Complete textual-variant dossier
No adverse entailment · agrees with the received text
Sections distinguish readings, edition history, evidence, theological consequences, and the Research Center's evaluation. CBGM is an analytical tool; editorial committees—not the software—make textual decisions.
1Passage and issue
Passage
Issue
A striking minority reading says Jesus was moved with anger when the leper appealed to him. The received and principal critical texts retain compassion, but the harder reading has shaped modern discussion.
Variant class
Punctuation
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
“Moved with compassion” (σπλαγχνισθείς).
Authorized Version
“And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him.” — Mark 1:41
Edition note
The Research Center uses the received Greek text underlying the Authorized Version as its baseline; edition-specific differences are recorded when the variation unit requires them.
Historical annotation witness
Erasmus’s Annotationes
Erasmus’s printed Greek text, his Latin annotation, and the Research Center’s evaluation are distinct evidence. Each edition remains separately identified because Erasmus revised the Annotationes across his five editions.
Not yet assessed. No inference about Erasmus’s silence has been made. A Latin annotation and translation will appear here only after an edition and exact locus have been verified.
The Erasmus annotation audit has not yet been completed for this locus. Do not infer from this status that Erasmus was silent.
Westminster and Dutch annotation witnesses
Westminster Annotations
Not yet assessed. No inference from silence is made.
Dutch Annotations
Not yet assessed. No inference from silence is made.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
“Moved with anger” (ὀργισθείς).
Translation or explanation
“Moved with anger” (ὀργισθείς).
Metzger’s report of the UBS committee
Metzger reports the UBS4 committee's treatment of the variation unit. The note grounds the relevant decision in the weight and distribution of external attestation, the likelihood that the competing form is a scribal correction or emendation, the comparative difficulty of the readings, authorial usage, grammar, or immediate context; the printed confidence rating represented here is {D}. This is a controlled synopsis rather than a quotation.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., note on Mark 1:41
ECM / CBGM evidence and editors
No passage-specific ECM/CBGM editorial explanation is attached to this record. Official method sources describe the CBGM as a set of coherence procedures, not a decision-maker: editors define variation units and local stemmata and evaluate pre-genealogical, genealogical, and stemmatic coherence together with transcriptional, intrinsic, and other philological evidence.
4UBS6 and intended NA29 revision
No UBS6 / intended NA29 main-text change is recorded for this passage in the controlled 169-change ledger.
No change row is attached to this passage.
UBS6 is published, and the German Bible Society identifies its Greek main text as identical to the intended NA29 main text. The complete NA29 volume and its apparatus remain forthcoming. Project-ledger rows retain their source and verification statements until they are checked against the published UBS6 text and, when available, the NA29 apparatus.
5Doctrinal and four-point analysis
Effect class
Exegetical or interpretive consequence
Exact proposition affected
No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
Doctrinal analysis
Exegetical or interpretive consequence. The record does not establish that the variant by itself removes an entire Christian doctrine; explicit wording, exegesis, and cumulative testimony must be distinguished.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Mark 1:41, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. 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.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Mark 1:41 must be applied to comparable readings as well. A principle such as age, difficulty, brevity, or coherence cannot be decisive here and quietly reversed elsewhere merely to escape a historical, grammatical, or theological difficulty.
Consequences
Exegetical or interpretive consequence: No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
Preconditions of intelligibility
The argument presupposes stable authorship, meaningful language, objective logical norms, transmissible evidence, and a coherent account of how Scripture can be received and identified by the church. The analysis tests whether the method can make those conditions intelligible without reducing the text to an indefinitely revisable editorial construct.
This framework examines an argument and its conditions; it does not claim to read an editor's private motives.
6Argument for the received reading
External and historical evidence
A textual record should also separate first hands, corrections, and versions. 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. , The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge, 1894).
Internal and transcriptional evidence
They ask why a scribe would replace a harmless expression of pity with wrath, whereas a copyist might soften an unsettling portrait of Jesus. 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.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
The Textus Receptus answers, “Jesus, moved with compassion,” touched him.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Mark 1:41. It supplies the confessional context in which manuscript transmission, broad reception, and the church's actual possession of Scripture are evaluated together.
Canonical coherence with the rest of Scripture
Canonical coherence remains an explicit test: a proposed reading must make grammatical and theological sense within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. No conflict is asserted merely because two editions differ; the claimed incoherence must be demonstrated at this passage.
Canonical-coherence verdict
The Authorized Version is retained where its representation of the TR forms a coherent reading within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. Any competing form must demonstrate an equal or better canonical fit rather than merely invoke an edition or method label.
Response to the principal critical argument
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. 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.
Conclusion
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.
Logical entailment
The Authorized Version serves as the faithful English representation. The preservation claim applies immediately to the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts—not to an English translation as though it were the inspired source.
Canonical-status rule: Physical printing is not canonical inclusion. If an edition prints a passage in double brackets while judging it secondary or non-original, it disagrees with the received text concerning the identity and extent of inspired Scripture.
No adverse entailment: agrees with the received text.
Necessary reasoning chain
- The current critical main-text reading assessed at Mark 1:41 agrees with the received Hebrew/Greek reading at the variation unit governed by this card.
- An adverse preservation entailment at this locus would require the current critical form to displace a different received reading.
- Because no such displacement occurs at the assessed locus, no adverse preservation consequence follows here.
Sources
- Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)Chapter 1, section 8 — Governing confessional preservation claim
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorized VersionReceived Greek reading
- Digital ECM — Mark 1:41Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- German Bible Society — UBS6 publications and relation to NA29Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- German Bible Society — The Sixth Edition of the Greek New TestamentCurrent critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Mark 1:41
Received reading: “Moved with compassion” (σπλαγχνισθείς).
Principal competing reading: “Moved with anger” (ὀργισθείς).
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
“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.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2005
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.1-dossier
- Review
- Level B — Editorial synthesis
- Editor
- Chris Thomas
- Reviewer
- Independent reviewer pending assignment
- First date
- 1st century · Date Range
- Last revised
- 2026-07-22
Evidence and editorial controls
- Verification
- Passage, principal readings, and stated editorial comparison checked against Scrivener’s received Greek text and the SBLGNT apparatus; exhaustive manuscript collation remains open. Metzger commentary entries were matched by exact passage where present; ECM/CBGM rationale is passage-specific only when an official editorial explanation is cited. Ledger rows are identified as UBS6 / intended NA29 data but retain their row-level verification caveats pending direct collation.
- Rights and access
- Original editorial synthesis. Biblical readings are short scholarly quotations; cited editions and digital witnesses retain their stated rights and access conditions.
- Known limitations
- This staging record summarizes the principal variation unit and representative evidence. It is not a fresh collation of every extant manuscript, version, lectionary, or patristic citation.
Links from this record
No public outgoing links are recorded.
Records that cite or connect here
No public backlinks are recorded.
Corrections and evidence submissions
No correction submission is presently attached to this record. Submit evidence or read the correction policy.
Chris Thomas, “Mark 1:41 — Moved with Compassion or Moved with Anger? Jesus and the Leper,” VAR-2005, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas