16:12 After this he appeared in a different form to two of them while they were on their way to the country.
5:14 Now 1 the herdsmen ran off and spread the news in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.
15:21 The soldiers 2 forced 3 a passerby to carry his cross, 4 Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country 5 (he was the father of Alexander and Rufus).
1 tn Grk “And.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate a transition to the response to the miraculous healing.
1 tn Grk “They”; the referent (the soldiers) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Or “conscripted”; or “pressed into service.”
3 sn Jesus was beaten severely with a whip before this (the prelude to crucifixion, known to the Romans as verberatio, mentioned in Matt 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1), so he would have been weak from trauma and loss of blood. Apparently he was unable to bear the cross himself, so Simon was conscripted to help (in all probability this was only the crossbeam, called in Latin the patibulum, since the upright beam usually remained in the ground at the place of execution). Cyrene was located in North Africa where Tripoli is today. Nothing more is known about this Simon.
4 tn Or perhaps, “was coming in from his field” outside the city (BDAG 15-16 s.v. ἀγρός 1).
1 tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”
1 tn Grk “this time” (καιρός, kairos), but for stylistic reasons this has been translated “this age” here.
2 tn Grk “with persecutions.” The “all” has been supplied to clarify that the prepositional phrase belongs not just to the “fields.”
3 sn Note that Mark (see also Matt 19:29; Luke 10:25, 18:30) portrays eternal life as something one receives in the age to come, unlike John, who emphasizes the possibility of receiving eternal life in the present (John 5:24).
1 tn Grk “asked that they might touch.”