In Luke's account of Jesus' Passion, Jesus does not appear to experience any deep anguish over his coming fate. This is clear when doing a comparison of what Jesus does prior to his betrayal and arrest as accounted in Luke 22:39-46; Mark 14:32-42. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus becomes "distressed and agitated" (14:33). Lukes version say nothing like this. In Mark, jesus tells his disciples that his soul is sorrowful unto death (14:34), these words are not found in Luke. In Mark, jesus leaves his disciples and falls to his face on the ground to pray (14:35). In Luke, he falls to his knees. In Mark, Jesus prays fervently three times for God to "remove this cup from me" (14:36, 39, 41). In Luke, he asks only once, and prefaces the prayer with "if you are willing." In comparison with Mark, Luke's Jesus does not appear to be in distress over his coming execution. But consider the famous verses in the middle of the scen, Luke 22:34-44, where an angel from heaven comes to give Jesus much needed support and where his sweat is said to have become "like great drops of blood falling to the ground".

These verses do show Jesus in agony but the question is whether these verses were written by Luke or added later by scribes who felt uncomfortable that Jesus in this version does not seem distraught. In the New Revised Standard Version and other modern bibles, the verses are placed in double brackets. These illustrate that the translators are confident that the verses did not originally form part of Luke's Gospel but were added by scribes at a later time. Among the reasons is that these verses are absent from the oldest and best manuscripts of the New Testament.

It's important to note that we no longer have the origin New Testament manuscripts, but copies of copies centuries after the originals were lost.

Without these verses, Jesus is calm and in control and therefore facing his fate with confidence.

(Adopted from Bart D. Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.)

See Peculiarities Of The Gospels