3 Maccabees 7:3-5

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

³ Certain of our Friends, frequently urging us with malicious intent, persuaded us to gather together the Jews of the kingdom in a body and to punish them with extraordinary penalties as traitors, ⁴ for they declared that our government would never be firmly established until this was accomplished because of the ill-will that these people had toward all nations. ⁵ They also led them out with harsh treatment as slaves, or rather as traitors, and, girding themselves with a cruelty more savage than that of Scythian custom, they tried without any inquiry or examination to put them to death.^(A)