Does Ἠλί, Ἠλί, λιμὰ σαβαχθανί contain the Aramaic root שׁבח - to glorify?

[yegr]

In the 19th century, the cabalist J.R. Skinner believed that "Eli, Eli, lamah sabachthani?" means "My God, my God, how thou dost glorify me" and that "lamah" means not only "why" or "how", but also as a verbal it connects the idea of to dazzle, or adverbially, it could run "how dazzlingly" (https://archive.org/details/keytohebrew ... 0/mode/2up, p. 301). In addition, there seems to be an Aramaic (and maybe Hebrew) verb שׁבח, which has a word form in modern Hebrew, and it means "to praise." So indeed, can the well-known expression from the Gospel of Matthew mean not only "Why did you abandon me?"
Also it is stated elswhere that מה (mah) instead of למה (lamah) means "What ...!" or "How much!", whereas in Codex Washingtonianus (Mt. 27:46) there's mah instead of lamah:

[zompist]

You probably shouldn't look for Biblical inspiration in 1876 tomes by occultists.

First, Skinner is misinformed: in Mark, considered the earliest gospel, Jesus is represented as speaking Aramaic, not Hebrew. There is thus no surprise that he quotes Psalm 22 in Aramaic, using Aramaic šəb̲aqtanî rather than Hebrew ‘ăzaḇtānî. The Aramaic does in fact use šəb̲aqtanî.

Second, why should שבק be related to שׁבח?

Third, neither Skinner nor you should simply guess at Biblical Hebrew words, without backup. Does your שׁבח ever appear in the OT in the sense of 'praise', rather than (say) הלל? Does למה ever mean 'dazzle'? (What is the root even supposed to be? Certainly not צָחַח.) You can easily check such things, here for instance.

Finally, if Skinner were even partly convincing, why has no one translated either Ps. 22 or Mt. 46 that way in over 2000 years? If this were a valid reading, it would have been discussed for centuries. Why would Greek-speaking Jews translate the quotation wrong? Why would Jesus deliberately quote a psalm of complaint (very understandably given his circumstances) to mean something quite the opposite?

Of course Skinner is claiming to have esoteric knowledge revealed only to himself, backed up only by gematria. If you like esoteric interpretations, go for it— it's been a pastime for millennia. But this one is not based on any reasonable reading of the text.

[yegr]

Being no expert in Semitic languages (not to the point of being not able to properly tackle the alphabet), I am curious to find out how another person of whatever epoch and background can be right or wrong about his or her linguistic analyses, for which Biblical inspiration is of minor importance. In this particular case, it was simply the words of the occultist that drew my attention to the phrase.
Firstly, Skinner did not explicitly exclude the possibility of Jesus speaking Aramaic (and, for instance on p. 65 he discusses an Aramaic-related phenomenon). I simply have no knowledge on whether šəb̲aqtanî is indeed a purely Aramaic dialect and could be no way Hebrew of the age. Also the NT leaves us with nothing else but a Greek transliteration, at that - two slightly different ones (in Mark and in Matthew). This also left room for Aramaic/Hebrew contextualization of Jesus' and NT's wordings. Even the choice of χθ in the Greek has various implications for the original Semitic words. Also, a thought that Jesus had all the chances to be aware of the Hebrew equivalent of Psalm 22, which he could have reproduced with ‘ăzaḇtānî, is not unique.
Secondly, who says שבק is related to שׁבח? Who has even proved that שבק is what was meant in the Greek transliteration? You may read https://brill.com/view/journals/nt/56/2 ... p196_5.xml substantiating quite a different opinion.
Thirdly, tracing various synonyms of praise in the Hebrew OT for me would take too much time for the very reason that starts this reply. This is why I hoped to get specific reasoning from people who are at ease with Hebrew and Aramaic. At least in as far as it concerns למה being 'dazzle' or not, or μα being a mistake or not in CW.
I believe purely linguistic analysis would be just enough, since other ways of treating the issue can be much more debatable (certainly, the topic must have been discussed many times over the ages, but as the article referred to above shows, there is no final and comprehensive solution to the issue). This way, wrong translations can in fact have quite a few explanations valid altogether (starting from a mere mistake that suited the context and ending up by the Church's intended distortions). The latter, by the way, could explain why a non-lteral meaning that one often calls esoteric on the ground it is not within the Church's exegetics could be disguised in an ambiguous Greek transliteration. Even being aware of such 'esoteric' explanations, I had no intention to bring them in here.

[zompist]

Firstly, Skinner did not explicitly exclude the possibility of Jesus speaking Aramaic (and, for instance on p. 65 he discusses an Aramaic-related phenomenon). I simply have no knowledge on whether šəb̲aqtanî is indeed a purely Aramaic dialect and could be no way Hebrew of the age. Also the NT leaves us with nothing else but a Greek transliteration, at that - two slightly different ones (in Mark and in Matthew). This also left room for Aramaic/Hebrew contextualization of Jesus' and NT's wordings. Even the choice of χθ in the Greek has various implications for the original Semitic words. Also, a thought that Jesus had all the chances to be aware of the Hebrew equivalent of Psalm 22, which he could have reproduced with ‘ăzaḇtānî, is not unique.
Secondly, who says שבק is related to שׁבח? Who has even proved that שבק is what was meant in the Greek transliteration? You may read https://brill.com/view/journals/nt/56/2 ... p196_5.xml substantiating quite a different opinion.

I think you're missing the point here, which is that šəb̲aqtanî is precisely the word used in the ancient Aramaic translation of Ps. 22. This makes Jesus' utterance a clear citation, which would have been obvious to his followers. There is no need to hope for the word to be found with a different meaning in Hebrew.

Nothing in ancient linguistics is absolutely provable, but you can't change your standards of proof at will to support a favored opinion, as Skinner does. Can it be mathematically proven that Jesus said or meant another word? No, history is not mathematics. But it's simply not the case that šəb̲aqtanî is a mysterious or incorrect word, any more than it's weird that the Greeks called God θεός instead of ʾĔlōhīm. And you can't just swallow his assertion that למה has another meaning, without any evidence whatsoever.

[yegr]

Again, being not able to trace fast both Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew dictionaries for possible instances of šbq (well I did find some in https://cal.huc.edu/ but this apparently doesn't extensively demonstrate whatsoever), I looked for some other sources, including this (not peer-reviewed) publication: https://www.academia.edu/45622119/Disco ... or_Aramaic. If this author is more knowing about the languages in question than some cabalist then it may look plausible that the Hebrew phrases from Matthew and Mark are quite Hebrew, not Aramaic, with 2 nuances: Eli/Eloi polymorphy (probably no implication for the case) and shabaktani being a Hebraized Aramaic word with a Hebrew ending. That is all Aramaic it has in it is only the root. If it is grammatically correct then even Skinner's favored opinion is irrelevant and he was correct to say the phrase was indeed in Hebrew.
From your comments it is hard to deduce whether you assert that the whole phrase is Aramaic or you call it so only because of the root (and not, for instance, the ending -ni, i.e. me in Hebrew). As you may see, the logic behind this (which can be useless as long as the relevant statements by Douglas Hamp are wrong) has nothing to do with swallowing any assertions. It is just a hypothesis. If only the majority's favored root is found in Aramaic, then it is firstly a coincidence with the corresponding Aramaic dictionary entry that may or may not imply that secondly it is not a mere coincidence (I am quite aware of complementary observations that may influence the scholarly consensus). Right, Jesus spoke Aramaic, but at the same time, as I (and far more than only I) mentioned, he could understand and use Hebrew. Also the phrases came not directly from him but from some unknown Jews or Hebrew-speaking persons and were later transliterated to a certain extent of veracity into Greek letters - all we have to start with our deductions anew, should we not take anyone's long-established favored opinion for granted (I and Skinner are no exclusion in this approach to this particular case). So in order to avoid the fallacy of petitio principii I would personally prefer to investigate in more detail not only positive assertions, but negative as well, just as the scientific approach, be it mathematics or even history, necessitates.

[zompist]

I looked for some other sources. including this (not peer-reviewed) publication: https://www.academia.edu/45622119/Disco ... or_Aramaic. If this author is more knowing about the languages in questionn than some cabalist then it may look plausible that the Hebrew phrases from Matthew and Mark are quite Hebrew, not Aramaic, with 2 nuances: Eli/Eloi polymorphy (probably no implication for the case) and shabaktani being a Hebrewized Aramaic word with a Hebrew ending. That is all Aramaic it has in it is only the root. If it is gramatically correct then even Skinner's favoured opinion is irrelevant and he was correct to say the phrase was indeed in Hebrew.

I looked over what he says about šəb̲aqtanî, and I have to say it's just conjecture. He writes, "Also, the ending of the word “ta+ni” is exactly what we would expect in Biblical Hebrew", as if this proves something, but it doesn't: -ta-ni is Aramaic, too.

From your comments it is hard to deduce wether you assert that the whole phrase is Aramaic or you call it so only because of the root (and not, for instance, the ending -ni, i.e. me in Hebrew).

-ni is Aramaic too. You did see the targum translation of Ps. 22, right? šəb̲aqtanî is used there precisely with the meaning "you have forsaken me".

I'm not sure what you're arguing about now... you seem to accept now that šəb̲aqtanî means what it's always been taken as meaning.

[yegr]

Even though שבקתני is grammatically Aramaic, it can still be a Hebraized word loaned from the vernacular, and this conjecture is complemented by other words of the phrase that are Hebrew and not Aramaic by form, especially from Matthew rather than from Mark. At least you didn't provide specific objections to that.
If šəb̲aqtanî is the unique equivalent to שבקתני, then of course there's not much to argue about. On the other hand, as stated in the initial message, I have no means to be sure σαβαχθανί is שבקתני, except that it was by and large believed so through the ages.
As for שׁבחתני in the sense of loudly addressing me, this meaning can be found in Psalms 106:47 (to loudly address thy praise) and in Psalms 117:1 (loudly address him).

[zompist]

Even though שבקתני is grammatically Aramaic, it can still be a Hebraized word loaned from the vernacular, and this conjecture is complemented by other words of the phrase that are Hebrew and not Aramaic by form, especially from Matthew rather than from Mark. At least you didn't provide specific objections to that.

Re Matthew vs Mark, it's generally accepted that Mark was the earliest gospel, and used as a source by the writers of Matthew and Luke. This might make Mark closer to Jesus' original words, but that of course is just an interpretation.

I think it's also generally accepted that Mark uses more Aramaic, Matthew more Hebrew. Why that is, people have debated forever. Matthew seems to have had more of an agenda of situating Jesus into Jewish tradition, so he may have felt a need to Hebraize the words.

Everything is complicated by who's analyzing all this and why. Christians have a received theology that they want to use to interpret the evidence; perhaps more to the point, they are often unaware of non-Christian evidence-- e.g. Jewish scholarship, or what we know about Aramaic.