[Avodah] yaarog v' al.....how many? and why?

[Simon Montagu]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 12:48 AM, Harvey Benton <harvw613 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> i read that
> the rambam holds certain
> groups (sadducees??/apikorsim,) etc,
> to be chayav mitah??

Is this perhaps a reference to "those who are in the country, but have
their backs turned towards the king's palace" in the Rambam's mashal
in Moreh Nevuchim 3.51?

In Friedlander's translation:
"Those who are in the country, but have their backs turned towards the
king's palace, are those who possess religion, belief, and thought,
but happen to hold false doctrines, which they either adopted in
consequence of great mistakes made in their own speculations, or
received from others who misled them. Because of these doctrines they
recede more and more from the royal palace the more they seem to
proceed. These are worse than the first class, and under certain
circumstances it may become necessary to slay them, and to extirpate
their doctrines, in order that others should not be misled."

>From http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp187.htm with an obvious
OCR typo (day for slay) corrected.

Prof. Michael Schwarz' Hebrew translation at
http://press.tau.ac.il/perplexed/chapters/chap_3_51.htm