Thomas -

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I was suggesting something similar to the second suggestion in Uri's paper starting "The Targum Yonathan...". I was looking this up in the response to the claim that sabachthani was not a valid word. I haven't studied this whole thread enough to know all of the nuances of Folah's claim. However, I would not have expected Uri to sit idly by while someone claims that a word is nonexistent while he has an essay available that discusses possible sources for the word.


If you read the entirety of Uri's article, you know that Targum Yonatan rendered Psalm 22 as:

"ELI ELI M'TUL MAH SH'VAQTANI"

Uri doesn't rule out that sh'vaqtani could have degenerated into sabachthani in the process of transliteration. However, this is a far cry from Uri acknowledging that sabachthani is an actual word.

If a Christian wanted to argue that it is a degenerated form of the Aramaic word sh'vaqtani (which is speculative at best), they would then need to explain why the rest of the sentence is entirely Hebrew.

Where is the Aramaic m'tul mah found in Targum Yonatan, or Aramaic l'ma found all throughout the Aramaic Targum Onkelos? The attempt to claim it is a transliteration of sh'vaqtani doesn't answer the questions, it just raises more linguistic questions, on top of the theological questions it raises about why Yeshu and/or the gospel authors did not know the Hebrew or Aramaic word that appears in the Psalm.

Uri's article also says that the closest Hebrew word to sabachthani (the rest of the sentence being entirely Hebrew) would actually be z'vachtani. From what I've seen the Greek word uses the throaty kh sound rather than the k sound (the q sound having been abandoned by that time). This actually fits well the Christian belief that Yeshu was a sacrifice, as z'vachtani derives from zavach, meaning to sacrifice/slaughter. However, this would translate to "My G-d, My G-d, why have you slaughtered me?" which would not correlate to the original Psalm.

You can believe one or the other, but they both have issues and raise questions about Yeshu and the authors, which accepting one or the other doesn't inherently resolve. The fact is, for whatever reason, sabachthani - and not azavtani or sh'vaqtani - appears in the GT, and thus the best one can do is retroactively make apologetics for this.

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Uri states in his essay that any admission of Jesus that God had forsaken him causes unresolvable theological issues. It does not, but this is not the time to get into that discussion. My point here is just because you think that Jesus is out of place saying this is not grounds to tell someone that sabachthani is nonexistent, when you know very well that it has at least two possible sources.


And as I explained in this post and my previous ones, each of those raise further linguistic and theological questions once you decide to accept one or the other. Sabachthani, whether it is meant to be a transliteration or not, is not itself a Hebrew or Aramaic word. The rest of the sentence is entirely Hebrew.

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If I were to try to determine exactly what sounds Jesus spoke that day, I would guess that Jesus said Sh'vachthani. That would not be considered to be pure Hebrew by you perhaps, but it might be a dialectic variation similar to Shibboleth and Sibboleth. The fact that the Greek text used Xi instead of Kappa and Theta instead of Tau indicates that to me.


Sh'vaqtani is not a Hebrew word. Lama is not an Aramaic word. Azavtani is the word actually used in the Hebrew Psalm. M'tul mah or l'ma would have been used in Aramaic. These are not dialectic issues. You can choose to believe that the word meant is sh'vaqtani, but in the end the word used is sabachthani, which is not a word. At best it can be presumed to be an attempt to transliterate, but again, that brings up the issues above.

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The next question would be why Jesus didn't say azavtani as per Psalm 22, which it is clear from the Greek text that he did not. I would suggest that this is again a dialectic variation that was "the way they said it" in Jesus' day. For a simple example from English, there was a time when people would have cried out, "Don't forsake me," while today they would say "Don't leave me all alone," and they mean exactly the same thing today.


Not dialectic, it is a language difference. One is Hebrew, one is Aramaic. The sentence attributed to Yeshu is entirely Hebrew - like the Psalm - except for the non-word, which people can retroactively attempt to apologize that it is supposed to be sh'vqtani, but can't prove. This constitutes an error either on the part of Yeshu or the authors.

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So I haven't proved anything, nor answered all of the possible questions. No, but I think that I have found a very plausible solution. Often in the NT and in the Tanach, we have to be content with that, and it certainly isn't a reason in itself to throw out the one or the other. Uri has confirmed in his essay that sabachthani is not ridiculous nonsense, as was implied to folah, when she was challenged to show that it was a real word. I will leave it to folah to decide if she was mistreated in this discussion.


Thomas, you are mistaken if you think it has been proven that sabachthani is a real world. It is not a real word in Hebrew nor Aramaic. I don't speak Greek, but I don't think it's a real word in Greek either save for that one example. And the only reason it is assumed to be a real word in those two examples is because the same verse it appears in claims it translates to the "forsaken" of Psalm 22.

Uri has provided two examples of what may have been intended, but this is a far cry from saying sabachthani is a real word. And each example - far from being an answer - raise more questions.

Netanel