Blog #4 Chelsey Richter

We have seen that the New Testament did not emerge as a single collection of 27 books immediately, but that different groups of early Christians had different collections of sacred books—not only different books, but different versions of the same book! Books in the ancient world could not be mass produced. Therefore, they were copied by hand and there was no other way. Since books were copied by hand, there was always the possibility that scribes would make mistakes and intentional changes in a book. Thus, today, we do not have the original books of the New Testament.[1]

In Luke’s account of the Jesus’ Passion is that He does not appear to experience any deep anguish over his coming fate. For a comparative example, we can look at Mark’s account where Jesus is said to become distraught and agitated. Jesus also tells his disciples that his soul is sorrowful unto death, in the Gospel of Mark. Also in Mark, Jesus prays 3 times to God to remove this cup from me, something that Luke does say in his gospel, but adds if you are willing. Luke’s Jesus is not fearful of his fate.[2] He knows that the end is not imminent.[3]

However, there is one verse in Luke that suggests that Jesus is in distress, Luke 22:43-44. But, was this verse originally in the Book of Luke? According to scholars, the important early manuscripts of the gospels of Luke lack these verses, but they were known to Christian writers of the second century and reflect tradition concerning the suffering of Jesus. Whether they were a part of the original text is debatable. [4] Verses 22:43-44 could have been added by scribes who felt uneasy over the fact that Jesus does not seem worried by his coming fate. Most translators are confident that these verses did not originally form part of Luke’s gospel but were later added by scribes because they did not appear in the oldest and many of the best manuscripts of the New Testament.[5]

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[1] B.D. Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 11.

[2] B.D. Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 133.

[3] B.D. Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 138.

[4] The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Oxford University Press, 2012.

[5] B.D. Ehrman, The New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 133.