Matius 16:20

16:20 Then he instructed his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. ¹ 

Matius 17:9

17:9 As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, ²  “Do not tell anyone about the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

Markus 8:31

First Prediction of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection

8:31 Then ³  Jesus ⁴  began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer ⁵  many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, ⁶  and be killed, and after three days rise again.

[16:20]  ¹ tc Most mss (א² C W Ï lat bo) have “Jesus, the Christ” (᾿Ιησοῦς ὁ Χριστός, Ihsou" Jo Cristo") here, while D has “Christ Jesus” (ὁ Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς). On the one hand, this is a much harder reading than the mere Χριστός, because the name Jesus was already well known for the disciples’ master – both to them and to others. Whether he was the Messiah is the real focus of the passage. But this is surely too hard a reading: There are no other texts in which the Lord tells his disciples not to disclose his personal name. Further, it is plainly a motivated reading in that scribes had the proclivity to add ᾿Ιησοῦς to Χριστός or to κύριος (kurio", “Lord”), regardless of whether such was appropriate to the context. In this instance it clearly is not, and it only reveals that scribes sometimes, if not often, did not think about the larger interpretive consequences of their alterations to the text. Further, the shorter reading is well supported by א* B L Δ Θ Ë^1,13 565 700 1424 al it sa.

[16:20]  tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”

[16:20]  sn See the note on Christ in 1:16.

[17:9]  ² tn Grk “Jesus commanded them, saying.” The participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant and has not been translated.

[8:31]  ³ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[8:31]  ⁴ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:31]  ⁵ sn The necessity that the Son of Man suffer is the particular point that needed emphasis, since for many 1st century Jews the Messiah was a glorious and powerful figure, not a suffering one.

[8:31]  ⁶ tn Or “and the scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 1:22.