Luke 9:55-56, “you know not what spirit you are of”
Modern Bibles omit the saying because they follow the shorter reading, which records Jesus' rebuke; the longer reading adds his words about the disciples' spirit.
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.
“The base text reads (nothing). The copies also carry καὶ εἶπεν, οὐκ οἰδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς. [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The saying about what spirit you are of is a later addition supplying the content of the rebuke. The early copies uniformly lack it.”
“The base text reads αὐτοῖς. The copies also carry αὐτοῖς, καὶ εἶπεν, Οὐκ οἰδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Early support across three classes and the explanatory expansion strongly favor the default.”
The APB committee kept the shorter reading at Luke 9:55. Its textual decision states: “The saying about what spirit you are of is a later addition supplying the content of the rebuke.” GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) served as the first translator, and Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) served as the second translator. The committee's printed text reads: “Then he turned and rebuked them.” The following verse records their travel toward another village.
The argument for each reading
If the rebuke was silent
The shorter reading records Jesus turning and rebuking James and John without giving his words. Westcott-Hort ends the rebuke there, and the apparatus places WH, Treg, and NA28 on that side of the difference. This reading leaves a complete sequence: the disciples propose fire from heaven, Jesus rebukes them, and they travel toward another village.
The case for this form rests on the early support described in the APB's textual decision and on the possibility that the longer saying supplies an explanation of the rebuke. The shorter wording leaves the content of Jesus' speech unstated; it does not establish that he said nothing.
If the saying belongs
The longer reading gives words to Jesus' rebuke. Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform includes the saying about the disciples' spirit, and its witness description identifies this as the reading of the Byzantine tradition. That tradition also carries the accompanying saying about the Son of Man in verse 56.
The case for retaining the saying rests on its place in that tradition and its direct connection to the disciples' request for fire from heaven. It makes Jesus' response more explicit by questioning their understanding of their own spirit. Its fit within the scene helps explain its significance, though that fit alone cannot establish whether it belonged to the earlier wording.
The uncertainty concerns whether the saying preserves the words of the rebuke or was added to explain it. The shorter reading does not reveal exactly what Jesus said. Both forms retain his rebuke of James and John after their proposal to call down fire. His rejection of that proposal therefore remains part of the scene under 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.