Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE CLIMAX OF JESUS' MISSION §17.1
narrative is heavily dependent on Mark, it means in effect that each of the 'last
words' is dependent on single attestation. Moreover, only one is attested by Mark
(15.34). Luke's first word has weak support in the textual tradition (23.34), 86 his
second is part of the unsupported account of a conversation between the three
crucified, 87 and his third looks like one of the psalm elaborations already noted
(where Mark 15.37 has only that 'Jesus let out a great cry'). John's first word is
bound up with his otherwise unattested 'beloved disciple' tradition (19.26), his
second seems to be a somewhat contrived way of introducing the allusion to Ps.
69.21 (he said it 'in order to fulfil the Scripture' — 19.28), and his third sounds a
more triumphant note than any of the other Gospels (19.30).
The uncomfortable conclusion probably has to be that most of the words
from the cross are part of the elaboration in the diverse retellings of Jesus' final
hours. Had there been words more clearly recalled, experience of the Jesus tradition
elsewhere suggests that they would have become a core within the fuller
story of Jesus' death and so would have remained stable within the varying
retellings of the story. Without such attestation we are pushed by the evidence to
the alternative conclusion: that the stable element was the scene itself and the
broad structure (attested by Mark/Matthew, variantly by Luke, and still more
variantly by John), and that beyond that much of the detail belongs to the category
of performance variation.
Of the seven 'last words', the one with strongest historical claim is certainly
the only one attested by Mark/Matthew — 'My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?' (Mark 15.34/Matt. 27.46). The citation of Ps. 22.1 certainly
raises suspicions. 88 On the other hand, the Greek is clearly an attempted transliteration
of Aramaic. 89 The potential embarrassment for Christian apologetics
('the cry of desolation') would surely have been obvious from the first and could
have been easily countered by somehow extending the allusion to the confident
climax of the psalm. 90 And the likelihood that Jesus fell back on familiar words
of worship when in extremis (heard by the faithful few who waited near him till
86. It is omitted by p 75 B D* W © and early Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions, but the
echo in Acts 7.60 suggests that Luke was aware of the Luke 23.34 tradition, so the textual tradition
is puzzling.
87. Brown suggests that Luke has taken the 'Amen' saying from another context and
used it here (Death 1001-2).
88. E.g., Bultmann, History 313; Funk, Five Gospels 125-26; Lüdemann, Jesus 108 (a
community product and therefore inauthentic; 'This follows conclusively [sic] from the contradiction
between the different cries on the cross and the lack of an appropriate eye-witness or
tradent').
89. See Pesch, Markusevangelium 2.495, 501; Davies and Allison, Matthew 3.624; and
further Brown, Death 1051-58.
90. 'He did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face
from him (MT)/me (LXX), but heard when he (MT)/I (LXX) cried to him' (Ps. 22.24).
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