Mark 5:25

5:25 Now ¹  a woman was there who had been suffering from a hemorrhage ²  for twelve years. ³ 

Mark 12:23

12:23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, ⁴  whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” ⁵ 

Mark 12:22

12:22 None of the seven had children. Finally, the woman died too.

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 ⁶  must marry ⁷  the widow and father children ⁸  for his brother.’ ⁹ 

Mark 6:18

6:18 For John had repeatedly told ¹⁰  Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” ¹¹ 

Mark 10:2

10:2 Then some Pharisees ¹²  came, and to test him ¹³  they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his ¹⁴  wife?” ¹⁵ 

Mark 10:11

10:11 So ¹⁶  he told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

Mark 12:20

12:20 There were seven brothers. The first one married, ¹⁷  and when he died he had no children.

Mark 5:33

5:33 Then the woman, with fear and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

Mark 7:25-26

7:25 Instead, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit ¹⁸  immediately heard about him and came and fell at his feet. 7:26 The woman was a Greek, of Syrophoenician origin. She ¹⁹  asked him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

Mark 15:40

15:40 There were also women, watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, ²⁰  and Salome.

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 ²¹  had married her.

Mark 14:3

Jesus’ Anointing

14:3 Now ²²  while Jesus ²³  was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, reclining at the table, ²⁴  a woman came with an alabaster jar ²⁵  of costly aromatic oil ²⁶  from pure nard. After breaking open the jar, she poured it on his head.

[5:25]  ¹ tn Grk “And.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

[5:25]  ² tn Grk “a flow of blood.”

[5:25]  ³ sn This story of the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years is recounted in the middle of the story about Jairus’ daughter. Mark’s account (as is often the case) is longer and more detailed than the parallel accounts in Matt 9:18-26 and Luke 8:40-56. Mark’s fuller account may be intended to show that the healing of the woman was an anticipation of the healing of the little girl.

[12:23]  ⁴ tc The words “when they rise again” are missing from several important witnesses (א B C D L W Δ Ψ 33 579 892 2427 pc c r¹ k sy^p co). They are included in A Θ Ë^1,(13) Ï lat sy^s,h. The strong external pedigree of the shorter reading gives one pause. Nevertheless, the Alexandrian and other mss most likely dropped the words from the text either to conform the wording to the parallel in Matt 22:28 or because “when they rise again” was redundant. But the inclusion of these words is thoroughly compatible with Mark’s usually pleonastic style (see TCGNT 93), and therefore most probably authentic to Mark’s Gospel.

[12:23]  ⁵ tn Grk “For the seven had her as wife.”

[12:19]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn The use of ἵνα (Jina) with imperatival force is unusual (BDF §470.1).

[12:19]  ⁹ tn Grk “raise up seed” (an idiom for fathering children).

[12:19]  ¹⁰ 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.

[6:18]  ¹⁰ tn The imperfect tense verb is here rendered with an iterative force.

[6:18]  ¹¹ 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.

[10:2]  ¹³ tc The Western text (D it) and a few others have only καί (kai) here, rather than καὶ προσελθόντες Φαρισαῖοι (kai proselqonte" Farisaioi, here translated as “then some Pharisees came”). The longer reading, a specific identification of the subject, may have been prompted by the parallel in Matt 19:3. The fact that the mss vary in how they express this subject lends credence to this judgment: οἱ δὲ Φαρισαῖοι προσελθόντες (Joi de Farisaioi proselqonte", “now the Pharisees came”) in W Θ 565 2542 pc; καὶ προσελθόντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι (kai proselqonte" Joi Farisaioi, “then the Pharisees came”) in א C N (˹: καὶ προσελθόντες ἐπηρώτησαν αὐτὸν οἱ Φαρισαῖοι) 579 1241 1424 pm; and καὶ προσελθόντες Φαρισαῖοι in A B K L Γ Δ Ψ Ë¹³ 28 700 892 2427 pm. Further, the use of an indefinite plural (a general “they”) is a Markan feature, occurring over twenty times. Thus, internally the evidence looks rather strong for the shorter reading, in spite of the minimal external support for it. However, if scribes assimilated this text to Matt 19:3, a more exact parallel might have been expected: Matthew has καὶ προσῆλθον αὐτῷ Φαρισαῖοι (kai proshlqon aujtw Farisaioi, “then Pharisees came to him”). Although the verb form needs to be different according to syntactical requirements of the respective sentences, the word order variety, as well as the presence or absence of the article and the alternation between δέ and καί as the introductory conjunction, all suggest that the variety of readings might not be due to scribal adjustments toward Matthew. At the same time, the article with Φαρισαῖοι is found in both Gospels in many of the same witnesses (א Ï in Matt; א pm in Mark), and the anarthrous Φαρισαῖοι is likewise parallel in many mss (B L ˹³ 700 892). Another consideration is the possibility that very early in the transmissional history, scribes naturally inserted the most obvious subject (the Pharisees would be the obvious candidates as the ones to test Jesus). This may account for the reading with δέ, since Mark nowhere else uses this conjunction to introduce the Pharisees into the narrative. As solid as the internal arguments against the longer reading seem to be, the greatest weakness is the witnesses that support it. The Western mss are prone to alter the text by adding, deleting, substituting, or rearranging large amounts of material. There are times when the rationale for this seems inexplicable. In light of the much stronger evidence for “the Pharisees came,” even though it occurs in various permutations, it is probably wisest to retain the words. This judgment, however, is hardly certain.

[10:2]  ¹⁴ tn In Greek this phrase occurs at the end of the sentence. It has been brought forward to conform to English style.

[10:2]  ¹⁵ tn The personal pronoun “his” is not in the Greek text, but is certainly implied and has been supplied in the English translation to clarify the sense of the statement (cf. “his wife” in 10:7).

[10:2]  ¹⁶ tn The particle εἰ (ei) is often used to introduce both indirect and direct questions. Thus, another possible translation is to take this as an indirect question: “They asked him if it were lawful for a man to divorce his wife.” See BDF §440.3.

[10:11]  ¹⁶ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “So” to indicate that Jesus’ statement is in response to the disciples’ question (v. 10).

[12:20]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “took a wife” (an idiom for marrying a woman).

[7:25]  ²² sn Unclean spirit refers to an evil spirit.

[7:26]  ²⁵ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[15:40]  ²⁸ sn In Matt 27:56 the name Joses is written as Joseph.

[6:17]  ³¹ tn Grk “he”; here it is necessary to specify the referent as “Herod,” since the nearest previous antecedent in the translation is Philip.

[14:3]  ³⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

[14:3]  ³⁵ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[14:3]  ³⁶ sn 1st century middle eastern meals were not eaten while sitting at a table, but while reclining on one’s side on the floor with the head closest to the low table and the feet farthest away.

[14:3]  ³⁷ sn A jar made of alabaster stone was normally used for very precious substances like perfumes. It normally had a long neck which was sealed and had to be broken off so the contents could be used.

[14:3]  ³⁸ tn Μύρον (muron) was usually made of myrrh (from which the English word is derived) but here it is used in the sense of ointment or perfumed oil (L&N 6.205). The adjective πιστικῆς (pistikh") is difficult with regard to its exact meaning; some have taken it to derive from πίστις (pistis) and relate to the purity of the oil of nard. More probably it is something like a brand name, “pistic nard,” the exact significance of which has not been discovered.