Luke 22:43-44: the angel and the bloody sweat
Whether the angel and sweat like drops of blood belong to Luke's original text is disputed: some witnesses include the verses, while Papyrus 75 and Vaticanus omit them.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
Luke 22:43-44: set in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.
“The base text reads ἀπʼ. The copies also carry ἀπὸ τοῦ [greek majuscule; early greek manuscript tradition]; the committee kept the base text.”
“The base text reads καὶ ἐγένετο. The copies also carry ἐγένετο δὲ [early greek manuscript tradition; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Retain the default with low confidence.”
“This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it. The passage is ancient but missing from the earliest and most varied copies.”
The committee's decision was to keep the wording of Luke 22:43-44 and set the passage in brackets. Its note states: "This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it." GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) served as the first translator; Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) served as the second translator. The APB's printed text brackets both the angel's appearance and the description of sweat like clots of blood.
The argument for each reading
If the verses are Luke's
The case for retaining the verses includes their place in the printed texts of Tregelles, NA28, and the Byzantine text. They preserve a scene in which an angel strengthens Jesus and his anguish accompanies more earnest prayer. His sweat falls to the ground like blood. If the verses are Luke's, their omission removes both the heavenly strengthening and this physical description of distress from the prayer scene. The editions' inclusion establishes support for retaining the passage, though it does not settle how the verses entered the manuscript tradition.
If they entered later
The case for the shorter reading rests on the absence of both verses from Papyrus 75, Vaticanus, and other witnesses. The omission includes the earliest Luke papyrus. Some later manuscripts move the verses into Matthew's Gethsemane, which adds uncertainty about their place in Luke. Westcott-Hort double-brackets them as an early, non-Lukan tradition. If the verses entered later, they added an angel's strengthening and a bodily expression of anguish to a prayer scene that already contains Jesus' request concerning the cup and his submission to the Father's will.
The witnesses leave uncertainty about whether these verses belonged to Luke's text or entered it later. Their absence and their movement to another setting bear on that question without resolving every step of their history. The variant changes the scene's account of heavenly help and physical anguish. Jesus' prayer concerning the cup and his submission to the Father's will remain in either reading.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.