Mark 13 : 8

Greek uses ἐπί with elided form ἐπ᾽ ('upon/against'), Syriac employs ܥܠ ('upon/against'), and Latin uses contra ('against'). All three prepositions convey hostility, but Latin makes the adversarial sense more explicit through contra rather than a spatial preposition.

The second prepositional phrase shows variation: Greek retains ἐπί, Syriac continues with ܥܠ (maintaining parallelism with the first clause), while Latin shifts to super ('over/upon'), introducing slight stylistic variation in the repeated structure while preserving semantic equivalence.

Greek κατὰ τόπους ('throughout places') and Latin per loca employ prepositional phrases, while Syriac uses the distributive construction ܒܕܘܟܐ ܕܘܟܐ ('in place place'), a characteristic Semitic idiom expressing distribution through noun repetition rather than a preposition governing a plural object.

Greek includes καὶ ταραχαί ('and disturbances/tumults'), which the Peshitta renders as ܘܫܓܘܫܝܐ ('and commotions'), but the Vulgate entirely omits this third element of the catastrophe list. This represents a substantive textual variant, possibly reflecting different Greek Vorlagen or deliberate abbreviation in the Latin tradition.

Greek places the demonstrative last (ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων ταῦτα, 'beginning of birth-pains these'), Latin follows this order (Initium dolorum hæc), while Syriac fronts the demonstrative (ܗܠܝܢ ܪܫܐ ܐܢܝܢ ܕܚܒܠܐ, 'these [are] the beginning of birth-pains'), employing the copular pronoun ܐܢܝܢ to create a nominal sentence structure typical of Syriac syntax.