Text:
After dunē ‘(if) you can’ Textus Receptus adds pisteusai ‘to believe,’ which is omitted by all modern editions of the Greek text.
Exegesis:
to ei dunē ‘the if you can’: here the definite article to ‘the’ is the equivalent of quotation marks in modern writing (cf. 9.10). In effect, Jesus takes the phrase ‘if you can’ which the father applied to him and applies it to the father: ‘Jesus said to him, (This saying of yours) If you can….’ Cf. Translator’s New Testament; Arndt & Gingrich: “as far as your words ‘If you can’ are concerned.”
dunata (10.27; 13.22; 14.35, 36) ‘possible.’
tō pisteuonti (cf. 1.15) ‘to him who has faith,’ ‘to him who believes’: if an object is to be supplied, it will be faith in God.
Translation:
If you can is a highly elliptical expression and is likely to be badly misunderstood unless the contextual setting is more evident. In many instances people interpret this phrase as meaning ‘if you can do so, then all things are possible….’ However, this is not the meaning of the passage and in order to make clear what the intent of this expression is, one can translate ‘why do you say, If you can? Why, all things are possible to him who believes.’ Indonesian and Toraja-Sa’dan translate ‘What about: if you can take it on you.’ In Sapo the rendering is ‘why do you ask if I fit?,’ in which the direct form is shifted to the indirect and ‘fit’ is the idiomatic term expressing capacity for a particular action.
Possible is interpreted in two different ways: (1) anything can happen with respect to one who believes (i.e. the one who has faith can be the recipient of any and all kinds of miraculous benefits) and (2) the one who has faith can do anything. It is this second meaning which should be reproduced here, in which case some languages require the direct, rather than the indirect statement, e.g. ‘the one who has faith can do all things.’
For faith see 1.15.
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 .