Now recently, several Reform rabbis have stated that the fact that the first surviving written record of the miracle is from the Gemara (500 CE) indicates that the miracle was invented around 500 CE. I am not an Orthodox Jew, but I do believe that the Gemara represents the sages writing down oral traditions, and am annoyed by the tendency among certain Reform rabbis to assume that everything was invented at the time it was written.
This point isn’t novel to “Reform rabbis” nor is it recent. This point dates back quite a lot and you’ll also get some Orthodox Rabbis who will make the same point.
There’s also other evidence that the idea of the miracle of the lights is late. In particular, the older part of additional Chanukah liturgy added in the Amidah makes no mention of the miracle of lights.
In general, there are sections of the Talmud that are clearly very old oral tradition. I’m not aware of any educated individual, Reform Rabbi or otherwise, who would claim that everything in the Gemarrah was invented out of whole cloth in 500 CE. But it is pretty clear that the oral traditions had highly unreliable aspects (see for example the section in Tamid involving Alexander the Great. This is one of many examples where the text is extremely ahistorical.)
This point isn’t novel to “Reform rabbis” nor is it recent. This point dates back quite a lot and you’ll also get some Orthodox Rabbis who will make the same point.
There’s also other evidence that the idea of the miracle of the lights is late. In particular, the older part of additional Chanukah liturgy added in the Amidah makes no mention of the miracle of lights.
In general, there are sections of the Talmud that are clearly very old oral tradition. I’m not aware of any educated individual, Reform Rabbi or otherwise, who would claim that everything in the Gemarrah was invented out of whole cloth in 500 CE. But it is pretty clear that the oral traditions had highly unreliable aspects (see for example the section in Tamid involving Alexander the Great. This is one of many examples where the text is extremely ahistorical.)