In a special discussion of the subject by Harnack, that WTiter maintains that the stamp of Lk. is clearly manifest on the verses in question, and it is to be remembered that it is a very remarkable thin;; that the only record of this event should occur in the Gospel attributed to the man whom tradition asserts to ha\e been a physician, and whose own language supports the statement. This remarkable phenomenon is the very thing we should expect a physician to take special pains carefully to record. Harnack in the same discussion draws attention to the passage in .In ]'i27:i0_ which he regards as that Evangelist's account of the same incident. It is remarkable that while the ]iassage in Lk. speaks of an angel succouring .lesus, the jiassage in the Fourth Gospel tells of a voice from heaven that answered His prayer, which \'oice was regarded by some of the people as that of an angel. In Harnack's opinion the Fourth Gospel draws its material for the Passion narrative from the Synoptics, and here he thinks we have another version of the storv con-
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tained in Luke. Harnack also reminds us that there are two points in the Lukan stor.y that would offend orthodox readers, first, the mention of an angel as strengthening our Lord, which might be a strong support to those who exaggerated the im- portance of angel ministry ; and, second, the fact that the agony was the result of an inward struggle, which might be taken as pointing to too great human weakness in our Lord's Person to be consonant with the full maintenance of His Divine nature.
3. There has been much discussion as to whether such a thing as a bloody sweat is a possibility, and here we come into the realm of medical evidence. Much has been written on the matter, both in older days and up to the present time ; a great deal of it, one must admit, being irrelevant. The less criti- cal medical writers of an earlier time were content to quote Galen as their authority for the state- ment that sometimes ' the pores are so vastly dilated by a copious and fervent spirit, that even blood issues through them and constitutes a bloody sweat' (see R. Mead, Medical Works, 1762, ch. 13). The most recent medical conclusion on the subject seems to be that it is physically possible for blood to exude through the sweat glands, as the conti- guity of the blood vessels and these glands is so close and oftentimes the walls that divide them are so extremely thin.* It may thus be granted that such an event as the ordinary text describes was a possibility, though nothing very closely allied to it has ever been observed, and one would naturally manifest great caution in accepting the historicity of it, in view of all that has already been said about the passage.
Some writers have understood the phrase ' drops of blood' as a purely figurative one, being simply expressive of the intense agony undergone by the sufferer, and not in any sense to be taken either literally or as even suggesting that the perspira- tion was itself so heavy as to suggest the dripping of blood.
There remains one interesting instance of the use of the verb ' sweat ' in a passage of the early Christian writing known as the Didache, where in ch. 1 we read, ' Let thine alms sweat into thine hands until thou shalt have learned to whom to give. ' The words, indeed, are not actually quoted as Christ's, but there can be little question that the author regarded them as a traditional saying of the Lord.
Literature. — The Comm. on the passage, esp. Plummer, ad loc, and the additional note on p. 544 ; Holtzmann in the Hdcom.; the Expos. Gr. Test. ; WH, 'Notes on Select Readings,' pp. 64-67; Hastings' DB, art. 'Medicine'; Encyc. Bihl., art. ' Sweat(Bloody),' col. 4824, also ' Cross, 'par. 5, col. 959; Harnack's discussion in Sitzungsher. der Berl. Akad. der Wissensch. 1901 ; Quain's Diet, of Medicine (ed. 1902, Murray), ' Sudoriparous Glands (Diseases of)' ; R. Mead, Medical Works, 1762, p. 630; W. Stroud, A 'Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, 1847 ; Allrjemeine Ztschr. fur Psychiatric, 1863, xx. 51 ; on the case of Louise Lateau see Macmillan's Mag. 1871, and Lancet, 1871, 1, 543 ; Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1897, ix. 388 ff. ; T. M. Anderson, Contributions to Clinical Medicine, 1898, p. 43 ; Besnier et Jacquet, La pratique dermatologique, vol. iv. 1904, pp. 420-424 ; Hobart, Medical Language of St. Luke, 79 ff. ; Harnack, Luke the Physician [Eng. tr.], 194 n. G. CURRIE MARTIN.
SWINE.— See Animals in vol. i. p. 64>.
SWORD. — In Lk 2^^ and in some passages in the Apocalypse the word for 'sword' is po/j.<pala ; else- where in the NT it is /jLaxaipa. The former denoted a weapon used by barbarous nations, especially the Thracians (Livy, xxxi. 39 : ' Thracas quoque romphfese ingentis et ipsse longitudinis, inter objectos undique ramos impediebant'). It thus appears to have been rather a lance or javelin than a sword, and so may reflect the Hebrew romah. In the Syr. of Lk 2=*^ the word used is romhn, and the phrase is probably a reminiscence of Ps 37'* (LXX). The word /ndxai-pa. may denote nothing