Luke 23:34: Why Some Manuscripts Omit Jesus’s Prayer of Forgiveness

“Father, forgive them.” For many readers, Jesus’s prayer from the cross is the clearest expression of his teaching about enemies. A footnote beneath Luke 23:34 can therefore be startling: some ancient manuscripts omit these words. The note concerns the prayer in the first part of the verse, conventionally called 23:34a, rather than everything numbered verse 34.

The evidence poses two different questions. Did Luke include the saying when he composed his Gospel? And how early did Christians know it? An ancient saying can have a complicated history within a particular book.

A divided manuscript record

Papyrus 75 and the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus lack the prayer. Codex Bezae’s original text also omits it, while other Greek manuscripts and early versions include it. Codex Sinaiticus preserves the prayer along with correction marks, making its history more complicated than a simple yes-or-no entry in a list. Counting manuscripts alone cannot settle the issue: critics also consider their relationships and the history of individual readings.

Dates need similar care. P75 has traditionally been assigned to around the late second or early third century, although its dating has been debated. Its importance does not turn a particular date into a precise timestamp for the origin of the omission.

Diego Velázquez, Christ Crucified, c. 1632 · Museo del Prado, Madrid · Public Domain. Image record.

What the double brackets mean

The Nestle-Aland 28th edition prints the prayer inside double square brackets. This is an editorial judgment that the words were not part of the initial text, coupled with a decision to retain an important ancient passage. It is stronger than the uncertainty signaled by ordinary square brackets. Readers can disagree with the judgment, but should first understand what the symbol communicates.

Two broad explanations remain under discussion. The saying may have entered Luke from an early tradition, perhaps encouraged by its fit with Luke’s portrayal of Jesus. Alternatively, it may have been removed from a text that originally contained it. Advocates of deletion have considered whether hostility toward Jews made a prayer understood as seeking their forgiveness uncomfortable for some copyists. That is a proposed explanation of transmission, not a documented confession by a scribe. The identity of “them” is itself an interpretive question; the prayer should not become a pretext for blaming Jews collectively for Jesus’s death.

Nathan Eubank’s article “A Disconcerting Prayer” directly addresses the originality of this verse. It belongs beside the manuscript evidence when exploring the debate, rather than treating the critical edition’s punctuation as the final word of every scholar.

Reading and preaching with the footnote

The prayer resonates with Jesus’s teaching to pray for those who mistreat his followers in Luke 6:28 and with Stephen’s dying prayer in Acts 7:60. Those connections explain its place in Christian reading, but thematic consistency alone cannot prove who first wrote it into Luke.

A preacher can explain both its importance and its textual status without forcing a choice between silence and certainty. A manuscript variant is evidence of a real transmission history. It does not by itself establish either a conspiracy to corrupt Scripture or the motives of every ancient copyist.

Sources and further reading

• Nathan Eubank, “A Disconcerting Prayer: On the Originality of Luke 23:34a”, Journal of Biblical Literature 129.3 (2010): 521–536.
• David Trobisch, A User’s Guide to the Nestle-Aland 28 Greek New Testament, on the edition’s bracket conventions.
• Codex Sinaiticus Project, manuscript images and transcription.

Explore original-language and historical context for sermon preparation at Didymus Lab.

Comments

Loading comments…

Leave a comment

Comments are reviewed before being published. Only your name and comment are stored — no personal data collected.

Name (required)Write a comment (max 1,000 characters)

Submit comment