Does anyone have a perspective, or has anyone done or seen good work around the topic of: why the bystanders at the cross think Jesus is calling for Elijah, when he’s quoting the well-known Psalm?
NB – I’ve seen it said (but cannot myself confirm as a biblical monoglot in English) that the underlying Aramaic (had Jesus spoken these works) would be closer to Mark’s Greek rendering of “Eloi”. If true, that would seemingly further distance the sound from that of how Elijah would be pronounced in Aramaic. Also, I cannot find a decent rendering of how Elijah (English) would be pronounced in Aramaic, only in Hebrew (approx: Eliyahu).
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Robert, thank you as always.
Robert said
Elijah in Aramaic is Elahi (אלהי), typically pronounced El-a-hee.The primary Hebrew word for God in Hebrew is Elohim (אלהים), a plural form derived from El (אל), and while neither need be translated in Aramaic, both of these Hebrew terms can be translated in Aramaic with Elah (אלה, El-ah), just as in Arabic (Allah). When one adds the suffix for “my” (י), this becomes Elahi (אלהי), which also could be pronounced el-a-hee.
Thus the spelling and pronunciation of Elijah and one version of ‘My God’ can be the same in Aramaic.
Ah, so in Aramaic (this version of) “my God” and “Elijah” would sound the same. That makes it clearer than I had been able to uncover before – thank you.
Is this version of “my God” (Elah-i, hyphenated for distinction from Elijah Elahi) the way one would have chosen to render the Psalm in Aramaic in Galilee were one reading the text (in Hebrew, or an Aramaic targum) aloud?
And Matthew’s “Eli” – would this have worked as well in Aramaic for “my God”? If so, whence the Elijah misunderstanding there (unless we’re going with nicknames)?
Robert said
Mark’s version of the Aramaic here is Eloi with a long ‘o’. I suspect this is related to the long ‘o’ sound in the Hebrew word Elohim, but one should also bear in mind that pronunciation varies over time and geography.
While the ordinary or most standard pronunciation of Elijah in Aramaic would be ‘Elahi’ (אלהי, El-a-hee), in both Hebrew and Aramaic, the ‘a’ vowel is sometimes pronounced as an ‘o’ under certain circumstances or in different areas. The ‘normal’ Biblical Hebrew ‘rules’ for pronouncing the ‘a’ as an ‘o’ may not hold here (closed and unaccented syllable), but you can see this also in some other Aramaic/Hebrew words, eg, חֳלִי,חֹֽלִי (choli, sickness) or Elohim (אלהים) so there could also be an ‘o’ sound in some pronunciations of Elijah in Aramaic.
More likely, in my opinion, this could be merely a play on similar sounding words or simply a misunderstanding of the underlying Aramaic by Mark or an earlier author of the passion narrative.
The ‘h’ sound could also have been rarely interpreted as an ‘o’ vowel, but it is much more likely that it dropped out because Greek has no way of expressing an ‘h’ sound in the middle of a word.
Is the “correct” pronunciation not clear enough to say one just wouldn’t use the long ‘o’ in Aramaic in either “Elijah” or “my God”? I ask, both based on your treatment above and because it would fit with another issue I’m having: namely, that I’m struggling with the potential that this is a Markan/Matthean play on words that is supposed to work. A Greek audience would have had to be steeped in Aramaic to get the joke unaided. And, if an Aramaic-speaking group of Jewish bystanders (in Jerusalem during Passover) heard that statement, even if Elah-i and Elahi sound the same, why would the first thing to come to mind not be Psalm 22, instead of “he’s calling for Elijah”? If one grants they are sufficiently up to speed religiously that Elijah is supposed to come back (Malachi), or he’s sometimes called on to help, it would stand to reason that this same person has heard the Psalm – even more so if the city is swelling with religious pilgrims. And Mark’s source (or Mark) clearly had to know it in order to place it on Jesus’s dying lips. It only seems to work if one (a) speaks Aramaic but (b) also knows very little of the religion yet (c) still knows enough to know the name and legendary aspects of the character whose name is the hinge in the wordplay.
As a literary device, it doesn’t seem to work – but perhaps I’m just not grasping it well enough.
Robert said
I don’t think anyone knows enough about all the variations within 1st-century Galilean Aramaic to answer this with any degree of certainty. I certainly don’t. If one were to count up the various translation variants used in the targums, we could get a sense of how common each was in much later times. The much later targum of Psalm 22, just keeps the Eli (אלי), the same as the Hebrew.
I think it very interesting that the later Aramaic targum preserves the Hebrew wording, not the putative Elah-i wording that the Markan story (or source) would appear to be making use of. It is suggestive, but not dispositive, that Elah-I is not how one would have recited that Psalm in Aramaic (Eli, not Elah-i) – and thus is either (a) an invention by Mark (or his source), (b) idiosyncratic to Jesus or his band of followers (suspend disbelief for the moment…), or (c) was something in the tradition that needed a back-explanation (it was floating around that Jesus called out for Elijah; perhaps because he did, though this is unlikely because there wasn’t anyone reliable nearby to report).
Robert said
Yes. The word-play works best in Aramaic, less so in Mark, and even less so in Matthew. This could be used as an argument for the cry of dereliction being part of an an Aramaic oral or written source used by Mark. Of all Mark’s potential sources, there is most support for his having some type of written passion narrative available to him, ‘though it is much debated what exactly was in this source, and what was added by Mark, not to mention whether Mark possessed the source in Aramaic or Greek.
So it doesn’t work well in Hebrew, nor does it work well in the later Aramaic targum (nor Matthew), nor does it work all that well in Mark’s (butchered) Eloi. It’s starting to feel like (a) or (c) above are the best explanations for its existence in Mark.
Robert said
Yes, an exclusively Greek audience would have to take it on faith that the word-play somehow works better in Aramaic, but it does not have to be exact for it to still function somewhat in Greek, and Mark’s audience might not have been exclusively Greek-speaking. Some conjecture Syria as a possible place of composition.
Understand about the potential geographical context, but even then, the wordplay only seems to work (in the story, not wrt Mark’s audience) (a) in Aramaic (or on an involved explanation in Greek), (b) if the bystanders in the story don’t know the Psalm well enough to recognize it, and yet (c) they know enough about the traditions to expect Elijah fits the context. That seems a (historical) stretch, no?
Robert said
For Mark the intended irony is that Elijah has already come and he too had been killed by the authorities. It might also be seen as ironic that those standing by (perhaps even still the high priests and scribes from 15,30) did not recognize that Jesus is quoting scripture.
Understood – and I think that is consistent with what I’m meaning to say, in a roundabout way. The ironies only work if the bystanders aren’t “it getters”, in the sense that they are too blind to “get” either irony.
Robert said
I would not make too much out of this. Eli (אלי) is one variant in Aramaic, and it is easy for a translator working with written texts to keep the same word as in the Hebrew, but it is not the only way to say to say ‘My God’ in Aramaic. (You can also find Elohee [אלהי] in the Hebrew text.) One instance of translation in a very late Targum does not establish the way that one would have recited this psalm in 1st century Galilee.
Fair enough. I guess, to your earlier point, a statistical analysis is probably in order before making such a conclusion…
Is Elohee [אלהי] reasonably common in the Hebrew (in this psalm or otherwise)?
Robert said
Oops, sorry. I think I was looking at the wrong screen this morning, at an unusually vocalized text of a Targum and confused it with the Hebrew, which is usually vocalized. אלהי is found in the Hebrew, very frequently, as the construct state of Elohim, but it is not vocalized as Elohee, with the ‘ee’ as in ‘meek’, but rather with long a, ‘ee’ as in ‘fiancée’. It can also be vocalized in Hebrew as אֱלֹהָ֔י or אֱלֹהַי֙, which would be pronounced as Elohay, meaning ‘my God.’
