Text:

Before lithos ‘stone’ Westcott & Hort, Souter, Soden, Vogels (in brackets), Lagrange, and Taylor add hōdē ‘here,’ which is omitted by Textus Receptus, Tischendorf, Nestle, Merk, and Kilpatrick.

Exegesis:

ou mē aphethē ‘will not be left’: the double negative is emphatic. For aphiēmi ‘leave’ cf. 2.5.

ou mē kataluthē ‘will not be torn down’: also emphatic. The sense of the two clauses is, ‘No two stones will be left standing together’ – so thorough will the destruction of the Temple be.

kataluō (14.58; 15.29) ‘destroy,’ ‘demolish,’ ‘tear down.’

Translation:

Said may be ‘replied,’ if the point of view in the receptor language is the previous exclamation, or ‘asked,’ if what follows governs the form of the verb introducing direct discourse.

Great is to be understood in terms of size, not importance.

The Greek text does not mean that no two stones will be left one on top of another (that is to say, Jesus did not prophesy that the stones would all be spread out singly on the ground), but that no two joining stones would be left together. In Copainalá Zoque this is well rendered by ‘will not remain a stone on stones’ companion.’ One may also translate this prophecy as ‘no two stones will be left together; they will all be thrown down.’ In Tzeltal the relationships of the stones in the first part of the expression is made somewhat more explicit by the phrase ‘these stones that are built up.’

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 .