with Megillah 3:4-5. So that's Atzmon's rationale. I wonder, though. Is it sufficient rationale to oust the freakin' New Year? - or is that just Hebrew cope? And you'll note that in at least one tradition, it didn't oust the freakin' New Year.

Propose instead a Zionist text.

Suppose nationalists who figured their new year to start with their semi-successful resistance to the Seleucia. Now, I am not saying that the Pesikta is a Maccabean text. What I am saying is that it is pro-Maccabean. The Sasanian occupation of "Palaestina" now Judaea II, we know, inspired much literature among the Jews, mainly in apocalyptic. If the text was composed earlier, it would at least have been copied under Nehemiah ben Hushiel. Absent this evidence I'll call it a neo-Maccabean construction, done in the AD 600s. UPDATE 12/15/23 Like Al HaNissim.