The Koine Bible

Then Antiochus the tyrant, having seated himself with the councillors on some high place, and his troops standing beside him all around, armed,

He was ordering the spearmen to draw each and every Hebrew aside and to compel them to taste pig’s flesh and idol-offerings.

But if some should not be willing to eat these polluted things, let them be put to death after being wheel-tortured.

And when many were brought along, one first from the herd, by name Eleazar, a priest by race, learned in the law, and advanced in age, and familiar to many of those about the tyrant because of his age, was brought near to him

And when Antiochus saw him, he said:

Before I begin the tortures against you, old man, I would advise you these things, so that, after tasting swinish things, you might be saved.

For I respect your age and your gray hair, which, having for so long a time, you do not seem to me to be philosophizing while using the religion of the Jews.

For why do you abhor the flesh-eating of this animal, though nature has granted it most beautifully?

For this is foolish, not to enjoy the pleasures without reproach, and unjust, to turn away from the graces of nature.

But you also seem to me to be making a still more foolish thing if, boasting vainly about the truth, you will still despise me in my own punishment

Will you not awaken from your nonsense philosophy and scatter the nonsense of your reasonings, and, taking up a mind worthy of your age, will you philosophize the truth of what is profitable?

and having bowed down to my humane encouragement you will pity your own old age

For consider also that if indeed there is any power overseeing this your religion, it would pardon you for every lawless act done under compulsion

In this manner, as the tyrant urged him on to the lawless flesh-eating, Eleazar asked for a word

And having taken authority to speak, he began to address the people thus

We, O Antiochus, being persuaded by a divine law to conduct our life, think that no necessity is more violent than obedience to our law.

Therefore indeed we deem it worthy in no way to transgress the law.

And yet, if in truth our law were not divine as you suppose, but we nevertheless thought it to be divine, even so it was not permitted for us to nullify the reputation for piety.

Do not therefore think this to be a small matter, if we should commit the sin of eating defiled food.

For to transgress in small things and in great things is equivalent.

For through each in the same way the law boasts itself proudly

And you mock our philosophy as though we were not living in it with good reasoning

For it teaches us self-control, so as to master all pleasures and desires, and it trains bravery so as to endure every toil willingly

and it disciplines righteousness so as to be equal in law through all customs and teaches reverence so as to worship magnificently the one and only God who is existent

Therefore we do not eat unclean things, for believing that the law has been established by God, we know that the lawgiver, the creator of the world, sympathizes with us according to nature.

He allowed the things that will be made familiar to our souls to be eaten, but he forbade the things that will be opposed to us to be eaten as flesh.

But it is tyrannical not only to compel us to act unlawfully, but also to eat, so that you may laugh at us with this most hateful defiled eating.

but you will not laugh at me this laugh

Nor will I ignore the sacred oaths of the ancestors for the keeping of the law.

Nor even if you should cut out my eyes and melt away my innards

I am not so old and without manhood that for me, because of piety, the mind does not grow young.

For these things, prepare the wheels and blow out the fire more fiercely.

I do not so pity my own old age as to destroy through myself the ancestral law

I will not lie to you, Law, instructor, nor will I renounce you, beloved self-control.

Nor will I shame you, O philosophical word, nor will I deny you, honorable priesthood and knowledge of the law.

nor will you defile the venerable mouth of my old age, nor the period of a lawful life

The fathers will receive me pure, not having feared your constraints even to death

For over the impious you will exercise tyranny, but over my reasonings for piety you will not lord it, neither by words nor by deeds