That's interesting pete. I never looked at it that way before . The society does teach the scripture as it were part of the original text, yet they clearly believe that jesus was human in the flesh and could be killed and eventually did die as a human because he was a perpetual sacrifice for the sins of mankind , there was no reason to add scipture to make it look like he was pouring out his blood prior to the execution.
no sweaty blood
by peacefulpete 24 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
Thanks earnest for again pointing out the manuscript support issue. It is however important to know the relationship that all the manuscripts that contain these verses and other unique variations have. Manuscripts are dependent upon earlier ones and this in a fashion produces a family tree. According to Metzger's "The Text of the New Testament" the Vulgate,Syriac,and Benzae are all cousins. All manuscripts (which includes dozens) which developed independently of this branch of the family do not contain the verses. This allows palaeographers to estimate the time and place that a varient was introduced. Manuscripts whose "ancestral manuscripts" branched off the tree prior to the introduction of an interpolation of gloss would not contain the passage. While the Sinaiticus is considered of the Alexandrian group it has relationship to the Western form as well. So what we have is not trully independent witnesses but rather evidence of early corruption that spread. Interestingly the 4th century corrected form of the Sinaiticus (that is, as it presently reads) has removed these verses. This suggests that the 4th century editor was aware the verses were not in the best form of the text that he had availble. As was said he had other manuscripts to use as source material that were not from the Western Group. And of course the P75 dated to about 200 does not have the verses. But of course ultimately it is possible it was removed at a very very early stage,tho this runs counter to the campaign against Docetism that the Church was fighting. It is not impossible that the passage was original to the Lukan Gospel. Gnostics early on showed favor for this Gospel. They no doubt would have seen solar symbolism in the Savior's red blood at his face. This was apparently centuries before part of the Osiris (solar God) myth. (I'm aware this contradicts my first post, I favor the explanation that suggests the passage was introduced to oppose Docetism) Perhaps then rather than an efort to oppose Docetism it was a later interpolation in effort to further identify Jesus with the solar deity motif. Anyway you look at it, it needed to be explained that this passage is questionable at best. I remember whole talks based upon the angelic comfort Jesus received and the distress in the Garden found in these two verses. That is why is was retained by them and other translations, it's dramatic stuff.
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heathen
Ernest --- The WTBTS describes the event of jesus praying in the garden not as human weakness but as an appeal to God that he not be considered a heretic as he was being accused of blaspheme which was a lie . The old testament does say accursed is the one hanging from a stake . It makes sense that he did not want to be the accursed one of Israel . His whole purpose of coming to earth was to be a ransom sacrifice so it makes no sense to say that he was looking for a way out .
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Earnest
[Luke 22:43-44] may have been deleted from the text by those who felt that the account of Jesus overwhelmed with human weakness was incompatible with his sharing the divine omnipotence of the Father. - Earnest, 23-Dec-03 03:12 GMT
Ernest --- The WTBTS describes the event of jesus praying in the garden not as human weakness but as an appeal to God that he not be considered a heretic as he was being accused of blaspheme which was a lie . - heathen, 23-Dec-03 20:01 GMT
heathen, I was not referring to the WTS but to the early copyists of the gospel of Luke who did not include vss.43,44 in their text. peacefulpete has mentioned that these verses were used in opposition to the docetic teaching that Christ only appeared to be a man. Consider three writers of the second century: Justin, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus. Justin observes that "his sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying," and claims that this shows "that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes," so that we "may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him" (Dial., 103). So too, Irenaeus, in an attack on the docetic aspects of the Ptolemaean Christology, argued that if Jesus were not really a man of flesh, he would not "have sweated great drops of blood," for this is a token "of the flesh which had been derived from the earth" (Adv. Haer. III, 22, 2). Somewhat later, and in a somewhat different vein, Hippolytus uses the passage to show the Patripassianist Noetus that Jesus "did not refuse conditions proper to him as a man" in that, as a human, he hungers, thirsts, sleeps, and "in an agony sweats blood, and is strengthened by an angel" (Adv. Noetum, 18). The converse of this is that those who considered such agony incompatible with the divinity in Christ may have deleted the verses from the text.
