The Confusing Sayings: Mark 3:29

But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.

This article is part of a series explaining Jesus’s Confusing Sayings.

If any of Jesus’s verse’s are confusing for you, let me know in a comment and I may analyze its Greek for you in a future article.

The context for this statement is explained only after Jesus’s words. This is more evidence for the fact that many of Jesus’s statements come in response to an unrecorded dialogue. Here, his challengers were saying that he had an “impure spirit.” This attack triggered this response. Jesus says in the previous verse that all types of “sin” will be “forgiven them,” (see this article about similar verses). Then he gives the exception in Mark 3:29:

NIV: but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.

• The words in boldface are explained in this article.

At the time, Jesus would have been heard saying something much more legal, less theological, and more practical than English Biblical translations might indicate. This article focuses only on the key translation issues in this verse. Some of these issues may or may not have theological implications regarding the Trinity, but that is not my concern as a translator. There are versions of this verse in Matthew (Matthew 12:31) and Luke (Luke 12:10), but this Mark version is the most interesting.

Slandering Spirit

The word translated as “blaspheme” has a much broader meaning in Greek. It means "to speak ill of," "to slander," and “to blame falsely.” Our definition is from the influence of the Bible, which makes it mean "to speak irreverently of God.” By using to apply to himself or the Holy Spirit, Jesus is not saying that they are God. He is only saying that they were slandered. The word described a crime at the time, not a criminal crime but one where the accuser could sue the defendant for damages against their good name. This sense of this “slander” as a legal term is re-enforced by the Greek word translated as “they are guilty.” In a court proceeding, that word means “to be found liable” to pay the penalty for the crime that the defendant was found guilty of.

The Greek words that Jesus used that are translated as “the Holy Spirit” mean "the spirit, the holy one." Both words, “spirit” and “holy” are used as nouns. See an article about these words here. The word translated as "spirit" primarily means "breath," "wind," and “bla,st” but can mean a "non-material being." It means the "breath of life" and is often translated as “soul” in the New Testament because it can refer to the spirit within us . Like "spirit" in English, it can also mean an "attitude" or "motivation.”

Never Forgiven?

The “never” in this verse is a mistranslation of the simple word “not.” It is changed to reinforce a meaning Jesus never intended.

The word translated as “forgiven” is the noun form of the common verb that means “to let go,” (see this article). The sense of the noun is “release,” “relaxation," "exhaustion," and so on. This noun form is only used three times by Jesus, but the first is when he is quoting the Old Testament where the word clearly means "release" because it refers to prisoners. So, again, we return to issues of crime and punishment. The sense is “no release” from a crime.

Jesus said that is slanderer will “have no release.” The verb “have” in this clause is not translated in the Biblical version. We might hear this in terms of prison, but at the time, the sense was probably more of release from a debt. It is hard to us today to understand the shadow that an on-going debt then cast on the lives of people. People could go to a guard house for debts, but it was more common to become a debt slave for a period of time until the debt was cleared. Those in debt lived under this shadow.

In this Lifetime

This verse then has three untranslated words in a row, an entire phrase, left out. The Biblical translation of “never” forgiven is contradicted by this eliminated phrase that follows.

The first untranslated word is a preposition that most commonly means “in” or “into.” It can also mean "on," "over," “against,” "concerning," or "by." This is the same word translated as blaspheming “against” the Holy Spirit, but it probably should have been translated as speaking ill “concerning” the Holy Spirit.

The next untranslated word is the definite article, “the.” It usually precedes a noun and, without a noun, takes the meaning of "the one." This article is translated as “the one” before the word “holy.” The Greek article is much closer to our demonstrative pronouns ("this," "that," "these," "those"). So, the sense here is “this lifetime” or “this era.” See this article for more.

The final untranslated word means "lifetime," "life," "a space of time," "an age," an epoch," and "the present world." This is the root word for the adjective later translated as "eternal,” but that word doesn’t mean “eternal” as much as it does “on-going” (see this article.) What Jesus said is the someone slandering the holy form of spirit will not have a release “ in this lifetime” or “in this age.” This phrase places a time limit on how long the person is trapped by his thinking, making it clear that the sense of the mistake is not “eternal” as our translation says. The word translated as “sin” means “mistake.” It is explained in detail in this article.

The Complete Verse

Jesus response to being accused of having an “impure spirit” was, not defending himself, but defending the “spirit” with which he spoke.

Listeners Heard: That one, however, when he speaks ill about the spirit, the holy one, he doesn't have a release in this lifetime. Instead, he is guilty of an on-going mistake.

Jesus didn’t defend himself, but the spirit that inspired his words. He says that people that deny that spirit, the idea of a holy spirit that inspired people’s words, were guilty of an on-going mistake. This mistakes prevents them from moving forward.