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
At Mark 3:32, UBS6/intended NA29 changes the NA28 main text from “[καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαί σου]” to “om.”; this dossier compares both forms with the TR, the Authorized Version, and the canonical context.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
καὶ ἐκάθητο ὄχλος περὶ αὐτόν· εἶπον δὲ αὐτῷ, Ἰδού, ἡ μήτηρ σου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί σου ἔξω ζητοῦσί σε.
Authorized Version
“And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.” — Mark 3:32, Authorized Version
Edition note
The full verse is supplied from the project’s Scrivener 1894 received-text source. Each edition-change row separately records whether its exact unit agrees with NA28, UBS6/intended NA29, neither form, or requires address-level review.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
NA29-061 (3:32/33): [καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαί σου]
Translation or explanation
The NA28 baseline contains 1 controlled unit at this verse. Square brackets and “om.” reproduce the project workbook; no bracket is silently converted into an unqualified printed reading.
Metzger’s report of the UBS committee
Metzger's second-edition commentary contains 3 earlier UBS4 notes at Mark 3:32. The discussion invokes external attestation, possible accidental omission, possible expansion, harmonization. The entry displays confidence ratings {C}, {B}. Because Metzger predates the ECM/UBS6 revision, it supplies earlier committee context rather than the reason for the new decision.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes at Mark 3:32
ECM / CBGM evidence and editors
INTF reports 33 Mark changes and provides the digital ECM, CBGM data, and Text-Critical Commentary for passages with a commentary marker. H. A. G. Houghton's current UBS6 commentary covers every UBS6 apparatus unit. No passage-specific explanation beyond an independently extracted official note is invented here. CBGM supplies coherence evidence; the editors define the local stemma and make the final textual and philological judgment.
4UBS6 and intended NA29 revision
1 controlled main-text change row affects this verse. Relative to the TR: 1 agrees with the TR in the UBS6/intended-NA29 form. UBS6 is published as the intended NA29 main text; the complete NA29 volume and apparatus remain forthcoming.
| Unit | NA28 baseline | Published UBS6 / intended NA29 main text | Source and verification |
|---|---|---|---|
| NA29-061 | [καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαί σου] | om. | M1 M1 p.1 — Workbook-transcribed; printed NA29 collation pending. TR comparison: The UBS6/intended-NA29 form agrees with the TR at this unit. |
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
Jesus’ natural family stood outside while he defined the family that does God’s will.
Doctrinal analysis
The sisters are historically real elsewhere in Mark, but their presence in this sentence is not necessary to the teaching. The TR and UBS6/intended NA29 omit the clause here.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Mark 3:32, the critical decision avoids arbitrariness only if the local witnesses, editorially proposed stemma, transcriptional account, intrinsic fit, and inferential step are made public. Naming the ECM or CBGM does not by itself supply that argument. The current controlled comparison is: 1 agrees with the TR in the UBS6/intended-NA29 form.
Inconsistency
The same canons must be applied at Mark 3:32 and at comparable units. A Byzantine or TR-aligned reading cannot be dismissed merely for being Byzantine when the ECM itself repeatedly adopts such readings, nor can “shorter,” “harder,” age, or coherence function as an unexplained trump only when convenient.
Consequences
Exegetical or interpretive consequence: The sisters are historically real elsewhere in Mark, but their presence in this sentence is not necessary to the teaching. The TR and UBS6/intended NA29 omit the clause here. Canonical and doctrinal consequence is evidence to explain, not a shortcut that permits the desired theology to dictate the wording.
Preconditions of intelligibility
The analysis presupposes stable authorship, meaningful language, objective logic, transmissible evidence, and an identifiable canon capable of judging later reconstructions. A method that treats the text as indefinitely revisable must still explain how its appeals to authorial meaning, Scripture-wide coherence, and ecclesiastical use remain intelligible.
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
This package does not claim a fresh witness-by-witness collation for Mark 3:32. The ECM/digital ECM apparatus and commentary remain the controlling sources for the critical edition’s external evidence. The TR’s broad ecclesiastical reception is relevant evidence, but it is not used as a substitute for identifying manuscripts, versions, corrections, and genealogical relationships at the unit.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
At Mark 3:32, compare accidental loss, deliberate or liturgical expansion, harmonization, and the author’s immediate syntax. “Shorter” and “harder” are questions to test, not automatic verdicts.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
The Authorized Version publicly represents the received Greek text at Mark 3:32. Its long ecclesiastical use is relevant to reception and intelligibility, but this record does not turn reception into a bare majority-vote rule or exempt the verse from source-level examination.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is treated as the confessional context for an identifiable text received in the church, not as permission to ignore variants. At Mark 3:32, the TR/AV is evaluated against the controlled edition rows, the passage, the rest of Scripture, and the available historical evidence.
Canonical coherence with the rest of Scripture
The Authorized Version’s omission at Mark 3:32 is coherent with Mark 6:3, which securely mentions Jesus’ sisters. The canon can affirm their existence without repeating them in every family notice; UBS6/intended NA29 now agrees with that received distribution.
