⁸ When Seleucus died and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, succeeded to the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias obtained the high priesthood by corruption, ⁹ promising the king at an interview three hundred sixty talents of silver, and from another source of revenue eighty talents.

¹⁰ In addition to this he promised to pay one hundred fifty more if permission were given to establish by his authority a gymnasium and a body of youth for it, and to enroll the people of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch. ¹¹When the king assented and Jason came to office, he at once shifted his compatriots over to the Greek way of life.

¹² He set aside the existing royal concessions to the Jews, secured through John the father of Eupolemus, who went on the mission to establish friendship and alliance with the Romans;

¹³ and he destroyed the lawful ways of living and introduced new customs contrary to the law. 

¹⁴ He took delight in establishing a gymnasium right under the citadel, and he induced the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. 

¹⁵ There was such an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways because of the surpassing wickedness of Jason, who was ungodly and no true high priest, 

¹⁶ that the priests were no longer intent upon their service at the altar. Despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hurried to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling arena after the signal for the discus-throwing, 

¹⁷ disdaining the honors prized by their ancestors and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige.

¹⁸ For this reason heavy disaster overtook them, and those whose ways of living they admired and wished to imitate completely became their enemies and punished them. ¹⁹ It is no light thing to show irreverence to the divine laws—a fact that later events will make clear.

¹ Not long after this, the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; 

²also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus, and to call the one in Gerizim the temple of Zeus-the-Friend-of-Strangers, as did the people who lived in that place. 

³ Harsh and utterly grievous was the onslaught of evil. 

⁴For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the Gentiles, who dallied with prostitutes and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and besides brought in things for sacrifice that were unfit. The altar was covered with abominable offerings that were forbidden by the laws. 

⁵People could neither keep the sabbath, nor observe the festivals of their ancestors, nor so much as confess themselves to be Jews. 

⁶ On the monthly celebration of the king’s birthday, the Jews were taken, under bitter constraint, to partake of the sacrifices;

⁷ and when a festival of Dionysus was celebrated, they were compelled to wear wreaths of ivy and to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus. 

⁸At the suggestion of the people of Ptolemais a decree was issued to the neighboring Greek cities

⁹ that they should adopt the same policy toward the Jews and make them partake of the sacrifices, and should kill those who did not choose to change over to Greek customs.

¹⁰ One could see, therefore, the misery that had come upon them. 

¹¹For example, two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. They publicly paraded them around the city, with their babies hanging at their breasts, and then hurled them down headlong from the wall. 

¹² Others who had assembled in the caves nearby, in order to observe the seventh day secretly,

¹³ were betrayed to Philip and were all burned together, because their piety kept them from defending themselves, in view of their regard for that most holy day.

²¹ Since on the twenty-fifth day of Chislev we shall celebrate the purification of the temple, we thought it necessary to notify you,

²²in order that you also may celebrate the festival of booths and the festival of the fire given when Nehemiah, who built the temple and the altar, offered sacrifices. 

²³ For when our ancestors were being led captive to Persia, the pious priests of that time took some of the fire of the altar and secretly hid it in the hollow of a dry cistern, where they took such precautions that the place was unknown to anyone.

²⁴ But after many years had passed, when it pleased God, Nehemiah, having been commissioned by the king of Persia.

²⁵ And he sent the descendants of the priests who had hidden the fire to get it.

²⁶ And when they reported to us that they had not found fire but only a frozen liquid, he ordered them to dip it out and bring it. ²⁷ When the materials for the sacrifices were presented, Nehemiah ordered the priests to sprinkle the liquid on the wood and on the things laid upon it. 

²⁸ When this had been done and some time had passed, and when the sun, which had been clouded over, shone out, a great fire blazed up, so that all marveled. 

(1) During the period of the second Temple, when the Greek kings were in power, they proclaimed decrees against the Jewish people, abrogating their religion and forbidding them to study the Torah or to perform the divine precepts. They laid their hands on their wealth and their daughters; they entered the Temple and broke through it, defiling the things that were pure. The people of Israel were sorely distressed by their enemies, who oppressed them ruthlessly until the God of our fathers took pity, saved and rescued them from the hands of the tyrants. The Hasmonean great priests won victories, defeating the Syrian Greeks and saving Israel from their power. They set up a king from among the priests and Israel's kingdom was restored for a period of more than two centuries, until the destruction of the second Temple.

When, on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the Jews had emerged victorious over their foes and destroyed them, they re-entered the Temple where they found only one jar of pure oil, enough to be lit for only a single day; yet they used it for lighting the required set of lamps for eight days, until they managed to press olives and produce pure oil.