Text:

Instead of eidōs ‘knowing,’ ‘perceiving’ of the great majority of modern editions of the Greek text, Taylor, Turner and (apparently) Revised Standard Version have idōn ‘seeing.’

Exegesis:

Some of the words in this verse have already been dealt with: for proserchomai ‘come to,’ ‘approach’ cf. 1.31; grammateus ‘scribe’ cf. 1.22; suzēteō ‘dispute’ cf. 1.27; kalōs ‘well,’ ‘fittingly’ cf. 7.6; entolē ‘commandment’ cf. 7.8; prōtē ‘first’ (of rank, or importance, not of time) cf. 6.21.

heis ‘one’: as in 5.22 the numeral is equivalent to the indefinite pronoun tis ‘a certain one.’ The whole phrase heis tōn grammateōn means simply ‘a scribe.’

akousas ‘hearing’: the participle here is practically in the nature of a relative clause, ‘who heard.’

poia (cf. 11.28) ‘what,’ ‘which’: although some (cf. Swete, Lagrange) hold that the pronoun has here the qualitative force ‘of what sort,’ ‘of what kind,’ most commentators and translations take it to be simply interrogative, equivalent to tis ‘what?,’ ‘which?’

prōtē pantōn ‘(the) first of all’: it is to be noticed that pantōn ‘of all’ is not feminine, in agreement with prōtē ‘first (commandment),’ but is either masculine or neuter. It probably is to be taken in a general way “first of all commandments” even though there is no concordance of genders (in which Taylor sees Semitic influence); Field, however, takes it to mean omnium rerum “of all things” (cf. also Lagrange le premier de toutes choses).

Translation:

Them disputing with one another may have one of two different meanings: (1) Jesus is included in the group disputing, and hence it is a case of the Sadducees disputing with Jesus, or (2) the Sadducees may be regarded as disputing among themselves on the basis of Jesus’ answer. Where the ambiguity of the Greek may be preserved, one should attempt to do so. Otherwise, one can choose either of the alternative meanings and translate the clause in such a way as to relate it meaningfully to the following.

Because of the series of verbs, involving three different subjects (came up … heard … disputing … seeing … answered … asked), it is often necessary to break the sentence up into smaller units, e.g. ‘a scribe came up and heard them disputing with one another; he saw that Jesus was answering them well; he asked Jesus.’

First must be understood in terms of importance or value, not with reference to time or position, except as these elements may also imply importance. One may translate accordingly, ‘what is the most important commandment?’

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .