According to the Gospel of Luke, while hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for the people participating in his execution.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

Or did he?

This prayer—which appears only in the Third Gospel—is absent from some important Greek manuscripts of Luke. Anyone who has studied the New Testament at a serious level understands that our English versions are translated from Greek, and that the Greek text used by translators is itself edited from the thousands of Greek manuscripts that preserve portions of the New Testament. But all of these manuscripts differ from each other in some ways, often very small but sometimes significant. These differences are called textual variants, passages in which the texts vary. So, again, with regard to Luke 23:34, some Greek manuscripts contain the prayer and others don’t; here there is a textual variant.

This is not one of the small differences among the manuscripts but one of major importance. The New Testament scholar Dirk Jongkind has said that this “may be the single most important textual variant in the Greek New Testament” (Introduction, p. 85). In a way, that statement shows how insignificant most textual variants are. Even if a variant is longer than this one, contains more words, it does not really affect Christian theology. Does this variant affect Christian theology? Maybe somewhat. Our understanding of Jesus is affected somewhat by whether he prayed for the people who were executing him while they were executing him. We might expect that Jesus would do that kind of thing, especially in light of his own teaching, such as Luke 6:28, where he told his followers to “pray for them which despitefully use you.” Praying for his enemies from the cross seems like something Jesus might do, but it would be nice to have the explicit statement confirming it.

So did he say it? Unfortunately, the evidence is rather difficult to parse, but most scholars say no. Most scholars consider this prayer a later addition to the Third Gospel, not something that the Gospel writer included but something a scribe inserted later, in the second century. It couldn’t have been added later than the second century, for Irenaeus of Lyon, at the end of the second century, already knows about it (though he doesn’t say explicitly that it’s found in Luke’s Gospel).

Now, by the fact that the Lord said on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, Christ’s long-suffering, patience, compassion, and goodness are shown forth, inasmuch as He Himself who suffered also excused those who had treated Him wickedly. For the Word of God who told us, love your enemies and pray for those who hate you, did just that on the cross, loving the human race so much that He prayed even for those who put Him to death. (Against Heresies 3.18.5; trans. Unger, p. 90)

Many scholars hold the view that the prayer was added in the second century, but not all. There are good reasons for considering the prayer a genuine part of Luke’s original composition. This post surveys the evidence.

The easiest place to examine the evidence is in a recent edition of the Greek New Testament. The edition I am going to use here is the United Bible Socities’ edition (UBS), and the reason I am using this edition is because of an interesting feature unique to it. The UBS edition has a ranking system for the level of confidence of the modern editors. That is, it tells us how confident the editors are that they got the right answer, that they figured out which reading among the manuscripts is the better reading, which variant is right. The ranking system is quadripartite, A being the highest (very confident), and D the lowest (not at all confident), and B and C in the middle.

Here is the relevant page from the UBS fourth edition. There is a fifth edition (2014), which presents the exact same evidence.

The first half of the page presents a portion of the New Testament text, and the bottom part of the page displays the critical apparatus. It’s the apparatus that is the real star of the show here, detailing which manuscripts say what. But before we get to the apparatus, notice that in the top half of the page this edition puts double brackets around the prayer of Jesus at Luke 23:34.

Now to the apparatus. Here’s an image of what the apparatus says about this variant.

Note that the very first thing said, after the verse number (34), is an A in curly brackets. That is the confidence ranking. As the introduction to this edition tells us: “The letter A indicates that the text is certain.” We have an A here, so the editors are confident that they got the right answer here. But what is the answer that they decided upon?

The next portion of the apparatus says: “omit verse 34a.” That’s the answer. The editors are completely confident that Luke did not include this prayer from Jesus in his Gospel; it must have been added later by a scribe—according to these editors.

Next, there are a few Greek words, just giving the beginning and ending of the variant unit. And then there is the citation of Greek manuscripts. Here are the Greek manuscripts that omit the prayer: P75 א B D* W Θ 070 579 597* 1241. All of these numbers and letters refer to particular Greek manuscripts. They are listed more-or-less in order of age, so P75 is the earliest (papyrus 75, early third century), and 1241 is something like the latest (12th cent.). After the number 1241 in the apparatus, there are a few more items listed that omit Jesus’ prayer: ita, d syrs copsa, bo pt. These aren’t numbers, so they aren’t Greek manuscripts. Instead, they are ancient translations: it = itala (i.e., an early Latin translation), syr = Syriac, cop = Coptic.

The next thing in the apparatus is a double slash mark introducing the next group of manuscripts, those which “include verse 34a.” Here are the manuscripts that do contain the prayer of Jesus, and the first one listed (after the parentheses) is א. This symbol is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, and it refers to a famous Greek manuscript called Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century). You’ll notice that there is an asterisk by א, and then also a 2. The asterisk refers to the original reading of this manuscript, so it is telling us that this manuscript originally contained the prayer of Jesus. The 2 refers to a corrector, a later scribe who changed the manuscript.

