Mark 7:16, “if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear”
Modern Bibles may omit Mark 7:16 because Reading A moves from verse 15 to verse 17 without the refrain, while Reading B includes it. The wording echoes Mark 4:9 and Mark 4:23.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB's translation committee works blind: it is never told it is translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and it never sees the witnesses above. Since revision 3.5, the places where the manuscripts disagree are decided before translation by three readers, Grok 4.3, GPT-6 Astra, and Claude Fable 5.1, who see the readings and the witnesses by age and class but never a reference or a manuscript name. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
Mark 7:16: set in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.
“The base text reads ὃς ἔχει. The copies also carry αὐτοῖς· [later majority tradition], the omission [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Default wording ὃς ἔχει is strongly supported by both external distribution and internal transcriptional probability.”
“The base text reads Ὃς ἔχει. The copies also carry Ὃ ἔχων [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Default wording Ὃς ἔχει is preferred; evidence is not genuinely against it.”
“The base text reads ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά. The copies also carry ἐκπορευόμενά ἀπ᾽ ἐκεῖνά [later majority tradition], ἐκπορευόμενά ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐκεῖνά [greek majuscule; later majority tradition], ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά ἐκεῖνά [greek majuscule; early greek manuscript tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Default wording chosen; evidence favors ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά over the later expansions.”
“The base text reads κοινῶσαι αὐτόν. The copies also carry αὐτὸν κοινῶσαι [greek majuscule; greek papyrus; early greek manuscript tradition; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The evidence is close but the early independent witnesses for κοινῶσαι αὐτόν tip the balance slightly in its favor.”
“The base text reads ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά. The copies also carry ἐκεῖνά [early greek manuscript tradition], ἐκπορευόμενα ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ ἐκεῖνά [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Default wording ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά is supported by the earliest independent witnesses and best explains the rise of the other two readings.”
“Included from the Faithlife/SBLGNT apparatus at Mark 7:15 as a traditional verse addition. Witnesses: Treg, RP.”
The committee's APB 3.5 decision at this unit was to set Mark 7:16 “in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.” Its printed text accordingly gives the line in brackets. The committee record calls it “Textual supplement: Mark 7:16” and says, “Included from the Faithlife/SBLGNT apparatus at Mark 7:15 as a traditional verse addition. Witnesses: Treg, RP.” The pericope audit verdict is “clean.”
The argument for each reading
If the refrain echoed in
Reading A ends verse 15 with ἄνθρωπον and continues to verse 17 without a separate refrain. Westcott-Hort is presented this way, and the apparatus places WH and NA28 on this side of the unit. On this reading, the teaching about what comes from a person proceeds without the familiar wording heard in Mark 4:9 and Mark 4:23.
The apparatus also shows that the nearby text has several smaller wording and order variations at Mark 7:15. That setting leaves open a scribal setting in which a familiar refrain could have been supplied after the verse. Reading A therefore preserves the shorter sequence at this point, while leaving the repeated language of Mark 4 available as a possible source for the longer form.
If Mark wrote it here
Reading B supplies a complete saying after Mark 7:15: Εἴ τις ἔχει ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω. Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform prints it as verse 16, and the apparatus assigns the addition to Treg and RP. The wording has close verbal resonance with the refrain printed at Mark 4:9 and Mark 4:23.
For readers of the later manuscripts, the saying fits the surrounding teaching: the crowd has been called to listen and understand in Mark 7:14, followed by the statement in Mark 7:15. The refrain can thus function as an emphatic closing summons. Its presence also explains why some editions preserve a numbered verse here rather than moving immediately to verse 17.
The evidence supplied here establishes that the refrain is present in Reading B and absent in Reading A, but it does not remove the question of how the two forms arose. The bracketed presentation keeps the wording visible while marking the dispute. The variant changes whether a familiar summons appears between verses 15 and 17; it does not change the stated content of Mark 7:15. Broader doctrine does not rest on this line alone, and doctrines are ordinarily considered across many passages.
Common questions
Why do some Bibles leave out Mark 7:16?
They follow Reading A, where verse 15 continues directly to verse 17. Other editions follow Reading B and print the refrain as verse 16.
What does Mark 7:16 say in editions that include it?
Reading B gives: Εἴ τις ἔχει ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω. The APB printed text retains the line in brackets as a disputed passage.
Is the wording found elsewhere in Mark?
The supplied references place related refrains at Mark 4:9 and Mark 4:23. That echo is part of the question raised by the longer reading at Mark 7:16.
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 as published scholarly fact with their sources linked above. The page does not declare which reading is original.
The registry gives no verdict
The registry does not say which reading is original. Each page lists the witnesses, shows what the committee did with the same text, and leaves the judgment to the reader.