"22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter,23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.30 I and the Father are one.”"
John 10:22-30
John's reference to the Feast of Dedication in 22 can hardly be said to be a mere indication of the time of the year. Knowing his propensity for hidden symbolism and for interpreting the feasts as finding their fulfilment in Jesus, we are probably right in assuming that He is saying something here about such a fulfilment. The Feast of Dedication is mentioned here only in Scripture. It originated in the time of the Maccabees and commemorated the cleansing of the temple and altar at Jerusalem by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 BC three years after Antiochus Epiphanes had defiled it by setting up the abomination of desolation in it. The temple was therefore, in being reconsecrated, given as it were, a new beginning. It may be that John is saying here that Jesus is the fulfilment of this feast in a still greater way in that He is reconsecrating the temple, giving it a new beginning: after its defilement by the hireling shepherds who had so signally failed the people. This is probably the connection with the earlier part of the chapter. The Pharisees were the thieves and robbers who had desecrated the temple, and now the good Shepherd had come to replace them. We made an earlier reference to Ezekiel 34-36, where the prophet explicitly promises that God would raise up new shepherds and that there would be a new people. Perhaps John actually has this in mind, for Jesus is certainly reconstituting the people of God, and reconsecrating them as a transformed community of believers who acknowledge Him as the true Christ (cf 36 where Jesus speaks of the Father's consecration of Him to be the Messiah).