Passover Pilgrims

As the Festival of Unleavened Bread was at hand in the first month, which the Macedonians call Xanthicus and we call Nisan, all the people flowed together out of the villages to the city and celebrated the festival, having purified themselves, along with their wives and children, according to their ancestral custom. They offered the sacrifice called the Passover on the fourteenth day of the same month and celebrated and feasted for seven days, sparing no great cost but making whole burnt offerings to God and performing sacrifices of thanksgiving, in return for God’s leading them again to the land of their ancestors and its native laws and for rendering the intentions of the king of Persia favorable to them.

Translated by William Whiston, adapted byAaron Samuels.