Mark 12 : 18

Greek uses historical present ἔρχονται ('they come'), while Peshitta and Vulgate employ past tense (ܘܐܬܘ 'and they came', venerunt 'they came'), a common stylistic leveling in translation traditions that prefer narrative consistency over vivid present-tense narration.

Greek places the subject Σαδδουκαῖοι immediately after the verb, while Vulgate postpones sadducæi until after the prepositional phrase ad eum, creating a chiastic effect. Peshitta follows Greek word order with ܙܕܘܩܝܐ in second position.

Vulgate inserts a colon after the relative clause describing the Sadducees' belief, creating a stronger syntactic break before the main verb interrogabant. Greek and Peshitta continue without punctuation, maintaining closer syntactic cohesion between the participial/relative description and the main narrative action.

Greek uses imperfect ἐπηρώτων ('they were questioning'), Vulgate employs imperfect interrogabant, while Peshitta uses a periphrastic construction ܘܡܫܐܠܝܢ ܗܘܘ (participle + auxiliary 'were asking'), a characteristic Syriac method for expressing progressive past action that mirrors Greek aspectual nuance.

Vulgate concludes with a colon to introduce direct speech, while Greek uses a raised dot (·) and Peshitta continues without explicit punctuation marker, reflecting differing scribal conventions for marking discourse boundaries in the respective manuscript traditions.