Mark 10:24, hard for whom to enter the kingdom?
Mark 10:24 has two readings: one says entry into the kingdom is hard for those who trust in riches; the other says it is hard without that qualifier. The difference changes the scope of Jesus' warning.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads ἐστιν. The copies also carry ἐστιν τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐπὶ χρήμασιν [greek majuscule; early greek manuscript tradition; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The harder wording and stronger external support firmly favor the default.”
“The base text reads (nothing). The copies also carry τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐπὶ χρήμασιν [greek majuscule; early greek manuscript tradition; later majority tradition], τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐπὶ τοῖς χρήμασιν [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Strong early support and an evident motive to soften the statement favor the default.”
The committee kept the base text without the qualifier about trusting in riches. Its textual note states that “the committee kept the base text.” GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) was the first and only translator to decide this unit; it did not proceed to a second translator. The committee's printed text reads: “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!” This gives the sentence an unrestricted scope while preserving the surrounding warnings about wealth.
The argument for each reading
If the saying is absolute
The shorter reading makes the difficulty of entering the kingdom apply to anyone. Westcott-Hort and NA28 print this wording without the qualifier about trusting in riches. In the surrounding passage, Jesus speaks about those who have money before this sentence and about a rich person afterward. The absolute saying therefore broadens the warning within a discussion of wealth. Its difficulty also gives a possible explanation for the longer reading: adding a phrase about trust in riches would narrow an unsettling statement. That explanation supports a case for the shorter wording, but it does not establish how the difference arose.
If only the trusting rich
The longer reading identifies those who trust in riches as the people for whom entry is difficult. Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform prints the qualifier, and the apparatus also assigns it to Treg. This wording connects the sentence directly to the surrounding warnings about wealth. It draws attention to a person's reliance on riches and gives the difficulty a defined scope. Its presence in the Byzantine text provides a textual basis for retaining it. The close fit with the context can explain its appeal, though that fit alone cannot establish whether the qualifier belonged to the saying from the beginning.
The unresolved question is whether the qualifier was part of the saying or entered the text as an explanation of its scope. The difference matters for how broadly this sentence speaks. It does not remove the surrounding warnings about money: the APB's Mark 10:23 addresses those who have money, and Mark 10:25 compares a rich person's entry to a camel passing through a needle's hole. This variant alone does not settle a doctrine of wealth or salvation.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.