Given the number of iPhone autocorrect and errant thumbs misfires I’ve had in other threads, I think you are allowed one very minuscule discordance in an example of a concept you are having to spoon feed to me in a triplet of languages I do not understand. Ha. On the upside, it gave me cause to look up what a construct state is…
Your statistical point still stands. And, lack of targum statistics notwithstanding, I think my issue around the lack of effectiveness in the wordplay (given what has to be assumed about the bystanders) still remains in force.
Robert said
I did come across reference to one manuscript of the Old Greek of Judges 5,5 that does have Eloi (ελωι), as in Mark’s Greek, but one can only guess at the underlying Hebrew in that manuscript as our Hebrew text of Judges 5,5 does not have a word corresponding to this here.
Ah, so there is some potential precedent for ‘Eloi’. But from an underlying Hebrew source, not an Aramaic one.
Robert said
Yes, sort of the opposite way of forming a genitive relationship, which intersects with the other thread.
Seems all roads lead to the genitive…
Ha.
Robert said
Yes, and I personally believe that it is most likely the influence of the Hebrew Elohim (אֱלֹהִ֑ים), also used in Jewish Aramaic, which would lead some people (whether uneducated or minimally educated Galilean country bumpkins or more educated Judeans) to ‘read’ or pronounce the Aramaic אלהי as Elohee and for that to be transcribed in Greek as ελωι, as Mark does.
Excellent – and I was just about to ask you about this, as a few (later) linguistic analogs occurred to me as I reflected on your prior point.
The first was swallowed consonants. Certain accents in Latin American Spanish swallow their s’s, often at the end of words in plural. And French evolved in a similar direction from older forms, such that they ultimately made a rule out of it (ending s’s are almost always silent). It struck me that perhaps the “m” in Elohim could have gotten swallowed in certain accents.
The second was the great vowel shift in English, broadly warping vowels over time. Perhaps the “ah” sound in Elah-i was at that time or place closer to an “oh”.
The last was just regional accents. As a displaced southerner, I can attest that where I grew up a, e, i, o, and u are very often (nearly always…) pronounced as ə. Perhaps the “ah” sound in Elah-i was in certain accents closer to an “oh”.
Could any of these hold any real water?
Robert said
I agree and personally prefer a), invented by Mark or his source as more probable.
I agree – invented by Mark or his source seems the most probable. With a few nuances to note:
– Your Elohee point above makes it more likely than I’d initially supposed (but not the plurality probability) that Jesus or someone Jesus-adjacent could even have said it. Not that the statement itself was historical, but that perhaps this pronunciation was. And that would make the probability ever so much higher than nil that Jesus or his followers could have said the verse in this way.
– The wordplay would only work for the (hypothetical historical) bystanders if: (i) they spoke Aramaic (in standard or regional variant accent) or swallowed-s Hebrew, (ii) knew enough about the religion to know the Elijah-will-return prophecy well enough to misattribute the call as one for help from (biblical) Elijah, but (iii) simultaneously was ignorant enough of the religion to not recognize a (well-known biblical) psalm. In my mind, if this is an invention by Mark (or his source), then he thought that the bystanders were morons (my hyperbolic statement, for effect), or that he thought his audience was. His elegantly simple gospel overall is evidence that he was too clever to have been the moron, so it leaves us with him having a low opinion of the intelligence of bystanders and/or his readers. Again, hyperbole to make the point plain with fewer words…
– I’m suspicious that, in the light of the above point where the effectiveness of the wordplay is clunky at best, there could have been a tradition floating around that Jesus had (actually) called for Elijah (who obviously didn’t come rescue him), and Mark (or his source) is trying to retroactively smooth over it. But, I have no evidence other than bad wordplay and general skepticism on which to hang that hat. So I have to treat it as no more than a suspicion at this point.
All this is to say, there was no one (neither quoted nor reliable) within hearing distance of Jesus at this time to make any accurate report of what he did say (if anything). But Mark (and Matt’s) story as written has numerous problems (possibly linguistic, but even more so literary/historical) that give me pause.