It is however important to know the relationship that all the manuscripts that contain these verses and other unique variations have. Manuscripts are dependent upon earlier ones and this in a fashion produces a family tree. According to Metzger's "The Text of the New Testament" the Vulgate,Syriac,and Benzae are all cousins. All manuscripts (which includes dozens) which developed independently of this branch of the family do not contain the verses. This allows palaeographers to estimate the time and place that a varient was introduced. - peacefulpete, 23-Dec-03 05:00 GMT
peacefulpete, thank you for your discussion on manuscript evidence but the evidence for Luke 22:42,43 is so early that relationships among manuscripts becomes irrelevant. If the verses are secondary, they must have been interpolated into Luke by the middle of the second century, for they are attested by fathers beginning with Justin and Irenaeus and by early Latin and Syriac witnesses. If they are original, they must have been deleted by roughly the same period, since they are absent from Clement at the end of the second century and from other Alexandrian witnesses of the early third, witnesses that represent a stream of tradition that is itself much older.
The ambiguities afforded by the manuscript alignments are only heightened by the style and diction of the two verses. Von Harnack argued for its authenticity on just such grounds, noting that angelic appearances and constructions with come to be are common in Luke, whereas several other words and phrases occur only in Luke/Acts and nowhere else: then an angel appeared to him (Luke 1:11), strengthening him (Acts 9:19), and he was praying more earnestly (Acts 12:5).
Kurt & Barbara Aland discuss early textual evidence in The Text of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1987) where they say "every manuscript of the earlier period [pre-fourth century], whether on papyrus or on parchment, has an inherent significance for New Testament textual criticism: they witness to a period when the text of the New Testament was still developing freely." They refer to classifying these early texts (as Metzger does) and say "such terminology may sound very scholarly, but it only beclouds the issue. We should not forget that all [except one] the early witnesses are from Egypt...From other major centers of the early Christian church nothing has survived. This raises the question whether and to what extent we can generalize from the Egyptian situation."
Having said all this let me confirm that I find it more reasonable to accept that these verses were added to refute the docetic heresy. But it is not decisive and so early a tradition should be accorded its due.
Earnest
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peacefulpete
I'm very uneasy with using early Christian wrtings (nonbibical) as authoritative for anything. There is simply no way to sort out the later psuedographical from original. I can not argue with your post tho. I'm well over my head already. This like so much about the Bible's authorship is lost to the past.
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Mysterious
Time Magazine right now has an article featuring the Lost Gospels if anyone is interested.
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zen nudist
"his sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying," First off, I never read this to mean he was bleeding, since it clearly says his SWEAT fell, not blood...but LIKE blood, which I take to mean like sticky large blobs rather than normal perspiration like dew....
second as to Jesus wife....my brother brought up something interesting... we always ASSUME that it is JOHN who is calling himself THE DISCIPLE whom Jesus LOVED.... but it never says this... could this really be referring to MARY, Jesus' Wife??
When Jesus is on the cross giving his Mother to THE DISCIPLE whom Jesus LOVED, there is NO other males present in any other gospel account.....hmmmm?
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minimus
If Jesus, the man, develpoed a rare ailment, such as sweating real blood, this shows he couldn't been perfect.
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Earnest
If Jesus, the man, develpoed a rare ailment, such as sweating real blood, this shows he couldn't been perfect. - minimus, 27-Dec-03 02:33 GMT
Hmmm, don't know about that minimus. Doesn't Isaiah 53 say of the Messiah "He was despised and was avoided by men, a man meant for pains and for having acquaintance with sickness...Truly our sicknesses were what he himself carried; and as for our pains, he bore them. But we ourselves accounted him as plagued, stricken by God and afflicted."
Not that Luke 22:44 necessarily refers to disease as the extant texts definitely say that "sweat became as if [hosei] drops of blood". The same word is used to describe God's spirit descending like a dove (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22) and the tongues as if of fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:3). But while I realise the idea of a paradise is without sickness and pain I don't think that is without qualification as both sickness and pain serve useful functions in physical bodies.
Earnest
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minimus
"Became AS blood"---NOT "became blood"......Those prophetic verses related to not literally getting sick but taking on the ills of the people, as it were. JC could not get a cold,the flu, a stomach ache---- never mind develop the medical condition the Society suggests could have happened.