Text:
After houtōs ‘thus’ Textus Receptus adds kraxas ‘crying out,’ which is omitted by all modern editions of the Greek text.
Exegesis:
ho kenturiōn (15.44, 45) ‘centurion’ (Latin centurio), commander of one hundred soldiers (Matthew, Luke and Acts use the Greek term hekatontarchēs ‘ruler of one hundred’).
ho parestēkōs ex enantias autou ‘who stood by opposite him,’ ‘who stood facing him.’
ho parestēkōs (cf. 14.47) ‘the one standing by.’
ex enantias (only here in Mark; cf. enantios 6.48) ‘opposite,’ ‘against’: here, in the nature of the case, ‘facing (him).’
exepneusen (cf. v. 37) ‘he expired,’ ‘he died.’
alēthōs (cf. 14.70) ‘truly,’ ‘certainly.’
houtos ho anthrōpos huios theou ēn ‘this man was the (a) Son (son) of God’: commentators and translators are divided over whether the words are to be taken as an expression of awe and admiration on the part of a pagan, ‘a son of God,’ meaning ‘a hero,’ ‘a superhuman being,’ or whether they are to be understood in a Christian sense ‘the Son of God.’ In favor of the former are Goodspeed, Moffatt, Translator’s New Testament, Manson; Gould, Swete, Rawlinson, Taylor; for the latter cf. American Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, The Modern Speech New Testament, Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale; Berkeley and Williams have ‘God’s Son’ (cf. also Zürcher Bibel, O Novo Testamento de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo. Revisdo Autorizada, Lagrange), while Knox, Douay, and Confraternity translate the Vulgate Filius Dei by ‘the Son of God.’
It should be made clear that grammar is not decisive since the Greek may be just as correctly translated ‘a son of a god’ as ‘the Son of God’: here it is in the context, which is to say one’s interpretation of the incident, which will determine the translation. The precisely identical Greek construction occurs in nine other passages in the Gospels (Mt. 4.3, 6, 14.33, 27.40, 43, 54, Lk. 4.3, 9, Jn. 10.36; similar phrases in Lk. 1.32, Jn. 19.7): in all of these passages Revised Standard Version translates ‘the Son of God.’
There is good evidence for understanding huios theou here as ‘the Son of God.’
Translation:
Centurion is usually translated as (1) the local equivalent of ‘captain’ or (2) by a descriptive phrase ‘leader of one hundred soldiers.’
For breathed his last see verse 37.
Truly, though in initial position, is usually related to the verb or the predicate, e.g. ‘this man was really the (or ‘a’) Son of God.’
The son of God may involve difficulties quite apart from the exegetical problems cited above. For example, in Central Tarahumara ‘a son of God’ refers only to a Central Tarahumara person. All other people are classed as ‘sons of the devil.’ Accordingly, in the Central Tarahumara language one must say ‘the only Son of God,’ or the comment of the centurion becomes quite meaningless.
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 .