Text:

The preposition en (before trisin hēmerais) ‘in’ is omitted by Tischendorf, included in brackets by Nestle, Westcott and Hort, Taylor; the majority of editions of the Greek text include it.

Exegesis:

hoi paraporeuomenoi (cf. 2.23) ‘the transients,’ ‘the passersby.’

eblasphēmoun (cf. 2.7; 7.22) ‘they were blaspheming’: here in the sense of ‘insult,’ ‘slander,’ ‘derision’ directed against man (not ‘irreverent speech’ directed against God).

kinountes tas kephalas autōn ‘shaking their heads,’ ‘wagging their heads’: a gesture of derision (cf. Ps. 22.8 for the phrase).

kineō (only here in Mark) ‘move,’ ‘shake.’

oua (only here in the N.T.; not to be confused with ouai 13.17; 14.21) ‘aha!’: an exclamation of scornful wonder, of mocking amazement (cf. Moulton & Milligan).

ho kataluōn ton naon kai oikodomōn en trisin hēmerais (cf. 14.58) ‘the one who tears down the sanctuary and builds it (again) in three days’: the whole phrase is in the nature of a title, and to be taken as a vocative, in apposition to the subject of the verb ‘save thou’ in the next verse.

en trisin hēmerais (cf. dia triōn hēmerōn 14.58; meta treis hēmeras 8.31) ‘in three days.’

Translation:

Derided him is perhaps most accurately translated in many languages as ‘insulted him.’

One must be careful in translating wagging their heads, for though we would assume that such derisive attitudes would be expressed by wagging the head back and forth, in many languages one must translate by terms which imply raising the head up and down. What counts here is not the precise manner in which the head was moved, but the cultural implications of the action.

Aha should not be transliterated, but rather rendered by an equivalent term of contempt, of which there are usually plenty.

The clause you who … in three days is sometimes impossible as a subject of the following verb save, and hence it must be rendered as a separate sentence, e.g. ‘you are that person who said he would destroy the temple and build it in three days; you save yourself….’

Would destroy, if translated literally, is quite ambiguous or obscure in some languages. The closest equivalent may be ‘said that you would.’ One should avoid translating would as ‘wanted to.’

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 .