Text:

Instead of hamartēmatos ‘sin’ Textus Receptus has kriseōs ‘judgment,’ ‘condemnation’: this clearly inferior reading is rejected by all modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

eis to pneuma to hagion ‘into the Holy Spirit’: eis here has a hostile meaning ‘against.’

aphesin (cf. 1.4) ‘forgiveness’ (for the verb aphiēmi ‘forgive’ see 2.5).

eis ton aiōna ‘into the age,’ i.e. the ‘future age.’

eis ‘into’ indicates duration of time.

aiōn (4.19; 10.30; 11.14) ‘age’: the word reflects the Hebrew concept of time as divided into ages, generally the present age (cf. 4.19) and the future age, the age to come (cf. 10.30). In this passage the phrase means ‘eternally,’ ‘forever’ as the parallel in Mt. 12.32 makes explicit: ‘either in this age or in the coming age.’ Cf. Vulgate in aeternum; Lagrange à jamais.

enochos (14.64) ‘guilty of,’ ‘charged with,’ here indicates the crime of which the man is guilty, not the punishment to which he is liable.

aiōniou ‘of the age,’ ‘age-long’: that is ‘eternal,’ ‘endless.’

hoti elegon ‘because they were saying’: these are words of explanation which the evangelist adds. hoti is causative ‘because,’ giving the reason why Jesus said what he did concerning the unforgivable sin.

elegon ‘they were saying’ is better than ‘they had said’ of Revised Standard Version. ‘They’ are the scribes referred to in v. 22.

pneuma akatharton ‘unclean spirit,’ the same as saying ‘he has Beelzebul’ (v. 22) or ‘he has a demon’ (cf. 1.34).

Translation:

Blasphemes against the Holy Spirit may be rendered as ‘to speak against the Holy Spirit’ or ‘to say evil words about the Holy Spirit’ (for “Holy Spirit” see 1.7).

Has forgiveness is a difficult expression to translate literally, for in general one must speak of ‘to be forgiven’ or ‘to receive forgiveness’ (but for numerous idioms for forgiveness see 1.4). In languages in which an active form of the verb is required the subject ‘God’ must be introduced, ‘God will never forgive a man who speaks evil of the Holy Spirit.’

To be guilty of an eternal sin can only rarely be translated literally. Rather, this phrase must be rendered by various types of idiomatic expressions, e.g. ‘his sin stays on his head for the time that never ends’ (Farefare), ‘he carries the weight of his sin that lasts forever’ (Yaka), ‘his sins will be continually taken into account’ (Pamona), ‘he will always have his sin’ (Highland Oaxaca Chontal), and ‘he has a sin that will never be taken away’ (Huichol).

In some way, the abrupt transition before the clause for they had said … must be marked, either by some kind of a dash, or by a complete new sentence, or by some transitional expression, e.g. ‘Jesus said this because they had said…’ (South Bolivian Quechua). The reason for making this break evident is that one must not translate as ‘he is guilty of an eternal sin because of what they had said’ (though indirectly this is true). Nevertheless, the last sentence must be construed with all that precedes, not merely with the last clause.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .