[Maryann Corbett]

Another of my more wacky questions:

Does anyone know how the stresses would fall in this phrase spoken by Jesus in the crucifixion story?

In Mark, it's Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?

In Matthew, it's Eli, Eli...

As I understand it the first is straight Aramaic, while in the second one a word has been nudged toward Hebrew.

Thanks for any help you can offer.
Maryann

[Tim Murphy]

When I'm doing the Passions as lector, I pronounce it as five trochees. I've no authority for doing so, but it sounds great.

[David Anthony]

Isn't it 'lama sabachtani'?
Not that I know anything about Aramaic.
Best,
David

[Maryann Corbett]

David, I grew up hearing "lama" also, and was surprised to find that the New American Bible (used in the modern lectionary) has "lema." When I google "lama" I get some 7000 hits, while "lema" gives me 12,000 (including the other spelling.)

Tim, thanks; I was doing it that way also but realized I had no backing for it. (Off-topic: I only get to be The Crowd in the Passion, but at least I sometimes get to sing it. Try singing "Crucify him!" triple forte in a high tessitura. Guaranteed to make one think.)

[Chris Childers]

Presumably the version in our Bibles is just a transliteration of the phrase in the Greek New Testament, doubtless to some degree a Hellenization of the original Aramaic. I know nothing about Aramaic, but Perseus gives the Greek version as follows, which would be pronounced and accented thus:

eloEE, eloEE, lamA sabakhthanAY

But my pronunciation of Greek is classical and I don't know to what degree the classical would have shifted to the demotic by the time the Gospel of Mark was written. If I were you, I'd just say it like everybody else does in English & not worry about how well you would be understood by a 2000 year-old speaker of Aramaic. That or find a learned commentary on Mark 15.

Chris

[Stephen Collington]

Hi Maryann,

Don't know about the Aramaic, though I suspect that (being related) it will be quite similar to the Hebrew. The rule in Hebrew (with exceptions: "segholates," enclitics etc.) is that the last syllable of the word is always accented. Here, however, something interesting seems to happen. The line itself is a quotation from Psalm 22, verse 1(2). The Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures includes accent markings to indicate the correct reading for synagogue cantors; this is what it says:

eLI Eli, laMAH 'azabTHAni.

The penultimate accent on 'azabTHAni (which is, apparently, more or less synonymous with the Aramaic "sabachthani") is easy to explain: the last "ni" is an enclitic pronoun ("me") that takes no accent . . . and so the accent here is indeed on the "last" syllable. But I would love to know, if there's someone out there who really knows their Hebrew, just what's going on with the switch of accent on the second "Eli" here. Any takers?

Hope that's helpful, Maryann.
Steve C.

p.s. For it's worth, many English bibles include pronunciation markings. So in my New Scofield Reference Edition, we have

Eli Eli, LAma saBACHthani

and

Eloi, Eloi, LAma saBACHthani

which more or less puts you on the spot, doesn't it! (It also indicates, with macrons over the vowels, that Eloi is to be pronounced as a trisyllable: E-lo-i.) You seem to have a choice: "authentic" Hebrew or "authentic" Christian tradition.

p.p.s. Cross-posted with Chris, who raises an interesting point about the Greek text. It just keeps getting more and more complicated, doesn't it! One thing to remember, though: the various markings which indicate accent in modern Greek texts, while developed as a teaching tool in the Hellenistic period, only were applied to written texts in general many centuries later. So the accenting of the Hebrew/Aramaic there is only a later editor's guess. My Nestle edition shows no accent markings over the words at all, which no doubt is how they appear in the manuscripts.




[This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited January 17, 2008).]

[Roger Slater]

From a few years of Hebrew school and some time spent listening in temple to prayers in Hebrew and Aramaic, oh so long ago, my educated but tentatively offered stresses and pronunciation:

eLEE eLEE leMA saBACH tan-EE

I do think that to some extent, it depends on the speaker. the "ee" or "i" at the end of each word is the first person pronoun, so if he is saying MY Lord why did you abandon ME, the last syllable would take more stress. And I'm giving what I believe are the stresses in the words, not the scansion of the line -- I have no idea whether Aramaic would promote or demote syllables, for example.

But I'm faking it here. Maybe Seree will stop by and tell us the answer.


[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 17, 2008).]

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks so much, Chris, Stephen, and Roger. I always learn so much by asking these questions, even if in the end I have to toss a coin to decide! I hope to hear Seree's opinion too.

Maryann

[Seree Zohar]

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt2622.htm

hi guys
follow the link
the listen button is not so much a button as a text line center top

after you hear the reader say the first, introductory line, which ends with "le-daVID' listen carefully carefully.....

1. it is azavTAnee (you have left me) and not azabTAni
2. if it were the other option, it would be pronounced 'si-bakh-TA-nee' - (short si, as in sit) but this word means something else entirely: sort of: gotten me into a complicated situation: s'vakh is tangled bush - as in what the ram was caught in when Abraham's hand was stayed (Gen 22:13).
3. the first 2 words would correctly be SAID el-EE el-EE, but it would correctly be SUNG el-EE EL-ee which is a poetic stress and has to do with the open vowel at the end of the first word. Fractionally altered forms and pronunciations occur frequently in classical poetic Hebrew.
4. l'MA (instead of LAmah) is soemthing else: LAmah is why; l'MA is 'for what'? example: you come home with some new gadget and your partner says (rolleyes) (for) what is this good? "lema" seems to be neither here nor there, but it would be incorrect in Hebrew to say l'MA sibakhTAni except in very colloquial form - and then, the complex sibakhtani would not be used, but rather, siBAKHta o'TI - so I can't see how lema comes into the equation, either way.

Roger - accent is generally penultimate syllable; th focus of the word (as in, why did you leave ME) will not be the reason for an accentuated syllable.

for now


[This message has been edited by Seree Zohar (edited January 19, 2008).]

[Seree Zohar]

added note;
while I've no intention to debate what exactly was said and how it was said (ie, Heb or Aramaic), the phrase in the original, lifted from one of K. David's most famous pieces, is so complete and insular that it's hard to imagine why it would undergo any kind of linguistic transformation in a time when people were fluent in both languages. The second half - lama azavtani - would be just as casually dropped in exactly that form but with a humorous tone -- among young Israeli kids, for instance: if one of them had to leave his/her group of friends at the pizza place early .... or if one employee got stuck with a sticky situation when a colleague didnt turn up that day, and so on. Just thoughts....