Translation commentary on Mark 14:20

Text:

Before trublion ‘dish’ Textus Receptus, Tischendorf, Soden, Vogels, Souter, Lagrange, and Merk omit hen ‘one’; it is included, in brackets (with some doubt as to its genuineness, therefore), by Westcott and Hort, Nestle, and Taylor; Kilpatrick includes it without brackets; Revised Standard Version also includes it, translating ‘same.’

Exegesis:

heis tōn dōdeka (cf. v. 10) ‘one of the Twelve.’

ho embaptomenos met’ emou ‘he who dips with me,’ ‘the one dipping with me’: what is said in v. 18 concerning the force of the definite article ho ‘the’ with the participle, and concerning the time involved in the designation, is applicable here as well.

embaptō (only here in Mark) ‘to dip in,’ ‘to plunge in’: here it is used with reference to the bread which was held in the hand and dipped in the bowl containing the designated sauce for the meal.

to hen trublion ‘the one bowl,’ i.e. ‘the same bowl.’

trublion (only here in Mark) ‘dish,’ ‘bowl’: placed in the center of the table, it contained the sauce into which the bread was dipped for eating.

Translation:

The twelve must be modified in two ways in some languages: (1) by the addition of a substantive, e.g. ‘disciples’ or ‘men,’ and (2) by a shift to a second person form, or identification, e.g. ‘one of you twelve disciples.’ Without the addition of ‘you,’ the clause may be interpreted as referring to another twelve persons rather than to those being addressed, since in certain languages it is possible to speak of oneself in the third person.

Dipping does not mean complete submersion of the bread, but only the dipping of it into a sauce.

One of the twelve must in some languages be ‘one of the eleven’ (Chol).

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 .

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