kamil gregor talked about this here :

time line 21:17

koine lingua also talked about this 

** you do not have permission to see this link **

i quote :

Also, the version of this episode in the gospel of John lends additional credence to this idea of it having been fabricated on the basis of the Psalmic verse. That is, John 19:23 seems to take Psalm 22:18 even more literally, and in so doing actually ends up misconstruing its sense.

So, the phenomenon of grammatical parallelism is ubiquitous in the Psalms. And one of the most common forms of parallelism here is repetition.

A common translation of Psalm 22:18 reads “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (ESV). But actually, contrary to what the conjunction “and” may imply in this, it’s not really describing two different actions at all here. Instead, these two things are in fact one and the same, simply repeated poetically. We can see this reflected in many English translations, which remove the conjunction:

“They divide my clothes among themselves, casting lots for my garments” (NJPS)

; “They are dividing up my clothes among themselves; they are rolling dice for my garments” (NET); “They divide my clothing among themselves; they cast lots for my clothing!” (ISV).

Some translations are even more unambiguous about this, collapsing the two clauses into one: “They gamble for my clothes and divide them among themselves” (GNT); “They took my clothes and gambled for them” (CEV).

Also worth noting, though, is that in the original Hebrew of Psalm 22:18, the first word “my garments” is plural (בְגָדַי), while the parallel word to this in the second part is actually singular לְבוּשׁ — which is either a kind of collective singular “clothing,” or sometimes a true singular “tunic” or “robe.” This is reflected in the Septuagint, too, using plural (τὰ) ἱμάτια and then singular ἱματισμός.

Again, I mention all of this because of what the gospel of John has here in its unique version of the crucifixion narrative:

23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments [τὰ ἱμάτια] — dividing [actually just ἐποίησαν] them into four parts, one for each soldier — and the tunic [χιτών]. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 24 So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says, “They divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing/tunic/robe they cast lots.” (John 19:23-24)

Instead of understanding just one single act of his garments being divided up by casting lots, then, it actually takes Psalm 22:18 hyper-literally, (mis)interpreting it such that there were two acts: quite literally dividing his garments evenly (“into four parts”), but then casting lots for a singular tunic.

“Read Psalm 22 and tell me that doesn’t speak directly of the crucifixion.”

Psalm 22 wasn’t even prophetic in the first place. Like other Psalms, it draws on real world events and phenomena (whether real or hypothetical), using this figuratively to make a point about suffering.

This applies even to some of the more specific imagery in Psalm 22, like verse 18. And we know this because we find any number of other ancient Near Eastern parallels to these things. For example, even to Psalm 22:18 in particular, there’s a parallel in a Mesopotamian lament: someone was near death, and states “[t]he coffin lay open, and people already helped themselves to my valuables; before I was even dead, the mourning was already done.”

So the taking of someone’s belongings, like their clothing, was already figuratively associated with being in a near-death state. (In terms of casting lots for this, in Babylonian law too, when dividing inheritance between sons, this was also done by casting lots. Casting lots was just a natural way of dividing things between multiple people who claimed/wanted something.)

However, the authors of the New Testament gospels took this overly literally when they constructed the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion and had actual Roman soldiers literally enact this figurative imagery from the Psalm.

…………

thoughts on this ?