What are the words given by Matthew and Mark?
The first words of the 22d Psalm. In the words of Farrar, “He borrowed from David’s utter agony the expression of his own.”
Is it probable that a man in the agonies of a terrible death would devote his expiring breath to a recital of Hebrew poetry? When even the dying words of this Christ are borrowed, is it not evident that the whole story of his life is fabulous?
The accounts of the crucifixion given by the Evangelists are to a large extent reproductions of the 22d Psalm, even to the language itself, the poetical allusions of the psalmist being transformed into alleged historical facts. The devout Christian who is familiar with this Passion Psalm sees in the Evangelists’ account of the crucifixion a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. But the critic sees merely the borrowed embellishments of a legend.
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What expression did his words, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” provoke?
Matthew: “Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias” ([xxvii, 47]).
This is additional proof of Matthew’s ignorance of Hebrew. He supposes a similarity of sound between the two words, whereas they were utterly unlike in pronunciation. Eli was pronounced Ali (long a), while Elias was pronounced Eleeyahu. But even had they been so much alike in sound that one might have been mistaken for the other, as Matthew supposes, the alleged incident is disproved by the fact that the Jews were not allowed to attend the execution, while to the Romans the words were meaningless.