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… nēsteuontes ‘they were … fasting’: the meaning is not, as King James Version has it, ‘used to fast’; rather it is a historical reference to fasting that was then going on.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