Text:

Textus Receptus omits pantachou ‘everywhere’: all modern editions of the Greek text include it. As Turner says: “A redundant expression quite in Mark’s style.”

Exegesis:

hē akoē autou ‘the report about (concerning) him.’

akoē (7.35; 13.7) has here the passive sense of something heard, ‘fame,’ ‘report,’ ‘rumor’; in the plural in 7.35 it means ‘ears’ (cf. Lk. 7.1, Acts 17.20).

autou ‘of him’ means ‘about him.’

pantachou (16.20) ‘everywhere,’ ‘in all directions,’ an adverb modifying exēlthen ‘went out.’

holēn tēn perichōron tēs Galilaias ‘all the region of Galilee.’

tēn perichōron ‘surrounding territory,’ ‘region round about.’ The phrase may be understood in three senses: (1) ‘the region which surrounds Galilee’ (so King James Version, Translator’s New Testament); apparently Matthew understood it thus, in writing holē hē Suria ‘all Syria’ (4.24); (2) ‘the whole neighbourhood of Galilee,’ that is, Galilee itself; the majority take it in this sense (Manson, Knox, Moffatt, Revised Standard Version; Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale: dans toute la contrée environnante, en Galilée); and (3) ‘all the region of Galilee around Capernaum,’ so Gould and Taylor, who refers to Lk. 4.37 for confirmation. The majority of translations and commentators prefer the second interpretation.

Translation:

His fame spread is a phrase which must be syntactically reconstructed in many languages, for his actually identifies the goal of the process of spreading reputation. For example, in Highland Puebla Nahuatl one can only say ‘they heard about him in all Galilee.’ In other languages one may say ‘his matter was spoken of much.’ In most instances, however, ‘fame does not spread’ but ‘people speak much of a person’ – which of course is semantically equivalent to the same thing.

If one adopts the second interpretation of the phrase throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee (see above), one may translate ‘all the region which was Galilee’ or ‘in all the area round about there, namely, in Galilee.’

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 .