Beginning a sentence with “and” was unusual, but was common in Hebrew.
From an article about the Hebrew background of Mark:
“Carmignac, a Dead Sea Scrolls translator and an expert in the Hebrew in use at the time of Christ. . . he came at the problem from a different angle.
“In order to facilitate the comparison between our Greek Gospels and the Hebrew text of Qumran, I tried, for my own personal use, to see what Mark would yield when translated back into the Hebrew of Qumran.
.....
“. . . He discovered the Greek translator of Mark had slavishly kept to the Hebrew word order and grammar.
” . . . could the awkward phrasings found in our Greek text have been nothing more than overly faithful translations (perhaps “transliterations” would be more accurate) of Semitic originals?
“If the second possibility were true, then we have synoptic Gospels written by eyewitnesses at a very early date.”
IOW, the translators into Greek tried as much as possible not to change a single word of what they had received, even when it made the grammar awkward.
Interesting. :)
“He discovered the Greek translator of Mark had slavishly kept to the Hebrew word order and grammar.”
(Warning Moosie thinking out loud)
So I guess we can assume that the original was written in Hebrew and not translated from Hebrew verbiage to Greek text within the head of the original scribe.
However the passage I found states the transcription took place in Rome which would suggest the original document may be in Greek, or possibly the scribe wrote in his native Hebrew and translated later.
Maybe this accounts for the slavishly accurate transliteration (?)
The book of Mark I can’t (Probably logically) find in the list of Qumran scrolls.
So out of curiosity, if anyone knows for sure which is correct I would love to know.