Megillat Taanit

Megillat Taanit (Hebrew: מגילת תענית) is chronicle which enumerates 35 eventful days on which the Jewish nation either performed glorious deeds or witnessed joyful events. These days were celebrated as feast-days. Public mourning was forbidden on 14 of them, and public fasting on all. In most of the editions this chronicle consists of two parts, which are distinct in language and in form, namely:

The days are enumerated, not in the chronological order of the events they commemorate, but in the sequence of the calendar, Megillat Ta'anit being divided into twelve chapters, corresponding to the months of the year. Each chapter contains the memorial days of a single month, the first chapter dealing with those of the first month, Nisan, and so on to the 12th chapter, which treats of those of the 12th month, Adar.

The festal occasions which these days were intended to keep alive in the memory of the people belong to different epochs; and on this basis the days may be divided into five groups, namely:

There are also a few days which do not refer to any known historical event, and are, therefore, chronologically uncertain. All these memorial days did not become festivals by being incorporated and recorded in Megillat Ta'anit, as J. Schmilg has attempted to prove (Ueber die Entstehung und den Historischen Werth des Siegeskalenders Megillat Ta'anit, pp. 11–20), but had been known and celebrated by the people long before that time, as he himself is obliged to admit in the case of some of them; indeed, the celebration of these festivals or semi-festivals evidently existed as early as the time of Judith (Book of Judith viii. 6). The compilers of Megillat Ta'anit merely listed the memorial days and at the same time determined that the less important should be celebrated by a mere suspension of fasting, while public mourning was to be forbidden on the more important ones.

In an old baraita (Shab. 13b) the question as to the authorship of the work is answered as follows: "Hananiah ben Hezekiah of the Garon family, together with a number of others who had assembled for a synod at his house, compiled Megillat Ta'anit." According to an account in the Halakot Gedolot, Hilkot Soferim (ed. Vienna, p. 104; ed. Zolkiev, p. 82c), the members of this synod were the "Ziḳne Bet Shammai" and "Ziḳne Bet Hillel," the eldest pupils of Shammai and Hillel. Megillat Ta'anit must have been composed, therefore, about the year 7 CE, when Judea was made a Roman province to the great indignation of the Jews (comp. Schmilg, l.c. pp. 20–36). This calendar of victories was intended to fan the spark of liberty among the people and to fill them with confidence and courage by reminding them of the victories of the Maccabees and the divine aid granted to the Jewish nation against the heathen.

...
Wikipedia