Mark 9:46: Why Modern Bibles Leave It Out, and the Evidence

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Mark 9:46

“Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” follows the warning about the foot in the great majority of Greek manuscripts and in Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Bezae of the fifth century, and in the Vulgate. Augustine quotes it with all three warnings, hand, foot, and eye, and marks that the Lord said the same words three times. Tregelles printed it.

The King James Bible

46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Read Mark 9

ὅπου ὁ σκώληξ αὐτῶν οὐ τελευτᾷ καὶ τὸ πῦρ οὐ σβέννυται. hopou ho skōlēx autōn ou teleuta kai to pur ou sbennutai

Greek Manuscripts

Byzantine manuscripts 𝔐 9th–16th centuries

Checked against: TAGNT (Robinson–Pierpont)
Codex Alexandrinus A 02 5th century

Checked against: CNTR transcription
Codex Bezae D 05 5th century

Checked against: CNTR transcription

Early Translations

Latin Vulgate vg Jerome, c. 400

Mark 9:45 in the Vulgate’s numbering.

Checked against: Clementine Vulgate (1592)

Church Fathers

Augustine of Hippo City of God 21.9 · c. AD 425

“Similarly of the foot: It is better for you to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.”

He quotes Mark 9:43–48 with all three warnings, and says, “He did not shrink from using the same words three times over in one passage.”

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1, vol. 2 ›

Checked against: NPNF1 2

Printed Greek Texts with This Reading

Textus Receptus · The Greek text the KJV was translated from, as Scrivener printed it (1894)
Majority Text · The Byzantine text, read by the great majority of Greek manuscripts (Robinson and Pierpont, 2005)
Tregelles · Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1857–1879)

Quotations from the Ante-Nicene and Nicene Fathers translations. Edition data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek NT, STEPBible.org (CC BY). About these texts and witnesses.