Exegesis:

ou dia touto…; ‘is it not on account of this…?’ ‘is this not the reason why…?’

planasthe (12.27; 13.5, 6) ‘you err,’ ‘you are mistaken’: the verb may be read as a middle, ‘you deceive yourselves,’ but is probably to be taken as passive, ‘you are misled.’

mē eidotes ‘not knowing’: the participle is causal, ‘because you do not know.’

tas graphas (cf. 12.10) ‘the Scriptures’: by this, of course, the Hebrew Scriptures are meant.

tēn dunamin (cf. 5.30) ‘the power.’

Translation:

Why you are wrong refers to their mistake in judgment and speech, not to “wrong” in the moral sense. In Tzeltal this meaning is brought out nicely by ‘you go off the wrong road in speech.’

Since the final clause introduced by that states the cause of the wrong judgment (grammatically anticipated in the words this why), one may substitute a causative conjunction, ‘is not this the reason why you are wrong, because you know….’

Know the power of God may give rise to two quite different meanings: (1) to experience the power of God, which is obviously not the meaning of this passage, and (2) to know about the power of God, e.g. ‘to know how God has power’ (Tzeltal).

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 .