Bible Synapse
Did Jesus cry out “Eli, Eli” or “Eloi, Eloi” on the cross?
Hard question · The death and resurrection of Jesus · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Jesus cried “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”; some bystanders said he was calling for Elijah (Elias).
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
Jesus cried “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”, which Mark translates; some bystanders said he was calling Elijah.
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias.
The objection
Matthew gives Jesus’ cry as “Eli, Eli”, the wording of the Hebrew of Psalm 22:1, and Mark as “Eloi, Eloi”, an Aramaic form. Shabir Ally asks which language Jesus used, since both cannot be his exact words.
The answer
Both Gospels report the same cry and translate it in the same way: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The difference is in one word, ‘my God’. The rest is the same in both, and it is not the Hebrew of the psalm. “Sabachthani” comes from the Aramaic verb shebaq, ‘leave, forsake’, where the Hebrew of Psalm 22:1 has ʿazavtani. So neither Gospel quotes the psalm in pure Hebrew, as Gill already noticed.
Nor does “Eli” by itself mean that Jesus spoke Hebrew. It is the form in the Hebrew psalm (ʾeli), but Aramaic used it too: the later Aramaic paraphrase of the Psalms, the Targum, renders this verse ‘Eli, Eli, metul mah shevaqtani’, with the same verb as the Gospels. Mark’s “Eloi” represents the more typically Aramaic ʾelahi. Hebrew and Aramaic are closely related languages, both in use in Judea in Jesus’ day, and the evangelists were writing these sounds in Greek letters, which could not reproduce them exactly. Jesus may have used either form, and each Gospel reports the cry faithfully in a form its readers would know. The bystanders’ mistake, “This man calleth for Elias” (Matthew 27:47), fits the sound ‘Eli’ well, since Elijah’s name in Hebrew is Eliyyahu, though a cry of ‘Eloi’ from a dying man could be misheard in the same way.
Other answers Christians give
Matthew keeps the sound that was heard
Many think Jesus said ‘Eli’, which best explains the bystanders’ mistake, and that Mark, whose Gospel early tradition links with Peter, gives the Aramaic form familiar to him; Ellicott calls Mark’s form the closer reproduction of the Aramaic. Others think Jesus spoke Aramaic throughout and Matthew gave the first word in the form of the Hebrew psalm.
The copies differ
Some important early manuscripts of Matthew read ‘Eloi’ as in Mark, and Westcott and Hort printed that reading in 1881; most read ‘Eli’. The copies of both Gospels also vary in how they spell ‘lama’ and ‘sabachthani’. The copyists, too, found these foreign words hard to write, but the meaning of the cry is not affected.
Still open
Which form Jesus himself used cannot now be known, and scholars are divided.
From the classic commentators
which words are partly Hebrew, and partly Chaldee; the three first are Hebrew, and the last Chaldee, substituted in the room of "Azabthani"; as it was, and still is, in the Chaldee paraphrase of the text in Psalm 22:1, from whence they are takenJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Matthew 27:46 (1746–1763)
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Matthew 27 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub
- C. J. Ellicott (ed.), Commentary for English Readers: Mark 15, at Bible Hub
- Aramaic Targum to Psalms 22:2 (Psalm 22:1 in English Bibles), at Sefaria
- Matthew 27:46 in the Greek editions (Nestle 1904, Westcott and Hort, Textus Receptus), at Bible Hub