5/4/2025 – A member of BAS ask for help here with the Greek in Mark 3:21 where it reads in the NRSVUE: “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” and that is different than other translations. The following responses show that the UE is a bad translation, as the Greek shows the writer is speaking of his family. Note this came up in Bart Ehman’s writings where Bart also points out that it is the family, including his mother Mary who, if she knew he was divine, would NOT have thought he had lost his mind. Here are the responses.
Dr. Marko Marina – BAS “Bible Scholar” [historian with a Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of Zagreb (Croatia). Also, I’m the author of dozens of articles about early Christianity’s history. I work as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Zagreb, teaching courses on the history of Christianity and the Roman Empire.] Contributor to the Bart Ehrman Blog.
Hey Andrew, as someone who knows Koine Greek quite well, let me explain it briefly. The key phrase in Mark 3:21 is: οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ ἐξῆλθον κρατῆσαι αὐτόν· ἔλεγον γὰρ ὅτι ἐξέστη.
Literally, this reads: “those from him went out to seize him, for they were saying that he was out of his mind.” The key subject here is οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ, meaning “his own people”, typically understood as his family. They are clearly the ones going out to restrain Jesus (the disciples are already with him in the house), and there’s no subject change before ἔλεγον γὰρ (“for they were saying”), which means it’s still the same group speaking.
In Greek, when a verb appears without an explicit subject (which is common), the implied subject is understood to be the most recently mentioned noun or pronoun, unless a clear shift is introduced, which doesn’t happen here. So in this case, “his own people” are the subject of both actions: they go out to seize him and they say he’s out of his mind. The crowd isn’t mentioned in the verse, and no new group is introduced. As a result, the most natural and grammatically sound reading is that Jesus’ own family thinks he’s lost his mind, not the crowd.
Hope I helped!
Michael L Waddell – BAS Super Apostle
I was going to answer, but Marko said it perfectly. This is one of the few places where the NRSV-ue translates the Greek in a markedly worse way than the NET Bible, NASB, NABRE, or even the NIV.
Charles Bledsoe – BAS Super Apostle
Marko Marina’s explanation is excellent; and, what’s more, Dr. Ehrman certainly has an impeccable grasp of Koine Greek and so you can trust that his argument that it’s inconsistent with her knowledge of Jesus’ divine paternity for his mother to fear that he’s gone cuckoo is based on an accurate reading of the text.
