There are three passages in the Bible which concern us from the viewpoint of history alone. They are in the New Testament: (1) Matthew 27:34 and 45 thru 50; (2) Mark 15:33 thru 37; (3) John 19:28 thru 30.
(1) 34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, la-ma sa-bach-tha-ni? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for E-li-as.
48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether E-li-as will come to save him.
50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
(2) 33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, E-lo-i, Eloi, la-ma sa-bach-tha-ni? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
35 And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth E-li-as.
36 And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, saying, Let alone; let us see whether E-li-as will come to take him down.
37 And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.
(3) 28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
29 Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.
30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
Luke had a totally different view of the sequence of events. He didn’t even record whether Jesus said he was thirsty, as John did; he didn’t record the words Jesus spoke as Matthew and Mark did. Starting with the verse where he did agree with the others, let’s look at Luke 24: 44 through 46:
44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
45 And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.
46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
You can see that Luke omitted the scene where Jesus spoke the words Matthew and Mark quoted and interpreted, and which many in the crowd thought were Jesus saying he was thirsty, and of which John thought so little of it that he merely quoted Jesus as saying “I thirst.” Luke also omitted the action, after Jesus’ strange words, of someone, thinking Jesus was thirsty, putting vinegar on a sponge, then putting the sponge on a reed, and giving the vinegar to Jesus. Matthew, Mark and John related this sponge and vinegar scene, which Luke omitted completely. It would seem that we should pass by Luke as a credible witness. Now let’s discuss those words which Jesus spoke, so vividly described by Matthew and Mark.
“Eli, Eli, la-ma sa-bach-tha-ni” and “Eloi, Eloi, la-ma sa-bach-tha-ni”.
Both Matthew and Mark put a question mark after their quote of Jesus’ words.
When Jesus spoke them, he created quite a bit of confusion. Some said, “Hey, he’s calling Elias.” (Maybe he’ll come and save him!) Others said that he was thirsty. John said simply, “Jesus said, I thirst.”
Someone in the crowd, thinking Jesus had said he was thirsty, soaked a sponge in vinegar, put it on a reed and held it to Jesus’ mouth.
We must give immense credit to Matthew and Mark for writing down as best as they could the sounds of the words Jesus spoke. From what they wrote, we know that no such words existed in Hebrew at that time. Nor did they exist in Aramaic nor in Greek nor in any other language of which we know for that area and that time.
Why did Jesus, in his dying moments, use a language which no one else knew? The best Matthew and Mark could do was say “which is, being interpreted” and “that is to say”. Thank God for their honesty. As for the difference between Matthew’s “Eli, Eli” and Mark’s “Eloi, Eloi” we must consider the crowd’s reaction. The only reaction quoted is in both Matthew and Markas Jesus having said “Elias”. If we are reduced to a choice, we would have to go along with “Eli, Eli.”
I searched and searched, and could not find the words in any language either. In desperation I turned to the parent language, Prehistoric Mayan or Naga.
There the words were, as large as life:
Heli, heli, lamat sabac ta ni.
(I am fainting, I am fainting, darkness is overcoming me.)
Since Jesus is quoted as having “cried with a loud voice” in both Matthew and Mark, perhaps we should quote the translation to be: I am fainting! I am fainting! Darkness is overcoming me!
This opens up a bucketful of questions and controversies. Imagine what I was faced with as soon as I found the translation. I was faced with a mountain to climb. If I didn’t climb it, I would never sleep again. I knew that, like solving the puzzles of cataclysmology, this problem would never leave me alone – mainly for the sake of my own and my Dear Wife’s curiosity. A hundred questions crossed my mind. Well, maybe not a hundred. But a plethora of them, anyway.
Why did Jesus, in his dying moments, speak a language which no one whom we know of heard him speak before? Was he naturally reverting to a language he had spoken as a prime language in earlier years?
If so, where had he been to have picked up that language? And used it habitually?
Let’s again look to the Bible as history. A good place to start is Luke 2: 41, where Jesus’ parents are mentioned:
41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.
42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.
43 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.
44 But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinfolk and acquaintance.
45 And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him.
46 And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.
47 And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.
48 And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?
This one story tells us that Jesus had to be a genius of his day. Also, it tells us that he had an affinity for dropping in at the temple to share minds with the adult intelligentsia on an equal plane.
One more fact should be taken into account in our summation of contributing factors, and that is that there is a total of only fifty-five days of Jesus’ life accounted for in the Bible. We are left with him at age 12 in the incident above, and brought back into his life when he is about thirty (Luke 3: 23).
