Expert: Fr. Michael - 10/1/2009

Question
Father, while Jesus was suffering in the garden he told the 3 disciples to watch Him but He found them sleeping... so how do they know what happened to put in Scripture if they were sleeping?

Answer
This is a good example why "translations" from the original languages are indeed blunt instruments for understanding the meaning of Scripture.  In Mark 14:37, the Greek verb addressed to Peter is in the singular, implying that on this occasion it was only Peter asleep.  In the rather literal Douay-Rheims version, this is translated:  "Sleepest thou?"  "Thou" is the formal second-person-singular pronoun in English.  Unfortunately, more modern English lost this distinction and uses "you" without distinction to refer not only to the plural number, as it originally did, but also to the singular number.  Thus, it is implied in this passage that there were other witnesses that formed the Apostolic Tradition on this matter, which came into the Evangelists.