Reflections on the Seven Words of Jesus from the Cross: 1 Father, forgive...

[[Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’]]* And they cast lots to divide his clothing. Luke 23.34 (www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)

*Footnotes: Other ancient authorities lack this sentence.

In most versions of the Bible these words are printed in brackets because, as the footnote in the New Revised Standard Version says, ‘Other ancient authorities lack this sentence.’ In fact, this is not quite true. The most ancient - and the most reliable - manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel, those containing the least number of mistakes and alterations by the scribes who copied them, do not include these words of Jesus from the cross.

The most likely explanation for this surprising omission is that they were only added to the story after the earliest manuscript copies were made. In Acts 7.60 the first Chrisian martyr, Stephen, says something very similar when he’s being stoned, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ He’s speaking to Jesus and it would be unthinkable that he could be more forgiving than Jesus himself, and very unlikely that Stephen would ask Jesus to do something for which he wasn’t already renowned. Perhaps the story that Jesus forgave his own persecutors while they were nailing him to the cross stems from the need for Jesus to be the example that Stephen and many others have followed. Or perhaps this is one of the sayings of Jesus which had survived in the tradition but hadn’t yet been recorded in any of our Gospels.

Forgiveness is so central to the teaching of Jesus that it is completely in character that he forgave the soldiers as they crucified him. He told us to forgive other people as often as it takes, (Matthew 18.22).

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