Let me explain: these ancient manuscripts were often used for centuries, and the users would sometimes write in the manuscript. I do the same thing with my Bible, sometimes writing in the margin, sometimes even crossing out something in the text and marking down what I think is a better translation. These scribes using the manuscripts sometimes did that kind of thing. The apparatus also presents the evidence of these later users of the manuscript.

The 2 by א refers to the “second corrector” of Sinaiticus; this second corrector also thought the prayer should be included. But why would we know that, since the original text of Sinaiticus already had the prayer? Because someone had tried to remove the prayer from Sinaiticus. If you look in the apparatus back on the manuscripts that “omit verse 34a,” you’ll see that the second manuscript listed is א with a 1 beside it, the first corrector. The apparatus is telling us that א originally contained the prayer, and then the first corrector tried to delete it, and then a second corrector reinserted it.

Or something like that. Actually, there was no erasing and insertion. Here is Codex Sinaiticus with the prayer of Jesus from the cross.

The beginning of the variant is near top left, where you see the Greek letters ΟΔ. You can see that Sinaiticus includes the prayer. But the manuscript also preserves the attempt to delete it. Right beside that ΟΔ, to the top left of the Ο, there is a faint mark that looks like a C or maybe like a parenthesis. This is a deletion sign or a cancellation mark. The original scribe included the prayer, and then a later scribe (the first corrector) added these deletion signs to signal to users of the manuscript that there was a textual problem with this passage. The corrector added these deletion signs at the beginning and end of each line of text that he wanted to warn readers about. The image below highlights these deletion signs.

The deletion signs are very faint, apparently because (and here I am guessing, based on the apparatus) a later scribe (the second corrector) either tried to erase the marks or, maybe, when he was re-inking the manuscript he did not re-ink the deletion signs.

If you look closely at the apparatus, you’ll see that the number of manuscripts that include Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34 is way more than the number of manuscripts that omit it. So why are scholars so convinced that it is not original? It’s because of which manuscripts omit it. The papyrus manuscript #75 (early third century) is very early, and so is B, which is another very famous manuscript called Codex Vaticanus (fourth century). Other early manuscripts that omit the prayer:

* D = Codex Bezae = 05 (fifth century)

* W = Codex Washingtonianus = 032 (fifth century)

* Θ = Codex Koridethi = 038 (ninth century)

* 070 (sixth century)

The other manuscripts listed in the apparatus (579 597 1241) are all in the second millennium.

Let’s take a look at some of these manuscripts that omit the prayer. The following image is P75, and the arrow shows you where the prayer would go if it were there, but it’s not.

Next, we have Codex Vaticanus, and again the arrow shows where the missing prayer would go.

This next image is more interesting. Codex Bezae does contain the prayer, but only in the lower margin, added by a later scribe. The red arrow in the image below shows where the prayer would go if it were included in the text of the Gospel, and the blue arrow shows the addition of the prayer in the lower margin of the manuscript. The addition of the prayer can be dated to the sixth century (see Gurry, p. 202 n. 40, relying on Parker, pp. 41–43).

By the way, this manuscript, Codex Bezae, is a bilingual manuscript, Greek and Latin on facing pages. Only the Greek has the prayer added. The Latin is also missing the prayer in the text of the Gospel, and there is no scribal correction on the Latin side.

The last image we’ll look at is from manuscript 597, a 13th-century Gospels manuscript now in Venice. If you look in the apparatus, you’ll see that 597 has an asterisk by it, meaning that the original text omits the prayer, but the asterisk also tells you that there must be a later scribal change, and this image below shows what happened.

A later scribe added the prayer in the margin, and then signaled with a symbol where the prayer should be inserted into the text of the Gospel.

When scholars (textual critics) judge among competing variants, they pay a lot of attention to the Greek manuscripts, as we have done above, but they also pay attention to other things. One thing to point out is that the prayer of Jesus is very similar to the prayer of Stephen, the martyr stoned in Acts 7.

And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60)

Acts is part two of the 2-vol. work by Luke. One might wonder whether Luke would want to represent Jesus and Stephen both praying for their persecutors, or whether a later scribe is the one who made the connection by inserting the prayer into the mouth of Jesus on the cross. (By the way, there is no textual problem for Stephen’s prayer.)

Let’s also note that this textual variant cannot be explained as an accident. Very many textual variants are accidents: a scribe messed up because he wasn’t paying attention. But this textual variant cannot be explained that way. Either a scribe intentionally inserted this prayer into the text of Luke (if the prayer is not original), or a scribe intentionally omitted it (if the prayer is original). In any case, it wasn’t an accident.

