Text:

After ēn ‘was’ Soden, Taylor and Kilpatrick add palai ‘already,’ which is omitted by all other modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

opsias genomenēs (cf. 4.35) ‘when evening came’: it is to be presumed that nighttime is meant, in light of the ‘late hour’ (v. 35) before the feeding of the multitude. Cf. Lagrange.

en mesō tēs thalassēs ‘in the middle of the sea’: the phrase means more than ‘out on the sea’ of the Revised Standard Version.

mesos (7.31; 9.36; 14.60; cf. 3.3) ‘middle,’ ‘in the midst.’

hē thalassa (cf. 1.16) ‘the sea,’ i.e. the Lake of Galilee.

kai autos monos ‘and he (was) alone’: monos is here an adjective, ‘alone,’ ‘by himself.’

Translation:

When evening came is translatable as ‘when it got night’ or ‘when darkness had come.’

The clause the boat was out on the sea may be wrongly interpreted, since it would seem to imply that the boat was there, but not the disciples. Note the contrast in the form of the last clause which specifies Jesus as being alone on the land. Accordingly, one may translate, as required, ‘the disciples were in the boat….’

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 .