As is generally
well-known to the careful reader of the New Testament, Jesus’ cry of dereliction
from the cross, recorded in both Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, reads slightly
differently. The spelling of “my God” is “Eli” in Matthew (which represents
Hebrew) and “Eloi” in Mark (which represents Aramaic). Both sayings are
transliterated, which is to say, they are presented in our English versions
following the phonetic articulation of the saying in the ancient languages, and
indeed, what one sees in English follows the actual Greek text itself, where
the saying, though it is not Greek, is transliterated into Greek letters
phonetically but with these different spellings respectively. The question,
then, is this: did Jesus speak these words in Hebrew (as in Matthew) or in
Aramaic (as in Mark)?
It has usually
been suggested that Mark is the more accurate, since he has several other
sayings of Jesus in his gospel that are Aramaic transliterations into Greek
letters (e.g., Mk. 5:41, 7:34). In fact, this feature of Mark’s Gospel becomes
part of the case for asserting that Jesus was probably a native Aramaic
speaker. The earliest tradition from Papias (early 2nd century) is
that Mark’s gospel preserves the memories of Jesus from Simon Peter, and as
such, is the one most likely to preserve Jesus’ verbatim words. We see this
also in Jesus’ familial address to God as Abba (Mk. 14:36), where Jesus
uses the Aramaic word for Father, a tradition that eventually carried over even
into the early Greek-speaking congregations of St. Paul (cf. Ro. 8:15; Ga.
4:6). In any case, it is common for commentators to suggest that Mark preserves
the actual words of Jesus in Aramaic, while Matthew provides the voice of
Jesus, but has recast the words into Hebrew. Here, I’ll offer an alternative suggestion
that goes against this scholarly flow.
While I have no
doubt that Jesus spoke Aramaic, there are two points in this scene of the cross
that make me think that perhaps on this occasion it is Mark who has recast
Jesus’ saying into Aramaic and Matthew who records the actual words of Jesus in
Hebrew. The first concerns the confusion on the part of the listeners that
Jesus' words "my God" may have been the name Elijah. The Hebrew “Eli”,
meaning “my God”, is virtually identical with the short form of the name Elijah,
the one easily mistaken for the other. However, this is NOT the case between
the Aramaic “Eloi”, where the long “o” sound in the possessive form is easily
distinguished from the name Elijah. The second point concerns Jesus’
familiarity with the Hebrew text of Psalm 22:1, which is the ancient prayer
from which his words were drawn. If Jesus were in the habit of
"praying" phrases from the Psalms, which on this occasion is clear
enough, it seems to me more likely that he would have done so from the Hebrew
text of the Psalm rather than from an Aramaic translation or a Targum. While
Targums were used in the synagogue service readings, they were not read in
isolation. Rather, they were read alongside the Hebrew text,
usually alternating sections at a time, first Hebrew, then
Aramaic, for the benefit of those who might have had trouble understanding
Hebrew. Hence, Jesus, who was a regular synagogue attender from his youth (Lk.
4:16), would certainly have been familiar with the Hebrew text of Psalm 22:1,
even if he was a native speaker of Aramaic. In my opinion, it seems more likely
that he would have used phrases in his prayers from the original Hebrew text rather than a
translated one.
Why, then, would
Mark have recast Jesus’ use of these Hebrew words into Aramaic? That is a
question about which one can only speculate, but one possible answer is that inasmuch
as Aramaic was perceived to be a mystical language, particularly by
Greek-speakers, Mark may have opted for the drama of recasting Jesus’ prayer
into a language with overtones of mystery. Alternatively, perhaps Mark may have
changed the saying from Hebrew to Aramaic purely for stylistic purposes to
match the other Aramaic sayings in his gospel. What seems abundantly clear,
however, is that Jesus said these words in either Hebrew or Aramaic, but hardly
in both. My suggestion is that he did so from the ancient Hebrew text of Psalm
22:1, using the actual Hebrew words of this ancient prayer of a man abandoned
by God. And, of course, the more important theological point is that in doing
so, he identified himself in his condescension with the lowest despair any
human could ever experience—the sense that God had forsaken him.