Mark: ‘Son of God,’ the Twelve, and ‘the Lord’

This is Part 4 of “The Moving Standard: NA29 and the Theology of a Revised Greek New Testament.”

Three Corrections, One Direction

The ECM changes thirty-three readings in Mark, twenty-one of them toward the Byzantine text. Three clusters are especially useful because they expose different kinds of earlier critical error. At Mark 1:1, NA28 doubted words that belong. At Mark 3:14–16, it retained bracketed words that do not belong. At Mark 16:19, it printed an expanded title where the received text has the simpler “the Lord.” The NA29-basis text returns to the Textus Receptus and Authorized Version at all three places. This variety matters: at Mark 1:1 the new edition restores and strengthens a title, while at Mark 3 and 16 it shortens. The common feature is not length but the reversal of the preceding critical text in favor of the received form.

Mark 1:1: The Title Was Always There

The Authorized Version begins Mark with no hesitation:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The received Greek text reads υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, “the Son of God.” NA28 printed a shorter grammatical form, υἱοῦ θεοῦ, in square brackets, thereby treating the title as textually doubtful. The ECM does two things: it removes the brackets and adopts the received form with the article, υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ. Its official commentary excludes the complete omission as weakly and incoherently attested, recognizes accidental omission through similar sacred abbreviations as a ready explanation, and judges the coherence of the received and Byzantine form superior to the anarthrous alternative. It also notes the title’s literary force in relation to the confessions later in Mark. The Son named by the evangelist at the opening is confessed within the Gospel and at the cross.

The theological effect is direct but must be stated exactly. Both NA28 and NA29 contain “Son of God”; NA28 did not remove the words from the line. It bracketed them and printed a different Greek form. NA29 removes the editorial doubt and restores the form used by the Textus Receptus. The change therefore does not recover a doctrine absent from NA28. It recovers the unqualified opening assertion which the Authorized Version never surrendered. Generations of readers were told that the brackets represented responsible doubt under the best evidence. The next edition now says that the words and the received form should stand without that doubt. The Textus Receptus did not acquire the title in 2026; the modern edition ceased questioning it.

Mark 3:14–16: Removing Surplus Wording

The calling of the Twelve presents the opposite kind of correction. The Authorized Version reads:

And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils: And Simon he surnamed Peter.

The received Greek moves with the same economy. At Mark 3:14, NA28 inserted in brackets the words “whom he also named apostles.” At the beginning of verse 16, it bracketed a second phrase, “and he appointed the twelve.” The NA29-basis text omits both. Neither bracketed phrase teaches error. Luke expressly says that Christ named the disciples apostles, and Mark has already stated that he made or appointed twelve. The issue is textual identity, not doctrinal danger. True words can be placed where the Holy Ghost did not place them. A harmonizing explanation or repeated clause does not become part of Mark because its content is orthodox.

Here the removal does exactly what a textual correction should do: it admits that NA28 carried surplus wording at those points. The change also rebukes an argument sometimes used against received readings—that a doctrinally agreeable expansion is presumptively secondary. Modern editors are perfectly capable of printing or bracketing an expansion and later removing it. The existence of an addition is not a fault peculiar to the received tradition, nor can its identification rest upon a slogan about scribal piety. The AV’s sequence is also better prose: Christ ordains the Twelve for fellowship, preaching, healing, and the casting out of devils; the naming of Simon then begins the list. The NA28 brackets interrupted that flow with a naming formula followed shortly by the actual surnaming of Simon. NA29 returns to the received order.

Mark 16:19: “The Lord,” Not “The Lord Jesus”

Within the traditional ending, NA28 reads κύριος Ἰησοῦς, “the Lord Jesus.” The ECM removes Ἰησοῦς and prints κύριος, “the Lord.” That is the wording of the Textus Receptus and the Authorized Version:

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

Once again, the removed word teaches nothing false. Jesus is the Lord, and the preceding context leaves his identity beyond doubt. Yet an inspired text is not a theological paraphrase in which any true title may be added without consequence. Mark’s wording is “the Lord.” The Authorized Version has it exactly. This local change should not be confused with the larger dispute over Mark 16:9–20, where the UBS/NA presentation uses typographical signs to express doubt about the passage as a whole. The present comparison asks a narrower question: within verse 19, which wording does the new critical text select? On that question, NA29 abandons NA28’s “the Lord Jesus” and returns to the received “the Lord.”

What Mark’s Reversals Establish

None of these changes grants authority to the received text. They show the newer editors arriving at readings the church already possessed. Nor do the three changes prove that every Byzantine or received reading must be accepted by the critical method. The same ECM rejects received readings elsewhere. Their value is evidentiary: they demonstrate that NA28’s doubts, additions, and expansions could be wrong in either direction. Mark 1:1 is also the clearest answer to the misconception that the Authorized Version lacks “the Son of God.” It contains the title, as does the Textus Receptus. NA29 restores the received Greek form and removes NA28’s doubt. Mark 3:14–16 and 16:19 supply the converse admission: NA28 carried wording that the new edition removes in order to match the received form.

The lesson is not that the newest edition is finally safe. It is that the modern critical standard changes even where the received wording has remained fixed. A court that first questions authentic words, then restores them; first admits surplus words, then removes them, may perform useful scholarly work. It has thereby proved that it cannot be the source of the text’s certainty.

Notes and Further Reading

• INTF, “ECM Mark Has Arrived”.
• INTF, Mark 1:1 Text-Critical Commentary.
• <a href="https://www.logosapostolic.org/bibles/textusreceptusking_james/mark/mark01.htm”>Mark 1 in the Textus Receptus and Authorized Version.
• <a href="https://www.logosapostolic.org/bibles/textusreceptusking_james/mark/mark03.htm”>Mark 3 in the Textus Receptus and Authorized Version.
• <a href="https://www.logosapostolic.org/bibles/textusreceptusking_james/mark/mark16.htm”>Mark 16 in the Textus Receptus and Authorized Version.