Maccabees 2 19
Mattathias answered in a loud voice,
I don’t care if every Gentile in this empire has obeyed the king and yielded to the command to abandon the religion of his ancestors.20 My children, my relatives, and I will continue to keep the covenant that God made with our ancestors. 21 With God’s help we will never abandon his Law or disobey his commands. 22 We will not obey the king’s decree, and we will not change our way of worship in the least
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Macabees 1
41-43 Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people. All the Gentiles and even many of the Israelites submitted to this decree. They adopted the official pagan religion, offered sacrifices to idols, and no longer observed the Sabbath.
44 The king also sent messengers with a decree to Jerusalem and all the towns of Judea, ordering the people to follow customs that were foreign to the country.45 He ordered them not to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, or wine offerings in the Temple, and commanded them to treat Sabbaths and festivals as ordinary work days. 46 They were even ordered to defile the Temple and the holy things in it.[e] 47 They were commanded to build pagan altars, temples, and shrines, and to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals there. 48 They were forbidden to circumcise their sons and were required to make themselves ritually unclean in every way they could, 49 so that they would forget the Law which the Lord had given through Moses and would disobey all its commands. 50 The penalty for disobeying the king’s decree was death.