Canonical-coherence verdict
Authorized Version / TR coherent; the published UBS6 text now converges with it. The earlier NA28 difference no longer represents the current critical main text at Mark 3:32.
Response to the principal critical argument
The editorial outcome is recorded exactly, but the argument is not allowed to collapse into an edition label or an unexplained coherence score. At Mark 3:32, the current comparison is: 1 agrees with the TR in the UBS6/intended-NA29 form. A complete critical case must disclose the local witnesses, the proposed local stemma, the transcriptional and intrinsic reasons, and the move from those premises to the selected reading. Where that passage-specific argument has not been extracted, the record says so instead of imputing a motive.
Conclusion
Retain the Authorized Version at Mark 3:32. The AV is correct at this locus because it faithfully represents the TR and that reading is coherent with the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. The published UBS6/intended-NA29 revision now agrees with the TR at the substantive unit on this card, so the current critical text is correct here precisely insofar as it has moved into that same coherent reading. The convergence should be acknowledged rather than treating NA28 as permanently synonymous with the critical text.
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.
No adverse entailment: agrees with the received text.
Necessary reasoning chain
- The current critical main-text reading assessed at Mark 3:32 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
- INTF — ECM Mark has Arrived (33 changes)Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- Digital ECM — Mark 3:32Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- German Bible Society — UBS6 publications and relation to NA29Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Mark 3:32
Received reading: “Thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee,” without a reference to sisters.
Principal competing reading: “Thy mother and thy brethren and thy sisters are outside seeking thee.”
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
“Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.” — Mark 3:32
Mark says that Jesus’ mother and brothers arrive, remain outside, and send for him. When the crowd reports their presence, the received text repeats those two groups. A disputed clause adds “and thy sisters.” Several critical editions print or bracket the addition despite the strong transmission of the shorter form.
The phrase is not historically impossible. Mark 6:3 states that Jesus had sisters. The question is narrower: were they present in this scene, and did verse 32 name them?
The narrative’s threefold frame
Verse 31 introduces “his brethren and his mother.” Verse 32 reports “thy mother and thy brethren.” Verse 33 asks, “Who is my mother, or my brethren?” The received form gives the paragraph a deliberate threefold repetition. Jesus then looks at those sitting around him and declares that whoever does God’s will is his brother, sister, and mother.
That final “sister” offers a ready source for expansion. A reader may reason that, because Jesus names spiritual sisters in verse 35 and because 6:3 mentions his natural sisters, the messengers must have included them. The added words then make the family list more symmetrical with the conclusion.
Supporters of the longer reading point to a possible eye-skip between two occurrences of sou, “thy.” In a line reading “thy brothers and thy sisters,” the eye could jump from the first possessive to the second and remove the middle. That is a real mechanical possibility. Yet the shorter text is not isolated, and the same sisters are absent from the arrival notice and from Jesus’ question. Deliberate omission would have to regularize only the middle statement while leaving verse 35 untouched.
The distinction between natural and spiritual kin is sharper in the shorter form. The family that actually arrives is named as Mark introduced it; Jesus broadens the category when he describes those who do God’s will. His inclusion of “sister” is theological, not evidence that unnamed women waited outside.
The longer reading has an unusual asymmetry: sisters appear in the crowd’s report but not in Mark’s statement that the family arrived. That is possible if the first notice abbreviates the group, yet it weakens the claim that omission was driven by hostility to the sisters’ presence. A scribe intent on removing them would also face verse 35, where spiritual sisters remain unchallenged. The variant is better explained locally than ideologically.
The received wording should remain. It follows the actors named in the scene and explains how the longer report could grow through nearby memory. Scripture clearly acknowledges Jesus’ sisters elsewhere, so retaining the shorter line does not hide them. It simply refuses to move them into a house where Mark did not place 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 3:20–35; 6:3; Matthew 12:46–50; Luke 8:19–21.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2012
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.2-na29-complete
- 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
- All 169 edition-change rows were reconciled to the controlled workbook and grouped into 154 canonical verse cards. TR and Authorized Version full-verse texts were attached from the project’s Scrivener/KJV sources. Row-level TR alignment is machine-assisted and manually overridden where the unit was known to require address-level judgment; printed NA29-apparatus review and independent witness collation remain open. Metzger notes are exact-verse matches to his earlier UBS4 commentary and are not represented as explanations of later ECM decisions.
- Rights and access
- Original editorial synthesis; short biblical and edition readings are cited for scholarly comparison. Source editions, photographs, and linked resources retain their stated rights.
- Known limitations
- Staging synthesis. The package records all edition changes, but it is not a new collation of every witness. A passage-specific ECM rationale is stated only when an identified official explanation was extracted; otherwise the linked commentary/apparatus remains the source to consult. Canonical coherence is asserted proportionately and no doctrinal conflict is manufactured for orthographic or equivalent forms.
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 3:32 — “Thy Brethren and Thy Sisters”: Does the Reference to the Sisters Belong?,” VAR-2012, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.2-na29-complete.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas