6 Not long after this, the king sent out an[fn] old man of Athainai to compel the Yehudim (Jews) to depart from the laws of their fathers and not to live by God’s laws, 2 and also to pollute the sanctuary in Yerushalem and to call it by the name of Olympian Zeus, and to call the sanctuary in Gerizim by the name of Zeus the Protector of foreigners, even as the people who lived in that place did.

3 The visitation of this evil was harsh and utterly grievous. 4 Because the temple was filled with debauchery and revelling by the heathen, who dallied with prostitutes,[fn] and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and moreover brought inside things that weren’t appropriate. 5 The altar was filled with those abominable things which had been prohibited by the laws. 6 A man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of their ancestors, nor so much as confess himself to be a Yehudi (Jew).

7 On the day of the king’s birth every month, they were led along with bitter constraint to eat of the sacrifices. When the feast of Dionusia came, they were compelled to go in procession in honour of Dionusos, wearing wreaths of ivy. 8 A decree went out to the neighbouring Greek cities, by the suggestion of Ptolemaios (Ptolemy), that they should observe the same conduct against the Yehudim, and should make them eat of the sacrifices, 9 and that they should kill those who didn’t choose to go over to the Greek rites. So the present misery was for all to see. 10 Because example, two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. These, when they’d led them publicly around the city with the babes hung from their breasts, they threw down headlong from the wall. 11 Others who’d run together into the caves nearby to keep the seventh day secretly, were betrayed to Filippos (Philip) and were all burnt together, because their piety kept them from defending themselves, in view of the honour of that most solemn day.