Text:

Instead of ēlthon ‘they came’ of the majority of modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus and Soden have ēlthen ‘he came.’

Before dielogizesthe ‘you were discussing’ Textus Receptus adds pros heautous ‘among yourselves’; Kilpatrick adds pros heautous after dielogizesthe; all other modern editions of the Greek text omit the two words.

Exegesis:

en tē oikia ‘in the house’: perhaps Peter’s house, which, it would seem, had become Jesus’ “home” in Galilee.

dielogizesthe (cf. 2.6) ‘you were discussing,’ ‘debating (with one another).’

Translation:

Came must often be changed to ‘arrived at,’ because of the problem of narrative perspective. However, in some languages, e.g. Yatzachi Zapotec, there are two words for ‘arriving’; one is used when one arrives at a destination other than one’s home and another when the point of arrival is at home (although in Yatzachi Zapotec there is an additional complication in that in this particular passage the point of arrival must also be related to the home of the narrator). In this passage Jesus was evidently arriving at his “home.”

On the way must be rendered in some languages by an expression containing a verb, ‘as you walked along the path’ (or ‘along the road’), since on the way implies a process of journeying, not simply a position.

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 .