This leaves about eighteen years of Jesus’ life unaccounted for in the Bible. Is there any other source? In the mid-1800’s, the British Army was stationed in northern India, near the town of Ahoydia, prehistorically known as Adjudia. They discovered that there was a temple there, of which there were only three of that kind in India. In pre-Brahman India, all temples were of this kind, and were called Nacaal Temples. The official language of these temples, the British found out, was Naga, or Prehistoric Mayan.
Curiously enough, there wasa tribe in the extreme north of India, called the Naga tribe. This tribe, even today, speaks pure Naga as their everyday language. They told the British of Jesus’ having been there as a late-teenager-young-adult who attended the Nacaal Temple as a student and graduate of the Temple.
He was especially remembered through tradition because he was a genius. Students were taught rigorous courses, from mathematics to medicine, languages, what we call ESP, out-of-body travel, metaphysics as a science, and natural healing. The course was so rigorous that it usually took the lifetime of a normal person to graduate from the temple. Students had to learn Naga.
Graduates were called Son of God. It’s interesting that Jesus never referred to himself as Son of God, but always Son of man.
The Nagas’ tale of Jesus includes Jesus’ becoming a student as a young man, and through his genius he went through the courses in record time asa student, Master and Graduate at 25 to 30 years old.
On investigating, I found that travel was quite common between the Holy land and India in Jesus’ time. He could have made the trip there very easily at fifteen to twenty and back just as easily ten to fifteen years later.
We are also informed of Jesus’ proclivity for dropping into temples just to have intellectual and spiritual discourse with adult intelligentsia.
Imagine his going to India, happening onto the Nacaal Temple, dropping in for some discourse, and afterward deciding that there was the place for him to stay and really learn.
Spending ten to fifteen years learning to speak and write Naga, and speaking it as his sole language for that duration, certainly would account for his reverting to it on the cross as his natural language.
There is another point in question which has to do with doctrine taught at the Temple. The entire philosophy of religion as Jesus taught it was exactly as he had learned it at the Temple. Never would he have entertained the thought that God would or might forsake him, under any circumstances whatsoever, on or off of the cross, or anywhere. Only humans would. At this point we should summarize everything we can about the events surrounding the moments when Jesus spoke those words on the cross, and apply whatever reasoning we can in order to cover every aspect involved toward either verifying or refuting our translation of his words.
First: Our only reasonable source of the words Jesus actually spoke is through Matthew and Mark.
Second: It is abundantly clear that Jesus spoke in a loud voice. There is a difference between listening to sounds and hearing them; Matthew and Mark listened to him to the extent that they were able to write down the phonetics of what Jesus said to the best of their ability. We should recognize that their attention to the details of the phonetics was enhanced by the loudness with which Jesus spoke. John didn’t pay much attention to detail; he just heard Jesus speak loudly, and assumed that Jesus said merely, “I thirst” without even attempting to listen to or write down the phonetics of the words Jesus spoke.
Third: Our only primary source of the meaning of those words is through Matthew, Mark, and John. Matthew said, “That is to say,….”; Mark said, “….which is, being interpreted,….”; and John said, “Jesus…. saith, I thirst.” It is clear that Matthew and Mark were not translating, but giving us their best guesses what the words Jesus spoke meant. John just guessed outright. The most interesting aspect of Matthew’s and Mark’s recordings is that the phonetics of Jesus’ words and their meaning are so nearly alike – with one syllable, “li” as recorded by Matthew, and “loi” as recorded by Mark being the only difference. It appears that each had his own memoty (as referred to by those in the field of aptitude studies as “Tonal Memory”) of the sounds of the syllable, suggesting independent recording of the phonetics by each of them. However, their interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ words are precisely the same, suggesting that they conferred with each other, comparing their interpretations, and arriving at a mutually agreed upon interpretation of what Jesus meant by what he spoke loudly. Certainly neither of them compared their memories with Luke or John. It appears that we must honor Matthew’s and Mark’s accuracy in recording the sounds of the words Jesus spoke. It’s plausible, since Jesus spoke loudly.
