Jesus Taught in Greek - 2) Eli, Eli, lama

The purpose of this series of articles is to show that Jesus taught in Greek, and that the words we have today are what he truly said. It argues against the claim that the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic and translated into Greek. By claiming our words are a translation, people are able to deny or make claims about what Jesus and the Gospel writers really meant, regardless of the words we have today. This supposed translation from Aramaic becomes another point at which the words were corrupted or changed. Complicated ideas involving the “original” Aramaic that most people cannot discuss are used to support these claims. My approach is to use the surviving words themselves to debunk such claims.

If we search the Internet on “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” we see many articles that start by assuring us that Jesus and the people of his area spoke Aramaic, even giving the usual bogus evidence such as a quote from Josephus (more about that “evidence’ in a future article). Several of these articles spend paragraphs on this topic before discussing the actual phrase. Why? Because any research into this phrase makes that claim less believable. Therefore, the claims must be reinforced before going into any facts about the phrase.

This phrase is clearly not Greek though it is written in Greek letters in the New Testament. It is from the beginning of Psalms 22 in the Old Testament, which we discuss later. There are three facts about Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani that we examine here.

1. While supposedly Aramaic, this phrase is more Hebrew than Aramaic.

2. The Judeans hearing this phrase at the time, didn’t hear it as Aramaic, but as Greek.

3. Jesus’s situation at the time he said it was a good reason to speak in a tongue other than Greek.

In the first article in this series, we established that Jesus was bilingual. He spoke Greek as someone does in a bilingual culture where Greek was the common language, and Aramaic was a “mother tongue” spoken in many, but not all homes. The evidence is how many Aramaic words are commonly used among his Greek words.

Here we have a related issue that is even more difficult to explain. We can start with the same question we asked about all the Aramaic words in the Bible: if all of Christ's words were originally Aramaic and translated to the Greek, why would this phrase appear in “Aramaic” instead of as a translation? Why did the Gospel writers make an issue about his speaking a different language in this situation. Why would they make an issue of it, not only here, but in all other verses where he spoke to someone in a different language? The other two verses are: .

Talitha cum! (Mark 5:41), telling a supposedly dead girl to get up.

Ephphatha! (Mark 7:34), telling a mute man to be opened.