Text:

Instead of ēlthen ‘he went’ of the majority of modern editions of the Greek text, ēn ‘he was’ is read by Textus Receptus, Turner, Taylor, and Kilpatrick. The evidence of the Greek mss. favors ēlthen, but the early versions (Old Latin, Vulgate, Syriac versions) favor ēn. Turner’s remarks in favor of ēn ‘he was’ have considerable force; besides conforming to Marcan usage, ‘he was’ is supported by the parallel passage Lk. 4.44, while in Mk. 1.14 we are told that Jesus came into Galilee preaching, and here he continues preaching in Galilee.

Exegesis:

ēlthen kērussōn … kai … ekballōn ‘came preaching … and … casting out’: with this reading (Nestle and others) ēlthen ‘he went’ goes with eis holēn tēn Galilaian ‘he went throughout all Galilee,’ while the two participles kērussōn ‘preaching’ and ekballōn ‘casting out’ function independently and modify ‘he’ (i.e. Jesus), indicating the manner in which he went into Galilee, ‘he went throughout all Galilee, preaching … and casting out.’ Should ēn ‘he was’ be preferred, the prepositional phrase eis holēn tēn Galilaian ‘in all Galilee’ will modify tas sunagōgas autōn, ‘their synagogues throughout all Galilee,’ while the two verbal phrases ēn kērussōn … kai … ekballōn ‘was preaching … and … casting out’ will stress the continued aspect of the ministry. Cf. Manson “went on making the proclamation,” Knox “continued to preach.”

autōn ‘their’ i.e. of the neighboring villages referred to in the previous verse.

Translation:

As noted above, the syntactic relationships of the various parts of this verse depend very largely upon the text which is followed, whether, for example, one says, ‘he was preaching in their synagogues throughout Galilee’ or ‘he went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues.’

Galilee may be identified as ‘Galilee region’ (or ‘province’), though by this point in the text the reader should have become somewhat familiar with the significance of Galilee, if classifiers have been used in previous verses.

Their represents a kind of general, impersonal use of the third person plural. In some languages such a pronoun would refer to the immediately preceding third person plural, namely, the disciples addressed by Jesus at the beginning of verse 38. Hence, ‘the synagogues of the people’ must be employed in some languages (so Toraja-Sa’dan, Pamona and Javanese).

For casting out demons see 1.34.

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 .