Mark 2 : 16

The Syriac ܘܣܦܪܐ ('and the scribes') fuses the conjunction, article, and noun into a single inflected form; Greek deploys an explicit article οἱ before γραμματεῖς, while the Vulgate scribæ carries no article per Latin usage. The semantic content is identical across all three.

Greek reads καὶ τῶν Φαρισαίων with a genitive ('and of the Pharisees'), implying the construction 'the scribes of the Pharisees', whereas the Vulgate et pharisæi and Syriac ܘܦܪܝܫܐ treat the Pharisees as a coordinate nominative subject. This reflects the well-known textual divergence between οἱ γραμματεῖς τῶν Φαρισαίων and οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι in the manuscript tradition.

The Greek interposes an additional καί before the participle ἰδόντες, a Semitic-style paratactic connector ('and seeing'); neither the Vulgate nor the Peshitta render this redundant conjunction, subordinating the participle directly to its subject.

Greek and Latin use a single aorist/present participle (ἰδόντες / videntes, 'seeing'); the Peshitta resolves this into a temporal clause ܟܕ ܚܙܐܘܗܝ ('when they saw him'), with the object pronoun suffix making the seeing transitive and explicit, a construction-level rather than semantic difference.

Greek ἐσθίει is present indicative ('he eats'); the Vulgate manducaret is imperfect subjunctive expressing reported/indirect discourse after quia; the Syriac fuses the relative-conjunction with the verb in ܕܠܥܣ. The verb of eating is also already incorporated into the single Syriac token covering 'that he was eating'.

Greek lists ἁμαρτωλῶν ('sinners') first, whereas the Vulgate publicanis and Syriac ܡܟܣܐ ('tax collectors') place the tax collectors first; the ordering of the two stigmatised groups is reversed relative to the Greek in the first clause, a word-order variation typical of the Western/Syriac harmonisation toward the question's later ordering.

The possessive 'of him' is rendered as an enclitic suffix ܘܗܝ on ܠܬܠܡܝܕܘܗܝ in Syriac, as the separate genitive pronoun ejus in Latin, and as the postposited αὐτοῦ in Greek; the Vulgate additionally carries the colon punctuation marking the transition to direct speech.

Greek expresses the interrogative as τί ὅτι ('why is it that'), a colloquial Hellenistic idiom; the Vulgate compresses this to Quare and the Syriac to ܡܢܘ, both simple interrogatives without the explicatory ὅτι, a routine idiomatic reduction.

Greek πίνει closes the question; the Syriac ܘܫܬܐ likewise; the Vulgate bibit appears with the closing interrogative punctuation. The verbs of drinking are mutually equivalent across the three traditions.

The Vulgate appends Magister vester ('your Master/Teacher') as the explicit subject of the question, a clarifying expansion absent from both the Greek NA28 and the Peshitta, harmonising toward the parallel articulation in Matt 9:11 where the disciples are asked why their teacher eats with such company.