Mark 13:12

13:12 Brother will hand over brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise against ¹  parents and have them put to death.

Mark 12:19

12:19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, that man ²  must marry ³  the widow and father children ⁴  for his brother.’ ⁵ 

Mark 3:33

3:33 He answered them and said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” ⁶ 

Mark 3:35

3:35 For whoever does the will of God is ⁷  my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark 6:18

6:18 For John had repeatedly told ⁸  Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” ⁹ 

Mark 12:20

12:20 There were seven brothers. The first one married, ¹⁰  and when he died he had no children.

Mark 1:16

1:16 As he went along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen). ¹¹ 

Mark 1:19

1:19 Going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother in their ¹²  boat mending nets.

Mark 3:17

3:17 to James and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee, ¹³  he gave the name Boanerges (that is, “sons of thunder”);

Mark 3:31-32

Jesus’ True Family

3:31 Then ¹⁴  Jesus’ ¹⁵  mother and his brothers ¹⁶  came. Standing ¹⁷  outside, they sent word to him, to summon him. 3:32 A crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers ¹⁸  are outside looking for you.”

Mark 3:34

3:34 And looking at those who were sitting around him in a circle, he said, “Here ¹⁹  are my mother and my brothers!

Mark 5:37

5:37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, ²⁰  and John, the brother of James.

Mark 6:3

6:3 Isn’t this the carpenter, the son ²¹  of Mary ²²  and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” And so they took offense at him.

Mark 6:17

6:17 For Herod himself had sent men, arrested John, and bound him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod ²³  had married her.

Mark 10:29-30

10:29 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, ²⁴  there is no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel 10:30 who will not receive in this age ²⁵  a hundred times as much – homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields, all with persecutions ²⁶  – and in the age to come, eternal life. ²⁷ 

[13:12]  ¹ tn Or “will rebel against.”

[12:19]  ² tn Grk “his brother”; but this would be redundant in English with the same phrase “his brother” at the end of the verse, so most modern translations render this phrase “the man” (so NIV, NRSV).

[12:19]  ³ tn The use of ἵνα (Jina) with imperatival force is unusual (BDF §470.1).

[12:19]  ⁴ tn Grk “raise up seed” (an idiom for fathering children).

[12:19]  ⁵ sn A quotation from Deut 25:5. This practice is called levirate marriage (see also Ruth 4:1-12; Mishnah, m. Yevamot; Josephus, Ant. 4.8.23 [4.254-256]). The levirate law is described in Deut 25:5-10. The brother of a man who died without a son had an obligation to marry his brother’s widow. This served several purposes: It provided for the widow in a society where a widow with no children to care for her would be reduced to begging, and it preserved the name of the deceased, who would be regarded as the legal father of the first son produced from that marriage.

[3:33]  ³ tn Grk “Who is my mother and my brothers?” The use of the singular verb ἐστιν (estin) here singles out Mary above Jesus’ brothers, giving her special prominence (see ExSyn 401-2). This is slightly unnatural in English since the predicate nominative is plural, though, so a plural verb was used in the translation.

[3:35]  ⁴ tn The pleonastic pronoun οὗτος (Jouto", “this one”) which precedes this verb has not been translated.

[6:18]  ⁵ tn The imperfect tense verb is here rendered with an iterative force.

[6:18]  ⁶ sn It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife. This was a violation of OT law (Lev 18:16; 20:21). In addition, both Herod Antipas and Herodias had each left marriages to enter into this union.

[12:20]  ⁶ tn Grk “took a wife” (an idiom for marrying a woman).

[1:16]  ⁷ sn This is a parenthetical comment by the author.

[1:19]  ⁸ tn Or “a boat.” The phrase ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ (en tw ploiw) can either refer to a generic boat, some boat (as it seems to do in Matt 4:21); or it can refer to “their” boat, implying possession. Mark assumes a certain preunderstanding on the part of his readers about the first four disciples and hence the translation “their boat” is justified (cf. also v. 20 in which the “hired men” indicates that Zebedee’s family owned the boats).

[3:17]  ⁹ tn Grk “to James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James.”

[3:31]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “And.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[3:31]  ¹¹ tn Grk “his”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:31]  ¹² sn The issue of whether Jesus had brothers (siblings) has had a long history in the church. Epiphanius, in the 4th century, argued that Mary was a perpetual virgin and had no offspring other than Jesus. Others argued that these brothers were really cousins. Nothing in the text suggests any of this. See also John 7:3.

[3:31]  ¹³ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:32]  ¹¹ tc ‡ Many mss read “and your sisters” here after “your brothers” (A D Γ 700 pm it). However, the pedigree of several of the mss which lack this phrase is considerable (א B C K L W Δ Θ Ë^1,13 28 33 565 892 1241 1424 2542 pm lat sy). It seems likely that this phrase was added by an early Western scribe to harmonize this statement with Jesus’ response in v. 35. NA²⁷ has the words in brackets, indicating some doubt as to their authenticity.

[3:34]  ¹² tn Grk “Behold my mother and my brothers.”

[5:37]  ¹³ tn Grk “and James,” but καί (kai) has not been translated since English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.

[6:3]  ¹⁴ tc Evidently because of the possible offensiveness of designating Jesus a carpenter, several mss ([Ì^45vid] ˹³ 33^vid [565 579] 700 [2542] pc it vg^mss) harmonize the words “carpenter, the son” to the parallel passage in Matt 13:55, “the son of the carpenter.” Almost all the rest of the mss read “the carpenter, the son.” Since the explicit designation of Jesus as a carpenter is the more difficult reading, and is much better attested, it is most likely correct.

[6:3]  ¹⁵ sn The reference to Jesus as the carpenter is probably derogatory, indicating that they knew Jesus only as a common laborer like themselves. The reference to him as the son of Mary (even though Jesus’ father was probably dead by this point) appears to be somewhat derogatory, for a man was not regarded as his mother’s son in Jewish usage unless an insult was intended (cf. Judg 11:1-2; John 6:42; 8:41; 9:29).

[6:17]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “he”; here it is necessary to specify the referent as “Herod,” since the nearest previous antecedent in the translation is Philip.

[10:29]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[10:30]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “this time” (καιρός, kairos), but for stylistic reasons this has been translated “this age” here.

[10:30]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “with persecutions.” The “all” has been supplied to clarify that the prepositional phrase belongs not just to the “fields.”

[10:30]  ¹⁹ 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).