There are seven expressions traditionally attributed to Jesus during his crucifixion, gathered from the four Canonical Gospels.[1][2] Three of the sayings appear exclusively in the Gospel of Luke and three appear exclusively in the Gospel of John. The other saying appears both in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew.[3] In Mark and Matthew, Jesus cries out to God. In Luke, he forgives his killers, reassures the good thief, and commends his spirit to the Father. In John, he speaks to his mother, says he thirsts, and declares the end of his earthly life.
Since the 16th century these sayings have been widely used in the preachings on Good Friday and entire books have been written on the theological analysis, and the devotional elements of the seven sayings.[3][4][5][6]
Physicians and scientists who have studied the medical aspects of the crucifixion concluded that the sayings had to be short because crucifixion causes asphyxia. This makes inhaling air to speak difficult and painful, especially as death approaches.[7][8][9][10]
The seven sayings tradition is an example of the Christian approach to the construction of a Gospel harmony, in which material from different Gospels is combined, producing an account that goes beyond each Gospel.[3][11] James Dunn considers the sayings as are part of the elaborations in the diverse retellings of Jesus' final hours.[12]
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The seven sayings form part of a Christian meditation that is often used during Lent, Holy Week and Good Friday. The traditional order of the sayings is:[13]
Traditionally, these seven sayings are called words of 1. Forgiveness, 2. Salvation, 3. Relationship, 4. Abandonment, 5. Distress, 6. Triumph and 7. Reunion.[14]
As can be seen from the above list, not all seven sayings can be found in any one account of Jesus' crucifixion. The ordering is a harmonisation of the texts from each of the four canonical gospels. In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus is quoted in Aramaic, shouting the fourth phrase only, and cries out wordlessly before dying. In Luke's Gospel, the first, second, and seventh sayings occur. The third, fifth and sixth sayings can only be found in John's Gospel. In other words:
This first saying of Jesus on the cross is traditionally called "The Word of Forgiveness".[14] It is theologically interpreted as Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him: the Roman soldiers, and apparently for all others who were involved in his crucifixion.[15][16][17][18] However, many early manuscripts omit Luke 23:34.[19]
This saying is traditionally called "The Word of Salvation".[14] According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus was crucified between two thieves, one of whom supports Jesus' innocence and asks him to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus replies, "Truly, I say to you..." (ἀμήν λέγω σοί, amēn legō soi), followed with the only appearance of the word "paradise" in the Gospels (παραδείσω, paradeisō, from the Persian pairidaeza "paradise garden").
This statement is traditionally called "The Word of Relationship" and in it Jesus entrusts Mary, his mother, into the care of "the disciple whom Jesus loved".[14]
This saying is traditionally called "The Word of Abandonment" and is the only saying that appears in more than one Gospel.[14]
This statement is traditionally called "The Word of Distress" and is compared and contrasted with the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman at the Well in John 4:4-26.[14]
This statement is traditionally called "The Word of Triumph" and is theologically interpreted as the announcement of the end of the earthly life of Jesus, in anticipation for the Resurrection.[14]
From Psalm 31, this saying, which is an announcement and not a request, is traditionally called "The Word of Reunion" and is theologically interpreted as the proclamation of Jesus joining the God the Father in Heaven.[14]
The last words of Jesus have been the subject of a wide range of Christian teachings and sermons, and a number of authors have written books specifically devoted to the last sayings of Christ.[20][21][22]
Priest and author Timothy Radcliffe states that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection, and he views the seven last words as God's completion of the circle of creation and performs analysis of the structure of the seven last words to obtain further insight.[23]
The saying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" is generally given in Aramaic with a translation (originally in Greek) after it. This phrase is the opening line of Psalm 22, a psalm about persecution, the mercy and salvation of God. It was common for people at this time to reference songs by quoting their first lines. In the verses immediately following this saying, in both Gospels, the onlookers who hear Jesus' cry understand him to be calling for help from Elijah (Eliyyâ). The slight differences between the two gospel accounts are most probably due to dialect. Matthew's version seems to have been more influenced by Hebrew, whereas Mark's is perhaps more colloquial.
The phrase could be either:
The Aramaic word šabaqtanî is based on the verb šabaq, 'to allow, to permit, to forgive, and to forsake', with the perfect tense ending -t (2nd person singular: 'you'), and the object suffix -anî (1st person singular: 'me').[24]
A. T. Robertson noted that the "so-called Gospel of Peter 1.5 preserves this saying in a Docetic (Cerinthian) form: 'My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me!'"[25]
The Lamsa Bible, (which takes its translation from the original Aramaic, rather than the Greek version of the Bible, on which the King James Version and most other subsequent versions are based), has a different interpretation of Jesus’ cry on the cross.
Matthew 27:46 is translated as:
Mark 15:34 is translated as:
Lamsa’s translation seems more likely to be accurate, as it is unlikely that during his last hours Jesus would have exhibited doubt in his life’s mission or in God’s commitment to him, after years of unremitting fidelity to his work.
James Dunn considers the seven sayings weakly rooted in tradition and sees them as a part of the elaborations in the diverse retellings of Jesus' final hours.[12] Dunn, however, argues in favor of the authenticity of the Mark/Matthew saying in that by presenting Jesus as seeing himself 'forsaken' it would have been an embarrassment to the early Church, and hence would not have been invented.[12] Geza Vermes, states that the first saying from (Mark and Matthew) is a quotation from Psalm 22, and is therefore occasionally seen as a theological and literary device employed by the writers.[28] According to Vermes, attempts to interpret the expression as a hopeful reference to scripture provide indirect evidence that it is an authentic cry of despair.[29] Leslie Houlden, on the other hand, states that Luke may have deliberately excluded the Mark/Matthew saying from his Gospel because it did not fit in the model of Jesus he was presenting.[3][5]