So, a basic question is: would a scribe be more likely to take the prayer out or to put the prayer in?

This is the question that Bruce Metzger asked three decades ago when discussing this variant in his important work A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2d ed., 1994).

The absence of these words from such early and diverse witnesses [he lists the manuscripts] is most impressive and can scarcely be explained as a deliberate excision by copyists who, considering the fall of Jerusalem to be proof that God had not forgiven the Jews, could not allow it to appear that the prayer of Jesus had remained unanswered. At the same time, the logion, though probably not a part of the original Gospel of Luke, bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin, and was retained, within double square brackets, in its traditional place where it had been incorporated by unknown copyists relatively early in the transmission of the Third Gospel. (p. 154)

Notice that Metzger suggests that the prayer is not original to Luke but it is original to Jesus, that is, it “bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin.” Metzger thinks Jesus said the prayer, and Christians transmitted the prayer orally, and then it was finally inserted into Luke’s Gospel (but not by Luke).

The more recent textual commentary by Hugh Houghton (2025) updates the discussion.

The first half of this verse is present in most Greek manuscripts but missing from many of the earliest witnesses [he lists them] and is indicated with asterisks in Codex Basiliensis (07 …). A full list of the forms it takes in Greek continuous-text manuscripts is given in TuT Luke (TS49). Although a similar sentiment is expressed by Stephen in Acts 7:60, the wording is entirely different so assimilation is unlikely. The SBLGNT and THGNT consider the longer text to be original, but in the absence of any obvious reason for omission or deletion, the UBS4 committee decided it was an early tradition which was incorporated at an early point into the Lukan crucifixion narrative. (pp. 182–83)

Ah, that’s interesting, about Codex Basiliensis. Let’s take a look at those asterisks in this eighth-century manuscript of the Gospels now in Basel. Actually, I see only one asterisk, in the left margin in the image below.

Notice also that Houghton alerts us to the fact that the last time the evidence for this variant was evaluated was for the fourth edition of the UBS text.

Houghton says there’s no good reason for the prayer, if original, to have been removed by later scribes. But some suggestions have been made. Could early Christians have taken the prayer out of Luke’s Gospel because they were being antisemitic and they didn’t like having their Scripture offer forgiveness to the Jews from Jesus himself—and even while the Jews were murdering him no less? (I am speaking here as one of these second century Christians; I myself do not think it is correct to say that “the Jews were murdering” Jesus without caveat.) This is Ehrman’s argument (pp. 190–93), who regards the prayer as original to Luke and omitted by antisemitic Christian scribes. Ehrman is following here a distinguished stream of scholars, such as Adolf von Harnack, B. H. Streeter, J. Rendel Harris, and Eldon Epp. (For specific citations, see the article by Eubank.) An extensive argument along these lines is presented by Nathan Eubank in his 2010 JBL article, who adds to the discussion by exploring the interpretation of the prayer in early Christianity.

We may, therefore, conclude that Harnack and others who suggested that the prayer was omitted for anti-Jewish reasons were on the right track. Note, however, that Early Christian consternation with Luke 23:34a stemmed not from anti-Judaism alone but also from the fact that Jesus’ prayer seemed to have gone unanswered [because of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70], and from a sense that the Jews had been punished unjustly [because they acted in ignorance]. The discomfort with the prayer explains why the external evidence for both readings is early and widespread; in all likelihood, Luke 23:34a was omitted fairly early, possibly by multiple scribes, while other scribes corrupted the text by changing ἄφες [“forgive”] to συγχώρησον [“yield to”]. (Eubank, p. 536)

On the other hand, Gurry (pp. 202–5) is right that usually Christians dealt with problematic texts of the Bible through interpretation (commentary) rather than changing the text. But in this case, somebody—or multiple somebodies—intentionally changed the text one way or the other, and Eubank’s argument (along with his predecessors) makes it more likely that some scribes removed the prayer rather than added it.

Moreover, the prayer does fit the Lukan theme that the Jewish leaders acted from ignorance, they knew not what they did.

And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. (Acts 3:17)

For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. (Acts 13:27)

I myself accept the prayer as original to Luke’s Gospel—based on its early attestation in Irenaeus and in manuscripts, and the plausible case that can be made for its intentional omission based on anti-Judaism. At least, I find this explanation more probable than any explanation for the addition of the prayer to a Gospel that lacked it.

One final note here. The next edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, the sixth edition, has just been published. I have not yet seen it, but I understand that there has been a significant change made in this updated edition in relation to Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34. The confidence rank for omitting prayer has been downgraded from A to B. Houghton’s textual commentary, published months ago, already alerted us to this change.

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