Robert said
As for statistics, even if someone had the time and patience to analyze all of the uses of the various words for God in the targumim (and their underlying Hebrew terms) and other Jewish Aramaic sources, this would only give us a sense of what was more or less likely centuries after Mark’s gospel was written, thus not much help for understanding Mark and his putative sources.
Fair. But would that really be all that dissimilar to what we already have with the gospel itself – written much later than Jesus (nearly half a century) and our evidence is from even later manuscripts (quantified in “centuries” later than the events reported)?
Robert said
One does speak of a very early ** you do not have permission to see this link ** from ‘a’ to ‘o’, perhaps especially on stressed syllables, which occurred in Hebrew but not in Imperial Aramaic, which is used to account for long-standing differences between Hebrew and Aramaic or Arabic pronunciation. Jewish Aramaic tended to maintain a number of Hebrew words and, I think obviously, some Hebrew pronunciations. As for regional pronunciations, I think this varied quite a bit. I recall being told by an elderly woman in Leuven that prior to the days of radio/television, some people from different neighborhoods in the same city would not understand each other in their everyday speech. This was a small country to begin with (Belgium) with half the country speaking a regional language (Flemish), variants of Dutch, and the upper classes still spoke French at the time. My German was pretty good, but if someone started speaking in their local dialect, forget it, even other Germans could not understand them.
Ok – thank you, good to know I’m not totally off in space here.
Similarly, there remain certain accents (that are dying off with older generations) in France where the “r” is different (rolls like the Spanish “rr”), or where the “n” at the end of the nasal vowel is pronounced as an “n” (rather than silent). Small examples of current day large differences in speech patterns in the same language in the same region (sometimes same 150 person village). This is current day, in a highly connected and hyper-literate society, one with an actual centralized clearinghouse for its language, within a 100 mile geographical radius. Not that present day France is a some amazing, direct analogy to first century Palestine, but, again, we’re talking about people here, with essentially the same DNA and thus mental wetware that generates languages.
Robert said
Mark is well known for his sharp sense of irony.
That statement works both literally and facetiously. The (modest) irony here is that the Markan irony doesn’t work unless he thinks the bystanders and/or his audience are of small understanding.
But as I reflect a little more on it in light of your understatement and gentle reminder – Mark clearly thought many people stupid. Including The Twelve…
Robert said
There’s a million things we’ll never know about ancient history, given the nature of our sources, which is why the most critical scholars focus on trying to understand the texts in their historical context.
Agree completely. And those most critical of scholars can only advance the boundaries of what we do know by proffering hypotheses and then falsifying them (or the probabilistic equivalent thereof), or succeeding in failing to do so.
Alas, I’m not (nor will time likely ever permit me to become) a scholar. I am limited to attempting the evaluation of the English version of the texts in my best understanding of the texts’ own context (the history of the stories themselves or the history of the writing/retelling of the stories). And, with your wildly generous and highly impactful tutelage, I’m able to explore the terrain much, much farther than I could otherwise without your help. Many others on these threads I’m certain feel the same.
To my untrained eye, a best sense of a probable minimal knowledge base of the (supposed) bystanders and/or Mark’s audience seems squarely within said context, and one that is distant but not fully inaccessible to us, to the extent that the characters are historical persons or based on a type of historical person. And that context makes the wordplay seem to fall a bit flat – because it presupposes the bystanders to be monumental dullards.
However, as your mention of the Markan ironic sense prompted me to reflect, Mark thinks many people in his narrative are idiots. The Twelve, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Galilean villagers, perhaps even Pilate. Which argues that, even if the wordplay is clunky, it is still likely the intention – he thinks they (the bystanders) are blind to the higher reality of Jesus’s cry out. Which speaks more to the “made up for effect” explanation that both of us think is the most probable than to alternative theories.
