Luke 22:43-44 and the Mormon Jesus: Protestant Past, KJV-Only Present

Abstract

Abstract Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the Lukan agony in the garden fits with Anglophone Protestant commentaries that were popular during his day. In the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C), the Lukan sweat-like-blood simile is understood as if literal, and Jesus atones in Gethsemane. This was standard fare in exegesis in England and America in the late 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s. What Smith did was re-cast common interpretation as prophetic and dominical while probably defending the verses, known to be absent from the other Gospels and sometimes suspected to be an interpolation into Luke. On the golden plates of the Book of Mormon, he had an ancient Amerindian prophet-king named Benjamin predict Jesus’ hemorrhage more than a hundred years in advance, and he had none other than the risen Christ verify it in a direct revelation in D&C 19. These references to Luke 22:43–44 in Smith’s extra-biblical writings have created a further apologetic imperative to defend his defense of the Bible, one reason for the LDS Church’s King James Version onlyism.