Text:

Instead of echousin ‘they have’ of the majority of modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus, Tischendorf, Souter, Kilpatrick and Revised Standard Version have echomen ‘we have.’

Exegesis:

dielogizonto (cf. 2.6) ‘they were pondering,’ ‘they were discussing.’

hoti ‘that’: if echousin ‘they have’ is read (see Text, above), hoti introduces indirect discourse and may be translated (1) ‘that,’ as is the usual case with indirect discourse; (2) ‘(it is) because’ is preferred by Gould; Translator’s New Testament takes hoti as the equivalent of ti ‘why.’

echomen ‘we have’ is adopted by American Standard Version, Moffatt, Revised Standard Version: in this case hoti is not translated, since it introduces direct discourse.

Translation:

It may here need to be identified as ‘what he said.’

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 .