The Angel and the Sweat Like “Drops of Blood” (Lk 22:43–44): ∏69 and f13
Claire Clivaz University of Lausanne, Switzerland
It is impossible to write except by making a palimpsest of a rediscovered manuscript. Umberto Eco Introduction Eldon J. Epp recently asserted that “the greater the ambiguity in the variant readings in a given variation unit, the more clearly we are able to grasp the concerns of the early church.”1 I agree with this principle and submit that the famous text-critical problem regarding the authenticity of Luke 22:43–44—the agony of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, which mentions the angel and the sweat “like drops of blood”—has not yet yielded its store of information about early Christianity, particularly in Alex- andria. This article has the modest purpose of presenting two technical notes on the complex question of the external evidence (from the manuscripts) bearing on Luke 22:43–44. These fi ndings provide some of the groundworkfor a reappraisal of the Lukan account of Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives.2 This article has the modest purpose of presenting two technical notes on the complex question of the external evidence in the manuscripts bearing on Luke 22:43–44. I begin by reviewing recent research on the disputed verses, and I shall argue that it is necessary to re-examine the external evidence of Luke 22:43–44. In the second section, I shall consider ∏69, a mid-third century manuscript that omits not just Luke 22:43–44, but the entire detailed content of Jesus’ prayer in Luke 22: 42–45a. I suggest that we can make sense of this larger omission by treating ∏69
1Eldon J. Epp, “Issues in New Testament Textual Criticism: Moving from the Nineteenth Cen- tury to the Twenty-First Century,” in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism (ed. David Alan Black; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002) 60. 2Such a reappraisal is the task of my nearly completed Ph.D. dissertation on Luke 22:39–46 (directed by Prof. Daniel Marguerat, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; written in French).
HTR 98:4 (2005) 419–440 420 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW as a witness to a Marcionite edition of Luke’s gospel. In the third section, I shall examine Family 13 (f13), a class of manuscripts that appear to transfer Luke 22: 43–44 to a position after Matt 26:39. I shall demonstrate that the transposition of these verses in the manuscripts of f13 cannot be used to prove that Luke 22:43–44 stems from another literary source.