This is one of those Music Boxes where I introduce two seemingly unrelated ideas and then weave them together. So I ask your indulgence…
Thread 1: When working with texts from antiquity, we have the problem that we don’t have the original manuscript in Plato’s or St. Luke’s handwriting. What we have are copies of copies, generally centuries after the author. So, to do a translation (for example), one must settle on a ‘best informed guess’ about the author’s original text. That field of study is known as ‘textual criticism’. The idea of ‘criticism’ here is not to find fault, but to engage our best ‘critical thinking’ — our very best scholarship — to weave together the surviving ancient manuscripts to reconstruct the original text. With regard to the New Testament, the situation isn’t as dire as one might think: we have hundreds of manuscripts from the first few centuries alone (ranging in length from a single verse to substantial portions of the New Testament) mostly differing in minor details like how to spell names (Maria? Mariam?). Meanwhile, try this on yourself: would you be willing to hand copy the New Testament so your children could have a copy for themselves? What kind of commitment on your part would that take? As you do the copy, what types of mistakes might you innocently make? What changes might you be inclined to make to more deeply inspire your children as you thought best?
Thread 2: Down through the ages poets have come up with various structures into which to pour their creative efforts. Free verse is all well and good, but there has ever been an interest by poets in how to pour their creativity into disciplined structures. Shakespeare sonnets have a very strict structure. So do limericks, and Japanese ‘haiku’ — five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Is the message of a haiku poem destroyed if the last line is six instead of five syllables long? Of course not! Nevertheless, the history of the arts is full of examples of creative geniuses who deliberately constrained themselves within boxes/limitations. Oddly enough, submitting oneself to that sort of discipline/limitation seems to unleash breathtaking creative accomplishment. (See Shakespeare, or Bach.)
In the ancient world, a popular poetic structure was “chiasm” (KhEE-ah-zim). Here’s the idea:
A (an “A” idea)
B (a “B” idea)
C (THE MAIN IDEA IN THE MIDDLE)
B’ (the “B” idea with some variation or elaboration)
A’ (the “A” idea with some variation or elaboration)
In other words, a nested structure with the point of the poem in the middle. The example above has three levels of nesting, but an ancient world chiastic poem could have from two to a great many levels of nesting.
With all this in mind, let’s consider Luke 22: 40ff:
40Now having come upon the place he said to them: Be praying not to enter into trial. 41 And he withdrew from them [about a] stone’s throw and having knelt he was praying, 42 saying: Father, if you intend [it], take this cup from me, nevertheless let not my will but yours come to pass. [43 Now there appeared to him [an] angel from heaven strengthening him. 44 And becoming more fervently in agony he was praying; and his sweat became as blood clots falling upon the ground.] 45 And having stood up from his praying, having come to the disciples he found them having fallen asleep from grief, 46 and he said to them: Why do you sleep? Having stood up be praying, in order that you not enter into [the] test.
The evidence from textual criticism (and many modern translations of the New Testament indicate this), is that it is highly likely verses 43 and 44 (about the supporting angel, and Jesus sweating like blood) were added later. If we set those verses aside, we end up with a chiastic structure:
A. Jesus admonishes the disciples to pray
B. Jesus prays
Middle idea. “Not my will but Yours be done.”
B. Jesus concludes his prayer (awake)
A. The disciples were asleep, and didn’t pray
One might think that the poetic structure in this passage is just coincidence. Perhaps. But the Bible is riddled with these sorts of chiastic structures: some which are clearly poetry, others prose that just seems to use this pattern anyway.
In the subsequent narrative, we see that Jesus reacts to the Roman soldiers calmly and with compassion: a panicky disciple cuts off a soldier’s ear, calm Jesus heals it. for example. The message is clear: prayer and submission to the Father’s will makes all the difference.