This is one of the cruelest and most luminous stories in the Talmud, preserved both in tractate Avodah Zarah and in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection as exemplum No. 67.
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, one of the Ten Martyrs of the Hadrianic persecutions in the second century, was arrested for the crime of teaching Torah in public. When he received the sentence of death by fire, he did not curse; he quoted. "The Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are justice" (Deuteronomy 32:4).
His wife was condemned to death by the sword, for failing to prevent him. "A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He" (continuing the same verse). She accepted her sentence.
His daughter was sent into a Roman brothel, punished for a moment of vanity she had once indulged before senators. She too found a verse to acknowledge the decree. Each of the three, the tradition says, sanctified the judgment against them with a word of Torah.
On the day of his burning the Romans wrapped Rabbi Chanina in a Torah scroll, soaked wet wool against his heart to prolong the agony, and set the parchment alight. His daughter wept. "Father, that you should be burned like this."
He answered her gently. "Is it not better that I should be burned in a fire that can be extinguished, than in the Eternal Fire?"
She wept again. "And I cry for the Torah that is burning with you."
He replied with the line that has comforted Jews at every burning since. "The Torah is itself fire, and fire cannot consume fire. The parchment burns, but the letters — the letters fly upward and are free."
Then he said, "The One who arises in the days to come will require my blood from these men, and punish them for their persecution of the Torah."