Mark 3:21

And when his friends heard it, they went to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.

His friends ... These words are made to read "his family" in GNNT, IV, and the New English Bible (1961), and this reading is supposed by McMillan, Cranfield; and many other recent commentators; but there are solid reasons for rejecting this change from the English Revised Version (1885), RSV, and KJV. To begin with, Mark referred to the immediate family of Jesus as "his mother and his brethren" just six verses later (Mark 3:27), and why he should have called them by another term here cannot be explained. To make Mark 3:27 an "explanation" of Mark 3:21 is sheer guesswork. Goodspeed, Weymouth, Phillips, Wesley, and others translate "relatives" or "relations," which in context cannot mean family.

To lay hold on him ... means something like "to take into custody," or "to take charge of"; those misguided friends or "neighbors," which is as likely a guess as any, were seeking to restrain Jesus. It is important to note that "his mother and brethren" (Mark 3:27) were not said to have been seeking to "lay hold on him," nor is there any hint that they said, "He is beside himself," these actions being attributed not to his "family" but to his "friends"; and there has always been a world of difference in THOSE words.

He is beside himself ... The true meaning is simply that the zeal of Jesus had, in the view of his neighbors, gone too far, or as Ryle translated, he has been "transported too far," that is, "carried away with his work."

Zeal in the service of God has never been intelligible to carnal and unregenerated men. Zeal for business, war, science, pleasure, politics, or nearly any earthly pursuit, is admired, complimented, and emulated; but let a man devote himself fully to the service of holy religion, and the neighbors begin to shake their heads and say, "He's getting carried away with it!"