There they all push to destruction any man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes: The word all in this context has caused some discussion, since it is unexpected, and hard to see how everyone in Beroea could push someone over the top into the ashes. However, Goldstein begins this verse with “There the community joins in pushing to doom….” Abel conjectures that the Greek word translated all is a scribal mistake for a word meaning “having taken him up.” This is a reasonable conjecture—it involves a change of one letter in Greek—and is followed by New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, and possibly Good News Bible. New American Bible has a similar translation, but it conjectures a slightly different textual change. We believe the word all is nothing more than a rhetorical overstatement. It is probably the correct text, but does not have to be explained literally, as Goldstein does. Good News Bible uses passive verbs to avoid revealing who pushed the criminals into the pit. For languages that do not have the passive voice, see the model below. Guilty of sacrilege means guilty of some offense against the gods thought serious enough to deserve death. An alternative model for this verse is:

• If a person committed a crime against the gods or any other serious crime, they took him to the top and pushed him over [to his death].

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.