Text:
Instead of tōn Pharisaiōn ‘of the Pharisees’ of all modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus has kai hoi Pharisaioi ‘and the Pharisees.’
After the second esthiei ‘he eats’ Textus Receptus, Tischendorf, Vogels, Merk, Souter, Soden, and Kilpatrick add kai pinei ‘and drinks’; Nestle, Westcott and Hort, Lagrange, and Taylor omit kai pinei.
Exegesis:
hoi grammateis tōn Pharisaiōn ‘the scribes (who belonged to the party) of the Pharisees’ (cf. Acts 23.9).
hoi grammateis ‘the scribes’ (cf. 2.6).
tōn Pharisaiōn ‘of the Pharisees’: on the origin and particular beliefs of this religious group, the largest among the Jews in the time of Jesus, cf. the standard dictionaries and commentaries. They are mentioned by name ten more times in Mark (2.18, 24, 3.6, 7.1, 3, 5, 8.11, 15, 10.2, 12.13).
hoti ‘why?’: although some take hoti here as recitative, introducing a direct statement (Souter, American Standard Version, Manson, The Modern Speech New Testament, Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale), the great majority of commentators and translators take it to be interrogative.
Translation:
The scribes of the Pharisees are ‘the scribes who belong to the sect of the Pharisees’ or ‘the scribes who were Pharisees.’ The scribes might be members of one of several different religious sects, of which the three most important were the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes.
The word Pharisees is derived by most scholars from a verb meaning ‘to separate’ (T. W. Manson, however, suggests it represents the Aramaic ‘Persian’). These persons undertook to separate themselves from the Hellenistic influences which threatened Judaism during the times of the Maccabees. However, by the N.T. period the name had become almost entirely a proper name, and as such should be transliterated, rather than translated. It may, however, be useful in initial contexts to introduce a classifier such as ‘sect’ or ‘religious group,’ in order to identify something of its significance.
To eat with … must in some languages be restated in terms of a different arrangement of constituents, e.g. ‘Jesus and the sinners and the tax collectors were eating in the same place’ (Loma (Liberia)).
The verbs for eating (and drinking) are often troublesome, for they may either require an object, which states what is eaten or drunk, or they may imply in their own form the type of food or drink which is consumed. For example, some languages have several words for ‘eat,’ depending upon whether one eats meat, vegetables, roots, or fruit. Similar contrasts occur with words for ‘drink.’ When the terms are so specific as to make the context entirely too restricted in meaning, it may be better to use a more generic expression, e.g. ‘to sit down at a meal with’ or ‘to gather with … at a meal’ (or ‘feast,’ for this was obviously a special occasion).
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 .