Saying may have the more specific connotation of “claiming” (see Good News Translation).

Note that Good News Translation has used indirect discourse and the second person “you” instead of the direct discourse and we of the Revised Standard Version text. This will be more natural in many other languages as well.

Had lived sometimes is rendered “had been alive.”

Fathers has the extended meaning of “ancestors” (Good News Translation).

Shedding the blood is a Hebrew idiom meaning “kill” or “murder” (Good News Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, New English Bible). The sentence may be expressed then as “We (or, You) would not have joined them in killing the prophets” or “We (or, You) would not have helped them to murder the prophets.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .