Text:

mou ‘my’ after kataluma ‘guest room’ is omitted by Textus Receptus, but included by all modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

hopou ean (cf. 14.9) ‘wherever’: the phrase ‘wherever he enters’ refers, of course, to whatever house he should enter.

oikodespotē (only here in Mark) ‘master of the house,’ i.e. the owner of the house (cf. Lagrange proprietaire).

ho didaskalos (cf. 4.38) ‘the teacher.’

to kataluma (only here in Mark) ‘the lodging,’ ‘the guest room’ (cf. Moulton & Milligan); possibly ‘the dining room.’

to pascha ‘the Passover meal’ as in 14.12b.

Translation:

Wherever he enters must not be translated as a generic or distributive expression, meaning that the man was likely to enter a number of places and that the disciples should inquire of each householder. The equivalent expression in some languages is ‘when he goes into a house, then say to the householder there.’ Unless this clause is translated with care, the impression will be given that the disciples were to follow the servant about town, begging a place from one householder after another.

My guest room must not be rendered as a straight possessive in some languages or it will imply that Jesus himself owned a part of the house. The meaning is rather ‘a guest room for me,’ ‘a room where I may be a guest,’ or ‘a room where I am to eat’ (see above).

Am to eat is rendered as a type of future. One must not interpret am to eat in the sense of ‘destined to eat,’ as some translators have done.

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 .

Exegesis:

epebalan (cf. 4.37; with direct object, 11.7) ‘they placed,’ ‘they laid on’: here in the sense of ‘they laid hold of him,’ ‘they grabbed him.’

ekratēsan (cf. v. 44; 1.31) ‘they seized,’ ‘they arrested.’

Translation:

They may be rendered as ‘the men there’ or ‘the people,’ if the literal translation of they is misleading.

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 .

Exegesis:

ho legomenos Barabbas ‘the one called Barabbas’: only here is the passive present participle of legō, with the meaning ‘called,’ ‘named,’ used in Mark.

Barabbas ‘Barabbas’: the Greek name represents the Aramaic barabaʾ ‘son of Abba,’ or ‘son of the father.’

ēn … dedemenos ‘was bound’: in accordance with Marcan style (cf. ēn … endedumenos ‘was clothed’ 1.6), this is to be taken as a verbal phrase and not to be split up into two verbs indicating two different actions (as done by Revised Standard Version). The clause would then read, ‘Now the man called Barabbas was bound with the insurrectionists, those who in the insurrection had committed murder.’

stasiastōn (only here in the N.T.) ‘rebels,’ ‘revolutionaries,’ ‘insurrectionists.’

en tē stasei (only here in Mark) ‘in the rebellion,’ ‘in the uprising,’ ‘in the insurrection’: the event is referred to in a definite way as though known to the readers, without being further identified.

phonon (cf. 7.21) ‘murder.’

pepoiēkeisan ‘they had committed’: the full force of the pluperfect is to be observed here, referring to an action terminated in the past (cf. dedōkei 14.44).

Translation:

Rebels may be translated in some languages as ‘men who fought against the government’ (Amganad Ifugao).

Committed murder is often equivalent merely to ‘killed a man,’ or ‘killed some people.’

Insurrection is usually quite easily translated since such events are common enough in various parts of the world. However, there are various ways of rendering such a term ‘beating the government’s mouth’ (Sapo), ‘fighting against rulers’ (Navajo), and ‘riot’ (Copainalá Zoque).

The position of the logical subject Barabbas at the end of the verse is not easily reproduced in many languages. Accordingly, one may have to recast the sentence as ‘a man called Barabbas was in prison among the rebels, who had killed people in an uprising against the government.’

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 .

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 .

Exegesis:

katekeito (2.4, 15; 14.3) ‘she was lying down,’ ‘she lay sick.’ Moulton & Milligan give examples from the papyri with the meaning ‘to be ill’ and Field translates “kept her bed, being sick of a fever.”

puressousa (only here in Mark) ‘feverish,’ ‘(with) a fever.’ The present participle is in the nominative case modifying penthera ‘mother-in-law,’ and has a causative force: “Simon’s mother-in-law, because she had a fever, was in bed….” Lagrange and Taylor point out that the participle itself does not necessarily mean that a prolonged siege of the fever is implied; all it says is that when Jesus and the others entered the house, she was in bed, sick.

legousin ‘they tell’: with considerable probability Turner classifies this as an impersonal plural, meaning simply ‘he (Jesus) was told’; Mark does not mean that Simon and Andrew with James and John told him. Taylor, however, is of the opinion that the companions of Simon are meant (cf. Swete and Lagrange).

Translation:

The Revised Standard Version now is purely transitional, not temporal.

Simon’s mother-in-law may be rendered ‘the mother of Simon’s wife,’ unless there are more idiomatic or specific terms for designating such a relationship.

To have a fever seems to us as English speakers to be a perfectly legitimate way of talking about a fever, but in other languages fevers may ‘have people.’ There are, in fact, a number of different ways in which one may speak of this type of illness, e.g. ‘heat was hers’ (Southern Bobo Madaré), ‘thrown down by a fever’ (Tzeltal), ‘making a fever’ (Shipibo-Conibo), or ‘taken by God with fever’ (Shilluk, in which all illness is spoken of as ‘being taken by God,’ an idiom which cannot be avoided in the Scriptures).

The Greek text implies two elements in ‘lay sick’ one that the mother-in-law was in bed and the second that she was sick with a fever. Both of these circumstances must be specifically indicated.

If a language distinguishes case, gender, and number (as in most Indo-European languages), it is quite easy to translate the clause they told him of her by the use of three pronouns. However, in Huautla Mazatec there are no such distinctions indicated in the verb construction and as a result there can be as many as 32 ambiguities unless nouns are used to distinguish clearly who speaks to whom about what. In fact, if the ‘him’ and ‘her’ are ambiguous, this clause is almost inevitably misunderstood, for it would be more natural for the people to tell the woman about Jesus than the reverse. In many languages, therefore, it is necessary to employ nouns rather than pronouns to identify the participants, e.g. ‘the people there told Jesus about the woman.’ In some languages, however, a phrase ‘about the woman’ does not fit the context, because of the specific nature of the information and so the clause must be changed to read ‘told Jesus that she was sick’ (Central Tarahumara).

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 .

Text:

Instead of hoi Pharisaioi ‘the Pharisees’ of most modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus has hoi tōn Pharisaiōn ‘the (disciples) of the Pharisees’ (with slight difference, Soden has this reading also).

Exegesis:

ēsan … nēsteuontes ‘they were … fasting’: the meaning is not, as King James Version has it, ‘used to fast’; rather it is a historical reference to fasting that was then going on. It is impossible to determine the occasion of this particular fast.

nēsteuō (2.19, 20) ‘to fast (as a religious practice).’ The Mosaic Law required only one day of fasting, the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16.29) but the Pharisees, in addition, fasted twice a week (cf. Lk. 18.12), on Mondays and Thursdays.

hoi mathētai Iōannou (6.29) ‘the disciples of John (the Baptist).’

erchontai ‘they come’: here, clearly, an impersonal plural. The meaning is not that ‘the disciples of John and the Pharisees’ came to Jesus and asked him something, but that ‘men came,’ ‘people came’ (the parallels Mt. 9.14 and Lk. 5.33 understand it differently): cf. Translator’s New Testament, Manson, Moffatt; Zürcher Bibel die Leute; O Novo Testamento de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo. Revisdo Autorizada alguns.

hoi mathētai tōn Pharisaiōn ‘the disciples of the Pharisees’: this phrase appears only here in the N.T.

Translation:

In order that the temporal setting of the first clause may be properly identified (to the extent that it is equivalent to what is implied in the Greek imperfect), one may translate ‘at that time … were fasting.’

For disciples see 2.15.

Fasting as an act of religious observance is relatively uncommon in the world. On the other hand, religious feasting is quite common, and hence to speak of going without food as a kind of religious observance often strikes the reader as strange, if not incomprehensible. There is a rather widespread custom of abstaining from food as a symbol that one is angry or distressed about something (e.g. the fasts of Ghandi) or is determined to prove the justice of one’s cause (hunger strikes in prisons), but in such situations the hunger is supposed to impress people to such an extent that the provoking circumstances will be altered. On the other hand, the fasting of the Scriptures involves a kind of religious abstention from food designed to stimulate greater piety or gain more merit, concepts which are quite alien to most people’s concepts of fasting. It is for this reason that expressions for fasting must in some languages be expanded so that they will be contextually conditioned. For example, to say ‘not to eat’ would mean little or nothing in Navajo. It might be that there was no food in the house or that the persons in question were so ill that they could not eat. Accordingly, one must say ‘to put food away reverently’ (that is, with religious intent). Similarly in Kaqchikel one says ‘to cause oneself not to eat,’ that is, to abstain from it purposely.

Frequently said to him must be changed to ‘questioned him…,’ for what follows is not a statement, but a question. Close attention to these matters must be given in many languages.

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 .

Exegesis:

exō stēkontes ‘standing outside (the house)’: Jesus is inside (see vv. 32, 34).

stēkō (11.25) ‘stand’: in the Septuagint and N.T. this verb is equal in meaning to the intransitive use of histēmi ‘stand.’

apesteilan pros auton ‘they sent (a message) to him’ (or, ‘they sent for him’).

kalountes auton ‘calling him’: this is the message they sent.

Translation:

Brothers should be understood as ‘younger brothers’ by the same mother, where as in so many languages special words are employed for brothers, whether younger or older (Copainalá Zoque, Tzeltal), or of the same mother or father (Navajo, Farefare).

Because of the distance of this verse from any previous reference to Jesus it would probably be necessary in some languages to introduce ‘Jesus’ (San Mateo del Mar Huave).

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 .