5. hear your prayers, and be reconciled to you, and never forsake you in time of adversity.
6. Even now we are praying for you here.
7. In the reign of Demetrius, the one hundred and sixty-ninth year, we Jews wrote to you during the height of the distress that overtook us in those years after Jason and his followers revolted against the holy land and the kingdom,
8. set fire to the gatehouse and shed innocent blood. But we prayed to the Lord, and our prayer was heard; we offered sacrifices and fine flour; we lighted the lamps and set out the loaves of bread.
9. We are now reminding you to celebrate the feast of Booths in the month of Kislev.
10. Dated in the one hundred and eighty-eighth year. The people of Jerusalem and Judea, the senate, and Judas send greetings and good wishes to Aristobulus, teacher of King Ptolemy and member of the family of the anointed priests, and to the Jews in Egypt.
11. Since we have been saved by God from grave dangers, we give him great thanks as befits those who fought against the king;
12. for it was God who drove out those who fought against the holy city.
13. When their leader arrived in Persia with his seemingly irresistible army, they were cut to pieces in the temple of the goddess Nanea through a deceitful stratagem employed by Nanea’s priests.
14. On the pretext of marrying the goddess, Antiochus with his Friends had come to the place to get its great treasures as a dowry.
15. When the priests of Nanea’s temple had displayed the treasures and Antiochus with a few attendants had come inside the wall of the temple precincts, the priests locked the temple as soon as he entered.
16. Then they opened a hidden trapdoor in the ceiling, and hurling stones at the leader and his companions, struck them down. They dismembered the bodies, cut off their heads and tossed them to the people outside.
17. Forever blessed be our God, who has thus punished the impious!
18. Since we shall be celebrating the purification of the temple on the twenty-fifth day of the month Kislev, we thought it right to inform you, that you too may celebrate the feast of Booths and of the fire that appeared when Nehemiah, the rebuilder of the temple and the altar, offered sacrifices.
19. For when our ancestors were being led into captivity in Persia, devout priests at the time took some of the fire from the altar and hid it secretly in the hollow of a dry cistern, making sure that the place would be unknown to anyone.