Mark 4:40 — “How Is It That Ye Have No Faith?” The Full Rebuke after the Storm

“Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” — Mark 4:40

The sea is calm before Jesus turns to the disciples. His second question appears in two forms. The Textus Receptus asks, “How is it that ye have no faith?” The critical text asks, “Have ye not yet faith?” The difference between ouk and oupō is only a few letters, but “not” and “not yet” do not sound the same.

The critical form looks backward over time. After hearing the parables and seeing earlier works, do they still lack faith? The received form concentrates on the present contradiction: with Christ in the boat, how can fear govern them as though he were absent?

A rebuke framed by their own cry

The disciples had awakened Jesus with, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” Their panic was not merely an incomplete stage of growth. It accused him of indifference. “How is it that ye have no faith?” answers that moral failure directly.

The phrase “not yet” is easy to introduce as a softening or explanatory gloss. Mark uses temporal adverbs elsewhere to mark the disciples’ slow understanding, and a copyist might expect one here. Critics, however, regard oupō as the better-attested and more characteristic wording. The case cannot be decided by tone alone.

The physical similarity also permits accidental movement in either direction. A short word can lose or acquire its final syllable, and the sentence remains grammatical. External evidence therefore matters, but it should be weighed with the exact narrative rather than with a general preference for the earliest surviving codices.

Neither reading says saving faith was wholly absent from every disciple. Biblical narrative can rebuke people for “no faith” in a particular crisis while still presenting them as followers who trust imperfectly. Jesus exposes the operative unbelief that filled the boat with terror after the waves no longer did.

Matthew and Luke phrase the rebuke differently, but all three accounts connect fear with deficient faith. Mark’s variant therefore should not be decided by forcing exact Synoptic agreement. The evangelists may preserve distinct wording from a single event, and copyists may move one account toward another. The received “how is it” has no exact need of either parallel; it stands as Mark’s own pointed response to the disciples’ accusation.

The received question has a force well suited to the scene. It does not console the disciples with an implied future improvement; it makes them face the irrationality of fearing destruction in the presence of the Lord who commands wind and sea. Their final question—“What manner of man is this?”—shows why the rebuke must remain sharp. They had not yet grasped who was asleep beside them.

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 4:35–41; Matthew 8:23–27; Luke 8:22–25.