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Bible Dictionaries
Sweat
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or SWEAT.—The word ‘sweat’ occurs only in one passage in the NT, namely Luke 22:44, in the narrative of our Lord’s agony in Gethsemane, where we read: ‘His sweat became, as it were, great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.’ In approaching the discussion of the passage there are three matters to be considered: (1) the textual problem, (2) the interpretation of the words ‘became, as it were,’ and (3) the possibility of the phenomenon known as ‘bloody sweat (hœmadrosis),
1. In turning first to the textual question, we find that Luke 22:43-44 are omitted in many of the best authorities for the text of the NT (the great uncials אa ABRT). A number of other uncials (ESVΓΔΠ) mark the passage as doubtful; and in the case of Codex א the hand of one corrector has apparently inserted it, while that of another has deleted it. The Church Fathers, Hilary, Jerome, and others bear witness that there were many Manuscripts known to them which did not contain these two verses; and certain Manuscripts insert them in the parallel passage in Mt.’s Gospel, namely after Matthew 26:39. Of the Versions, one MS of the Old Latin omits them, as do also the best of the Egyptian, Armenian, and the oldest Syriac versions. Cyril of Alexandria omits the verses in his Homilies on Lk.’s Gospel, while the silence of such writers as Clement of Alexandria and Origen cannot be without significance. One cursive MS (124) omits them, while No. 13 has them inserted by a corrector. In the Greek Lectionaries the verses are generally omitted from the lesson in which they would naturally appear, but are inserted in the Mt. passage, a custom that seems to have influenced Chrysostom in his reference to the passage, though, as WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] admit, ‘a mere comparison of the parallel narratives of the Evangelists would suffice to suggest to him the reference.’ On the other hand, the Manuscripts that include the verses as they stand in Lk. are the following: uncials א*DFGHKLM QUXA, and nearly all cursives. While A omits the passage, as we have seen, it has the reference section-number in the margin, showing that its presence in other Manuscripts must have been known to the scribe. The verses are contained also in the majority of the Manuscripts of the Old Latin, some few Egyptian, the Syr-Pesh. and Syr-Hier. They are known also to Justin Martyr (who quotes them in his Dialogue with Trypho, 103), Iren., Jerome, and Augustine. The verses gave rise to much discussion among early writers, some of whom held that they had been wilfully cut out by some who were afraid of their employment by unorthodox writers; though, on the other hand, they constituted a strong weapon of proof against those who denied the reality of our Lord’s humanity.
The conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that the main witness to the presence of the verses is of a Western order; but this need not mean more than that, as is the habit of the Western text of Lk. in particular, many elements of tradition that would otherwise have been lost are contained in it. This is the conclusion to which WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] come. Their words are: ‘These verses can only be a fragment from the traditions, written or oral, which were, for a while at least, locally current beside the canonical Gospels, and which doubtless included matter of every degree of authenticity and intrinsic value. These verses and the first sentence of Luke 23:34 may be safely called the most precious among the remains of this Evangelic tradition which were rescued from oblivion by the scribes of the 2nd century.’ Neither do these editors think that there is any evidence of the omission of the verses for doctrinal reasons. It would appear, therefore, as if they stood very much in the same position as does the Pericope Adulterœ; that is, as an early story of the Evangelic tradition that had not found its way into all the copies of the canonical Gospels.
2. The next point to consider is the interpretation of the words ‘as it were great drops of blood.’ Here again there is a secondary question of reading, because certain manuscripts and versions (אVX, Vulgate Boh.) read the genitive of the word rendered ‘falling down,’ agreeing with the word for ‘blood,’ and not the nominative in agreement with the word for ‘drops,’ as do the majority of the authorities. The Greek word θρόμβος, either with or without αἵματος, can itself bear the meaning ‘a drop of blood,’ and is so used in classical Greek writers (see aesch. Eum. 184; Plato, Crit. 120 A). Tatian in his Diatessaron renders in an exaggerated form, ‘like a stream of blood,’ which Bernard supposes would be visible in the moonlight.
When Justin quotes the verse he also omits ‘of blood’; but this may be because he regarded the word θρόμβοι as bearing that signification. Even when all is said, however, the expression may not mean more than that there was a resemblance between the falling of the heavy drops of perspiration and the plashing of blood-gouts from a wound, so that the verse does not absolutely and necessarily assert that blood flowed from our Lord’s body in the moment of His extreme anguish.
