The Koine Bible

Why do you delay, O tyrant? For we are ready either to die or to transgress our ancestral commands.

For we are ashamed of our ancestors justly, if we do not make use of the obedience to the law and the counsel of Moses.

Counselor, tyrant of lawlessness, do not, hating us more than them, pity us.

For we consider your mercy for our lawless salvation to be more grievous than death itself.

But you frighten us, threatening us with death through tortures, as though not having learned a short while ago from Eleazarum

But if the elders of the Hebrews, because of piety, having endured tortures, were pious unto death, would we not die more justly, we who are young, despising the tortures of your necessities, which even our teacher, being old, conquered?

Try therefore, tyrant, even our souls, whether you will put us to death for piety; do not think that you are harming us by torturing us.

For through this suffering and endurance we shall have the prizes of virtue and shall be with God, on account of whom we also suffer

But you, because of our bloodguilt, will endure sufficient eternal torment by fire under the divine justice.

When they had said these things, the tyrant was enraged not only as against disobedient men, but also as against ungrateful men.

Wherefore the guards, having been ordered, brought forward their eldest, and, tearing his tunic, bound his hands and his arms on both sides with straps.

But when they, striking with the whips, had wearied themselves, accomplishing nothing, they lifted him onto the wheel

Because of whom the noble young man, being stretched tight, was disjointed.

And being broken limb by limb, he blasphemed, saying:

Most vile tyrant and enemy of the heavenly judgment and cruel-minded one, you are torturing me in this way, though I did not murder this man nor act impiously, but was defending the divine law

And while the guards were saying, Confess to eat, so that you may be freed from the torments

But he said, Your wheel is not so strong, O vile servants, as to strangle my mind; cut my limbs and burn my flesh and twist my joints.

For through all the tortures I will persuade you that the only sons of Hebrews are unconquerable for virtue.

While he was saying these things, they spread fire underneath and they stretched tight the wheel that was also causing torment.

But the wheel was defiled on every side with blood, and the heap of embers was extinguished by the drops of the ichors, and around the axles of the instrument the flesh flowed down around

and having already the knotting of the bones cut around, the high-minded and Abrahamic young man did not groan

but just as, being transformed in fire into incorruptibility, he nobly endured the tortures

Imitate me, brothers, saying, do not fall away from my contest, nor renounce my brotherhood of courage.

You have waged a sacred and noble campaign for piety, through which may our righteous and ancestral providence, having become gracious to the nation, punish the unrelenting tyrant.

And when he had said these things, the priestly young man gave up his soul.

But when all marveled at his steadfastness of soul, the guards led in the second by age after the former, and, having fitted on iron hands with sharp nails as an instrument and with a catapult, they bound him up

And as if he wished to eat before being tortured, asking, they heard the noble resolve.

From the sinews, with their iron hands, they drew down all the flesh and the skin of the head as far as the beards; the leopard-like beasts were tearing it off, but he, enduring this pain heavily, was saying

How sweet every manner of death is for the sake of our ancestral piety, and he said to the tyrant,

Do you not think, most savage of all tyrants, that you are being tortured more than I, seeing your arrogant reasoning for tyranny being overcome by our endurance for the sake of piety?

For I indeed lighten my toil by the pleasures that are because of virtue.

But you, in the threats of impiety, are being tormented; you will not escape, most defiled tyrant, the penalties of the divine wrath