“Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,” he said: He said is not in the Greek text. Revised Standard Version inserts it to let the reader know that Eleazar is now speaking. If translators begin his speech at the end of the previous verse, this quote frame is not needed. Eleazar is speaking of himself when he says our time of life. His opening words may be rendered “Pretending like that is not worthy of a man as old as I am.” In some languages translators will need to show what the pretense includes by saying “It would be disgraceful for a man as old as I am to pretend to eat unlawful food.”

Lest many of the young should suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion: Here Eleazar refers to himself in the third person by using his name and the pronoun his. In English this sounds odd, so Good News Bible has simply used the pronoun “I.” Some translators may find that this is not strange in their language, so they should not hesitate to follow Revised Standard Version. However, it may be helpful to render the last half of this verse as a separate sentence, as in Good News Bible. Alternative models that do this are “Many [of our] young people would think that I had converted to another religion at the age of ninety” and “… think that after living ninety years, I had started worshiping another god.”

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.