Note 25 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

The other feature peculiar to Luke, namely, the bloody sweat, was early felt to be no less fraught with difficulty than the strengthening by the angel. At least it appears to have been this more than anything else, which occasioned the exclusion of the entire addition in Luke, v. 43 and 44, from many ancient copies of the gospels. For as the orthodox, who according to Epiphanius25 rejected the passage, appear to have shrunk the most from the lowest degree of fear which is expressed by the bloody sweat: so to the docetic opinions of some who did not receive this passage,26 this was the only particular which could give offence. Thus in an earlier age, doubts were raised respecting the fitness of the bloody sweat of Jesus on dogmatical considerations: while in more modern times this has been done on physiological grounds. It is true that authorities are adduced for instances of bloody sweat from Aristotle27 down to the more recent investigators of nature;28 but such a phenomenon is only mentioned as extremely rare, and as a symptom of decided disease. Hence Paulus points to the ὡσεὶ (as it were), as indicating that it is not directly a bloody sweat which is here spoken of, but only a sweat which might be compared to blood: this comparison, however, he refers only to the thick appearance of the drops, and Olshausen also agrees with him thus far, that a red colour of the perspiration is not necessarily included in the comparison. But in the course of a narrative which is meant as a prelude to the sanguinary death of Jesus, it is the most natural to take the comparison of the sweat to drops of blood, in its full sense. Further, here, yet more forcibly than in relation to the angelic appearance, the question suggests itself: how did Luke obtain this information? or to pass by all questions which must take the same form in this instance as in the previous one, how could the disciples, at a distance and in the night, discern the falling of drops of blood? According to Paulus indeed it ought not to be said that the sweat fell, for as the word καταβαίνοντες, falling, refers not to ἱδρὼς, sweat, but to the θρόμβοι αἵματος, drops of blood, which are introduced merely for the purpose of comparison, it is only meant that a sweat as thick and heavy as falling drops of blood stood on the brow of Jesus. But whether it be said: the sweat fell like drops of blood to the earth, or: it was like drops of blood falling to the earth, it comes pretty much to the same thing; at least the comparison of a sweat standing on the brow to blood falling on the earth would not be very apt, especially if together with the falling, we are to abstract also the colour of the blood, so that of the words, as it were drops of blood falling on the ground, ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵματος καταβαίνοντες εἰς τὴν γῆν, only ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι, as it were drops, would properly have any decided meaning. Since then we can neither comprehend the circumstance, nor conceive what historical authority for it the narrator could have had, let us, with Schleiermacher, rather take this feature also as a poetical one construed historically by the Evangelist, or better still, as a mythical one, the origin of which may be easily explained from the tendency to perfect the conflict in the garden as a prelude to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, by showing that not merely the psychical aspect of that suffering was fore-shadowed in the mental trouble, but also its physical aspect, in the bloody sweat.