The joins · 03 of 04 · The copies split
Sweat like blood
An angel strengthens Him. He is in agony, and His sweat falls like drops of blood. Early books land on both sides. This is not a simple KJV extra.
And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Not in the BSB main text. A footnote: some manuscripts add that an angel appeared and strengthened Him, and that His sweat became like drops of blood.
ὤφθη δὲ αὐτῷ ἄγγελος ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ ἐνισχύων αὐτόν. καὶ γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ ἐκτενέστερον προσηύχετο· καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἱδρὼς αὐτοῦ ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵματος
How it sat
01Let this cup pass
Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours. Every early Luke has this prayer. The split starts at the next breath.
02An angel strengthening Him
Some of the oldest books have the angel. Some of the oldest do not. This is not a margin that wandered in after Erasmus. It is a fork.
03Sweat like blood
As if drops of blood falling to the ground. Luke’s medical eye, or a later Luke-shaped hand. The copies will not let you pretend it is simple.
04Loud cries and tears
In the days of His flesh He offered up prayers with loud cries and tears. The suffering is not waiting on Luke 22:44 to be true.
In these copies
- Sinaiticus (א*)
- D, L, ƒ¹
- later Byzantine copies
- KJV, WEB, ASV
- early church writers who know the lines
Not in these copies
- p⁷⁵
- Vaticanus (B)
- some Sahidic
- ƒ¹³ in part
- BSB, NIV main text
Read it this way
Most of the rooms on this page are later lines climbing into a verse. This one is older, and the copies honestly split. Papyrus 75 and Vaticanus skip from “let this cup pass” to the sleeping disciples. Sinaiticus has the angel and the sweat. So do a stream of later books, and so does the King James.
Hebrews already says He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears. Gethsemane in Mark is already distress, to the point of death. Luke’s extra lines do not invent a suffering Christ. They paint, in Luke’s way, a Man who is helped by an angel and who sweats as if He were bleeding.
Honest Bibles either print the verses or tell you they are missing from two of the oldest witnesses. That is a split in the copies, not a modern plot against blood. We print the walk, and we tell you both sides sat in the first centuries.
Some sayThey took the blood-sweat out of Gethsemane so you would doubt He suffered.
He suffered. Mark already said so. What split is whether Luke wrote the angel and the sweat — not whether the night was heavy.
KJV
on the page
WEB
on the page
BSB
not printed
ASV
on the page