“And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him.” — Mark 1:41
The leper kneels and says, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” The Textus Receptus answers, “Jesus, moved with compassion,” touched him. A much narrower line of transmission reads “moved with anger.” Unlike many disputes in this series, the principal modern critical editions have generally kept compassion, sometimes with uncertainty.
Anger is attractive to some critics because it is difficult. They ask why a scribe would replace a harmless expression of pity with wrath, whereas a copyist might soften an unsettling portrait of Jesus. The argument deserves an answer; “harder” cannot simply mean “therefore original,” but an unexpected reading often explains a comfortable one.
Difficulty is not direction
Mark does not hide Christ’s anger. In 3:5 Jesus looks around “with anger,” and in 10:14 he is indignant when the disciples hinder children. Those texts survived. There is no evidence of a systematic campaign to remove every strong emotion from this Gospel.
The immediate narrative favors compassion. Jesus touches a man whose disease isolated him, declares his willingness, and cleanses him. His stern charge in verse 43 can explain how anger entered the line: a copyist or translator may have allowed the following rebuke to color the preceding participle. Similar-looking or sounding terms in an intermediary language have also been proposed, though such reconstructions remain hypotheses.
If “anger” were original, its object would still need explanation. Jesus might be angry at the ravages of disease, at social exclusion, at unbelief, or at the man’s approach. The text names none of these. An interpreter who chooses one is supplying the missing object. Compassion, by contrast, has the sufferer directly before it.
A textual record should also separate first hands, corrections, and versions. The anger reading is associated chiefly with a restricted Western line rather than with a broad independent coalition. Its antiquity still matters: an early minority can preserve an original. But antiquity plus difficulty is not a complete method. Distribution, immediate syntax, Mark’s known portrayal of anger, and the action that follows all belong in the same judgment.
The broad and diverse witness for splagchnistheis, its agreement with the action, and Mark’s willingness elsewhere to name anger make the received reading more secure. This is not a choice between a sentimental Christ and a vigorous one. The same Lord can grieve, burn with righteous anger, command sternly, and touch the unclean in mercy. Here Mark says which affection moved him first: compassion.
Sources and further reading
- F. H. A. Scrivener, ed., The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge, 1894).
- Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010), text and apparatus.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes on the stated passage.
- Mark 1:40–45; 3:5; 10:13–16; Luke 5:12–16.