It does, however, slightly also raise the (Bayesian) probability of the “back-solve a story to account for actual rumors circulating that Jesus did cry out for Elijah”. Not enough to take it out of “just a suspicion” territory, but slightly higher (for me) than just prior to your reminder about Markan irony. Why does it slightly step up in probability? Because (substantially) all the other people who Mark thinks are idiots both: (a) didn’t understand who Jesus really was, and (b) to the extent they were historical persons, probably said and did or were likely to have been thought (by more people than just the evangelist) to have said and did things that were very similar to what Mark narrated them as saying or doing. So the (supposed historical) bystanders by analogy have some slightly higher probability of having some historical basis for the Markan Elijah claim. But, again, not nearly enough to get it off the ground.
I think I’m done working with this back-solve hypothesis. It was fun to play with it. Thanks for your forbearance while I did so.
Robert said
Sure. But we can be pretty sure of the broad strokes of the texts of the gospels from the early versions. Too chaotic for anyone to have vastly changed the stories everywhere and in every language.
I agree. And I don’t mean this at all to be argumentative, but I think that is, by analogy, the point I’m attempting (poorly) to make about the targumim. If, despite the earliest fragment of Mark being from 150-250 CE (I’m going by what data I’ve read in popular news recountings of the first century Mark saga, not some deep Nongbri-like knowledge of Markan fragmentary history), we can be pretty sure of what Mark originally wrote, why cannot we be pretty sure what the range of pronunciations were like in Aramaic from a statistical analysis of the targumim around the same time (maybe a little later)? If I’m missing something obvious, I apologize. To my untrained eye, it seems a valid comparison.
NB – I composed this on iPhone by copy/paste/change method in the Notes app. I see in the edit history you edited the original post since the time I copied it to edit it in Note. It’s on me if my quotes of you don’t precisely track with the current version.
Robert said
It’s an interesting idea. I think Joel Marcus in his commentary on Mark talks about the popular belief in Elijah as a kind of patron saint of lost causes that one might call upon in times of extreme need. I’m sure he’s relying on later rabbinic sources but such a belief could have developed earlier. It’s also possible that the tradition that Jesus was desperatly calling upon Elijah as he died on the cross originated as a Jewish criticism of Jesus, which could also have been based in fact.
It’s a fun idea, so I’m a little bummed to have to shelve it. But such is life.
Not to take us further down the self-made rabbit hole on this theory, but I want to make sure I fully grasp the contours of your thought about the possible Jewish criticism of Jesus. Would it work something like the following?
Skeptical commentator: “Jesus couldn’t be the messiah – he was cursed, hung on a tree. He failed to install the Kingdom – look we’re still surrounded by these occupying Romans. Plus, I hear he was even calling for Elijah to rescue him at the end. That’s a tacit admission if I’ve ever heard one – he himself didn’t believe in his own messianic bona fides at the end!”
And then that last piece *might* have originated with someone close enough to the cross to hear something uttered resembling “Elijah, help me” (in fact), and that was then transmitted back to Mark by game of telephone through people’s incredulous feedback to (what they thought were) these weird Jesus movement folks?
Note: please don’t respond with something at your normal level of interestingness, because it will likely force me to break my promise about not taking us down the rabbit hole…
Robert said
I’m sure there are much more competent and well trained linguists, native speakers of Hebrew and studying Aramaic from their youth perhaps, who could no doubt succeed in such a project more easily than me!
Blasphemy!
[I stopped short of jokingly quoting all of Mk 14:64, as it takes a rather dark turn…]
I toyed with asking this in the Last Supper thread (where the no-verb-in-Aramaic conversation originated), but given this thread has become a master class in Aramaic, I came to the conclusion that there’s no thread like the present.
Given the phenomenon of no verb in Aramaic in “This bread [is] my lunch,” how would one express ἐγώ εἰμι (I hope I spelled that correctly) in Aramaic?
And, in Aramaic, would these two sentences below lack the verb and thus look the same when written?
– I am the Lord.
– I Am is the Lord.
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