Exegesis:

endiduskousin (only here in Mark; cf. enduō 1.6) ‘they clothe,’ ‘they dress’ (after having taken off his own clothes – cf. v. 20)

porphuran (15.20) ‘purple cloth,’ ‘purple robe’; Souter defines it as a red-colored cloak, such as common soldiers wore, which Rawlinson identifies as the paludamentum or the sagum.

perititheasin (cf. 12.1) ‘they place around’: here of the ‘crown’ or, better, ‘wreath’ placed on the head.

plexantes (only here in Mark) ‘having woven,’ ‘having plaited.’

akanthinon (only here in Mark) ‘thorny’: the akantha (cf. Mt. 27.29) was a thorn bush.

stephanon (only here in Mark) ‘wreath,’ ‘crown’: probably an imitation of the laurel wreath worn by the Emperor (cf. Rawlinson).

Translation:

In verse 16 or 17, it may be necessary to make the third person singular reference clear by using ‘Jesus’ in place of ‘him.’

The color of purple is treated in a number of ways, of which the following are the most common: (1) an indigenous term which is approximately the color of purple (or dark red, as some believe the Greek term implies); (2) an approximation of the color, employing other terms which identify colors which are reasonably near in the spectrum, e.g. ‘a kind of blue’ (Amganad Ifugao), ‘dark red’ (Tzeltal), ‘burnt red’ (Huastec), ‘a kind of red’ (the choice of one or another such expression depends upon the way in which people in a receptor language actually speak of purple); (3) the identification of the color by some bird or flower, e.g. ‘cloth of the color of…,’ at which point the name of some commonly employed object is used, provided, of course, this is a normal way of speaking about the color in question; and (4) the use of a phrase identifying the process of dyeing cloth, e.g. ‘cloth like that dyed in…,’ with the introduction of the proper plant used as dye stuff (Piro).

Crown is difficult to translate in the sense of a circular object worn by royalty, for this type of artefact is not very common. However, the object may be described as ‘put a circle of thorns on his head’ (Tzeltal) or ‘wove thorn branches together into a wreath (or ‘circle’) and put them on his head.’

Put it on him must in many instances be amplified so as to specify where the thorns were placed, namely, ‘on his head.’

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 .