Friday 24 January 2014

The Gospels: A Comparative Reading - Part 2 Jesus' Last Words

According to the author of Mark, Jesus' last words before he died on the cross were, "My God , my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?".  The author of Matthew, who borrowed liberally from Mark, used these exact same words as Jesus' last utterance.  This seems like a very strange thing for Jesus to say.  How has God forsaken him?  Jesus has been telling his disciples that he must be rejected and must suffer and die.  His disciples never seem to understand this, but Jesus certainly does.  So what has happened?  Jesus has been rejected and is now suffering and dying.  It looks like everything is going according to plan.  What could God have done to prevent Jesus from saying that He had forsaken him?  Removed him from the cross, made him feel no pain? Jesus wasn't expecting God to do either of these things as it would have changed everything, and if he did want them done, for some reason, he could certainly have done them himself, after all, he is purported to have performed a miracle or two.

It seems very unlikely that Jesus uttered the words that Mark's and Matthew's authors attributed to him.  The authors of the gospels of Luke and John must have thought the same.  Luke's author, who like Matthew's borrowed liberally from Mark,  changed Jesus' last words to, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit."  John's author has Jesus uttering these few words, "It is finished."

So, what were Jesus' last words?  We evidently don't know.  Personally, I find Luke's words the most believable of these quotations for Jesus, or any other dying religious person to have said at the end of their life, but that doesn't make it necessarily true in Jesus' case.  The most popular last words are Mark's and Matthew's at 2 to 1, but popularity doesn't necessary lead to the truth either.  So, what do we know?  We know that if one wanted to find out what Jesus' final words on the cross were, the gospels are a contradictory and unreliable source for this information.

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