Fourth: We have no secondary source of the words Jesus spoke; we only have secondary sources through Matthew, Mark, and John, who tell us about the crowd at the scene and their reaction to what they thought Jesus said. Some in the crowd said, “Hey, he’s calling Elias! Maybe he’ll come and get him down off the cross!” – As if it were a big joke. Some others said, “He says he’s thirsty! Someone give him a drink!” So someone ran to a bowl of vinegar, put a sponge on a reed, soaked it in the vinegar and held it to Jesus’ lips. Of course, John added his bit by writing “Jesus ….. saith, I thirst.”
It is obvious that there was a great amount of confusion resulting from Jesus’ words, with three known interpretations of those words. Isn’t it interesting and provocative that those three versions differed from each other to the extent that there is absolutely no comparison between them?
Fifth: It is a fact that Jesus’ words did not exist in any known language at that time, including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. “Eli” expressly was not a part of the Hebrew tongue; it was entered into that language since then to mean “My God”. It seems strange that those who fostered and shouted for his crucifixion would be the ones to adopt one of the words Jesus spoke on the cross into their language.
Sixth: We must take into consideration Jesus’ physical condition at the time he spoke those strange words.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Sagrada Familia by Gaudi
Contra to one of the popular myths, Jesus was not nailed to the cross through his hands and spaces through his bones in his lower feet leading to his toes. It was a common form of execution in that time, and always, the nails were driven through a space in the wrist bones as, if driven through the hands, the crucified could pull his hands off of the nails easily while on the cross. Plus, the same conditions existed in the feet of the crucified: in order to keep him from pulling his feet off of the nails, the nail or nails had to be driven through a space between the upper foot bones. Therefore, the crucified became literally a prisoner of the cross. The only way to get him off of the cross was to pull the nails.
The crucified was nailed to the cross in such a way that, with his knees bent somewhat, he could hang by his arms and rest his legs. After a while his diaphragm would enter the early stages of paralysis, and he would feel suffocation oncoming. Then he would straighten his legs, standing on his nailed feet, providing relief for his arms from bearing the stress of holding up his body, thereby relieving the stress on his diaphragm leading to paralysis and suffocation. Consequently, he endured a running continuum of up and down, up and down, up and down for hours and hours.
Those responsible for performing the crucifixion had a way of stopping this endurance test. They simply broke the legs of the crucified so that he couldn’t stand on them any more. He was forced to hang by his arms without surcease; he soon fell into full paralysis of his diaphragm and died of suffocation.
It is known that Jesus suffered “scourging” for some time before his walk to crucifixion with Simon of Cyrene, who was compelled by soldiers to carry his cross. “Scourging” meant torture with whips with barbs in the ends of the lashes of each whip; those barbs ate deeply through Jesus’ skin and into his flesh. It had to be excrutiatingly painful. While on his walk to Golgotha, Jesus was still sufficiently conscious to have made the walk successfully; he had not yet entered a state of deep shock.
There were three men crucified at the same time on Golgotha. Jesus, of course, was in the middle. The other two had not been tortured before their crucifixion.
After they were on their crosses, Jesus entered into deep shock. In that condition it was impossible for him to feel any pain. While in that condition, he lost consciousness; and while entering that state, he said loudly (as quoted by Matthew):”Eli, Eli, la-ma-sa- bach-tha-ni?”.
It has been popularly assumed that pain drove Jesus to say those words. Impossible. He was feeling no pain. He was in deep shock, on the verge of passing out. It is most logical that he was saying “I am fainting, I am fainting, darkness is overcoming me!”. It is most illogical that Jesus would be complaining in a loud voice that God had forsaken him. As I said before, he knew absolutely that only humans would do that.
This is an apropos time to consider The Shroud of Turin. The image on – or in – it shows the barb gouges of a whipping scourging, plus showing that the legs of the victim were not broken – as Jesus’ were not.
Further, the image shows irrefutable signs that the victim had been crowned with a crown of thorns, as Jesus had been.
Further still, the image shows irrefutable signs of the victim having been crucified in the standard manner.
Those parts of the image – the proof of barbed whipping scourging; the proof of the victim being crucified; the unbroken legs, which was most unusual in a crucifixion; and the crown of thorns worn by the victim – all point to Jesus as being the wearer of that controversial shroud.
The crown of thorns is the most powerful indicator of Jesus being the wearer. Who else but Jesus would have been so crowned as a part of his scourging, scourging itself being almost never employed? And crowned for whatever reason, in Jesus’ case for derision as “King of the Jews”?
There is a last subject to consider: how the image was made on the Shroud of Turin. This is a point of great controversy among scientists.
How it was accomplished is known only to those of us who have found how Nature makes gravity.
