Luke 23:34

I'm beginning a series this week on the seven sayings of Jesus while on the cross. The first one is Luke 23:34, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" [NKJV]. In the Holman Christian Standard Bible the verse is bracketed, showing that there is some doubt about its authenticity. The text is bracketed in UBS4 with an "A" rating, meaning the committee believes it likely is not original to Luke.

Both p75 and B omit the verse, as do a few other later Alexandrian and Western mss. Aleph includes the verse as does A C L Byz and some Syriac. When you get down to it, the external evidence is split.

What are the internal factors? Bock summarizes them well [1868].

· The parallel prayer of Stephen in Acts 7:60 argues for inclusion, since Luke frequently notes parallelism between events. Some have argued that the text was modeled on Acts but the other way around seems more likely.
· The absence of a parallel in the other Gospels speaks of inclusion here. There is no good reason to explain why a copyist would add such a remark.
· The motif of ignorance is common in Acts [3:17; 13:27; 17:30] and finds endorsement here [Epps].
· It is easier to explain the prayer's omission than inclusion. A scribe could have considered the remarks too forgiving of the Jews [R. Brown] or if he regarded the prayer as unanswered in light of A.D. 70 [Morris; Jerome, Letter 120.8.2 says it delayed the judgment].
· Each major subunit of Luke's crucifixion narrative contains a saying. If the prayer is omitted, then a saying is lacking from this subunit [23:28-31, 43, 46 Marshall, 868].

While certainly not overwhelming, the internal evidence suggests that the text is original with Luke [Ernst, Grundmann, Tiede, Ellis, Bock, Morris, Stein, Marshall (although he is a bit hesitant). As mentioned above the text is bracketed in UBS4 and given an "A" rating. The text is bracketed in WH as well.

Brown has a detailed summary of the discussion, including four options of how the prayer arose: (1) spoken by Jesus and preserved by Luke, (2) spoken by Jesus and inserted early on into Luke, (3) formulated by Luke, and (4) formulated after Luke. Bock prefers option 1, Brown option 3, and Metzger option 2.

Prudent text criticism takes both external and internal evidence into account. For Luke 23:34 it is the internal evidence that is the most persuasive.