This document about the feast of Purim, said to have been translated by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, a native of Jerusalem, was first made public in the fourth year of king Ptolemy and queen Cleopatra, by Dosithaeus, who claimed to be a priest of true Levite descent, and his son, who was also called Ptolemy.✻

On the first day of the month Nisan, in the second year of the great Artaxerxes, a vision came in a dream to Mardochaeus the Benjamite, who was descended from Cis through Jairi and Semei.

Although a Jew, he dwelt at Susan, and was a man of consequence in the royal court;✻

he belonged to that band of exiles who were carried off from Jerusalem by Nabuchodonosor, king of Babylon, together with the king of Juda, Jechonias.

His dream was this: Mutterings and uproar at first, thunder and earthquake, and commotion all over the world,

and from these two dragons disengaged themselves, ready to join battle.

Roused by their clamour, the whole world rose to levy war against one innocent nation;

it was a time of darkness and of peril, of affliction and sore need, and great fear brooded over all the earth.

Then this innocent nation, terrified by the misfortunes which threatened it, already marked down to die,

cried out to the Lord. And at their cry, a great river grew out of a little spring, and rolled on in full flood;

the sun returned, and the sunlight, the weak triumphed now, and tyranny fell a prey to their onslaught.

All this Mardochaeus saw, and rose from his bed still wondering what the divine purpose was; still the vision haunted his mind, and he longed to know what was the meaning of it.