In a special discussion of the subject by Harnack, that writer maintains that the stamp of Lk. is clearly manifest on the verses in question, and it is to be remembered that it is a very remarkable thing that the only record of this event should occur in the Gospel attributed to the man whom tradition asserts to have been a physician, and whose own language supports the statement. This remarkable phenomenon is the very thing we should expect a physician to take special pains carefully to record. Harnack in the same discussion draws attention to the passage in John 12:27; John 12:30, which he regards as that Evangelist’s account of the same incident. It is remarkable that while the passage in Lk. speaks of an angel succouring Jesus, the passage in the Fourth Gospel tells of a voice from heaven that answered His prayer, which voice was regarded by some of the people as that of an angel. In Harnack’s opinion the Fourth Gospel draws its material for the Passion narrative from the Synoptics, and here he thinks we have another version of the story contained in Luke. Harnack also reminds us that there are two points in the Lukan story that would offend orthodox readers, first, the mention of an angel as strengthening our Lord, which might be a strong support to those who exaggerated the importance of angel ministry; and, second, the fact that the agony was the result of an inward struggle, which might be taken as pointing to too great human weakness in our Lord’s Person to be consonant with the full maintenance of His Divine nature.
3. There has been much discussion as to whether such a thing as a bloody sweat is a possibility, and here we come into the realm of medical evidence. Much has been written on the matter, both in older days and up to the present time; a great deal of it, one must admit, being irrelevant. The less critical medical writers of an earlier time were content to quote Galen as their authority for the statement that sometimes ‘the pores are so vastly dilated by a copious and fervent spirit, that even blood issues through them and constitutes a bloody sweat’ (see R. Mead, Medical Works, 1762, ch. 13). The most recent medical conclusion on the subject seems to be that it is physically possible for blood to exude through the sweat glands, as the contiguity of the blood vessels and these glands is so close and oftentimes the walls that divide them are so extremely thin.* [Note: In the case of haemophilic persons it seems not only possible but probable. Again, however, the relevancy is not very apparent.] It may thus be granted that such an event as the ordinary text describes was a possibility, though nothing very closely allied to it has ever been observed, and one would naturally manifest great caution in accepting the historicity of it, in view of all that has already been said about the passage.
Some writers have understood the phrase ‘drops of blood’ as a purely figurative one, being simply expressive of the intense agony undergone by the sufferer, and not in any sense to be taken either literally or as even suggesting that the perspiration was itself so heavy as to suggest the dripping of blood.
There remains one interesting instance of the use of the verb ‘sweat’ in a passage of the early Christian writing known as the Didache, where in ch. 1 we read, ‘Let thine alms sweat into thine hands until thou shalt have learned to whom to give.’ The words, indeed, are not actually quoted as Christ’s, but there can be little question that the author regarded them as a traditional saying of the Lord.
Literature.—The Comm. on the passage, esp. Plummer, ad loc., and the additional note on p. 544; Holtzmann in the Hdcom.; the Expos. Gr. Test.; WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] , ‘Notes on Select Readings,’ pp. 64–67; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible , art. ‘Medicine’; Encyc. Bibl., art. ‘Sweat (Bloody),’ col. 4824, also ‘Cross,’ par. 5, col. 959; Harnack’s discussion in Sitzungsber. der Berl. Akad. der Wissensch. 1901; Quain’s Dict. of Medicine (ed. 1902, Murray), ‘Sudoriparous Glands (Diseases of)’; R. Mead, Medical Works, 1762, p. 630; W. Stroud, A ‘Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, 1847; Allgemeine Ztschr. für Psychiatrie, 1863, xx. 51; on the case of Louise Lateau see Macmillan’s Mag. 1871, and Lancet, 1871, 1, 543; Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1897, ix. 388 ff.; T. M. Anderson, Contributions to Clinical Medicine, 1898, p. 43; Besnier et Jacquet, La pratique dermatologique, vol. iv. 1904, pp. 420–424; Hobart, Medical Language of St, Luke, 79 ff.; Harnack, Luke the Physician [English translation ], 194 n. [Note: note.]
G. Currie Martin.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Sweat'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/sweat.html. 1906-1918.
