For considering the flood of numbers involved and the difficulty there is for those who wish to enter upon the narratives of history because of the mass of material: In this verse the writer gives the reason for his undertaking the summary of Jason’s history. We suggest that translators make it a separate sentence as Good News Bible and Contemporary English Version have done. Flood is literally “liquid poured out.” It is used here in Greek as a metaphor, so flood is a suitable English equivalent. The word numbers can be interpreted different ways. Goldstein takes the word in the technical sense of the number of words and translates the flood of numbers as “a sea of words.” Good News Bible takes numbers in a slightly different sense, saying “number of details.” The phrase the mass of material at the end of the verse repeats the same idea as the flood of numbers, stressing the huge amount of facts and details that Jason put into his history. These two phrases may be combined by saying “the huge number of facts and details.” For the difficulty there is for those, Contemporary English Version has “they discourage readers,” and Good News Bible says “can be overwhelming for anyone.” Who wish to enter upon the narratives of history may be expressed as “who wants to read an account of these events.”

The following model reorders slightly the material in this verse:

• He left [or, wrote] a very long history, with a huge number of facts and details. So it is difficult for [or, will discourage] even a reader who is interested in an account of these events.

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.