Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Friday 22 July 2005 18:57, Peter Kirk wrote:
> On 22/07/2005 19:22, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:
> >... The Aramaic behind Matthew is
> >êlî êlî lmâ ”vaqtanî. Whereas Mark has elohî
> >elohî.
>
> The former is Aramaic, but the latter is surely Hebrew. The Aramaic, if
> not êlî, might be elahî, but not elohî. 
[snip]

Not necessarily.  Rendering from one script to another is always a little 
iffy, and if both Matthew and Mark's authors are reporting the same 
exclamation, it would appear that they simply did the best they could with 
the alphabet they had.  Mark doesn't have elohi, he has eloi, because Greek 
didn't have a way to indicate a word-medial "h" sound.  It is also likely, as 
I have said before, that Jesus' words were rather slurred, considering his 
physical condition by the time he reached this point.  The fact that two 
gospel writers could render the first words in such different ways, while 
others heard some variation of "Elijah," suggests that there may have been a 
bit of an enunciation problem.  Intense flogging, dehydration, nails through 
the extremities, having to pull yourself up against said nails to breathe, 
and generally being on the verge of death could tend to have that effect.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Well, if I'd wanted a safe life, I guess I wouldn't have 
married a man who studies rocks." - Betty Armstrong (Fay Masterson)