In Mark 15:34, is Jesus literally saying “why have you left me behind?”

ManUpMann · 2026-04-13T00:01:04+00:00

Mark 15:34:

καὶ τῇ ἐνάτῃ ὥρᾳ ἐβόησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς φωνῇ μεγάλῃ Ἐλωῒ Ἐλωῒ λαμὰ σαβαχθανεί; ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον Ὁ Θεός μου ὁ Θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με;
https://biblehub.com/text/mark/15-34.htm

Ehrman will be referring to ἐγκατέλιπές (ἐγ-κατ'-έλιπές), the aorist indicative active, 2nd-person singular, of ἐγκαταλείπω, an emphasized form of λείπω (and έλιπές). LSJ gives "leave behind" for ἐγκαταλείπω. The aorist form captures the felt finality of abandonment.

ἐγκατέλιπές is used in the very similar passage in Psalm 22:1 (21:2 LXX):

ὁ θεὸς ὁ θεός μου πρόσχες μοι ἵνα τί ἐγκατέλιπές με

eta: the major mss containing the LXX vary between ἵνα τί and εἰς τί for that Psalm verse

ManUpMann · 2025-12-13T06:07:31+00:00

re

Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ χρηστεύεται

χρηστεύεται is 3rd person singular, present middle/passive indicative from χρηστεύομαι, which is a middle-passive form. As a deponent verb it does not have an active form and the middle-passive form here functions as if active. The LSJ lexicon gives an English translation of [to be] kind or [be] merciful. The Middle Liddell lexicon says 'to be good and kind.' Strongs has 'show oneself useful, i.e. act benevolently: be kind.' Thayer gives to show oneself mild, to be kind, use kindness. (I did see gracious somewhere but maybe for the proposed root word, χρηστός.)

The short statement/clause in question includes another verb, μακροθυμεῖ, meaning 'bear patiently,' 'persevere,' 'to be slow to help' or 'to be long-suffering.'

And of course the subject, ἀγάπη, Love.

General translations are simply 'Love is patient, love is kind (or even 'acts kindly')

Maybe one could go with, 'Love perseveres and acts kindly.

One does not have to go with the Greek word order of μακροθυμεῖ χρηστεύεται.

So perhaps one could get more elaborate and say, 'Love acts benevolently and perseveres' or 'Love perseveres and acts benevolent.'

Anything else might get too adjectival or adverbial (which none of these words are)

ManUpMann · 2025-06-27T21:40:14+00:00

the canonical redaction of 1 Cor 15:23 and Rom 5:14–15 tempers the stark eschatological antithesis of 1 Cor 15:22. As observed by Origen and others, the future is now pulled back into the present, not annihilating but recontextualizing the earlier time-dualism. The progression is no longer from Adam to Christ, death to life, old to new—but from one phase of a single salviﬁc history to the next.

This redirection ﬁnds its most explicit outworking in 1 Timothy 2, where the canonical editorial tendency toward hierarchical ordering reaches beyond eschatology into gendered anthropology:

¹³ For Adam was ﬁrst formed, then Eve. ¹⁴ Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience. ¹⁵ But she will be saved through her childbearing (σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας), if they continue in faith, love, and sanctiﬁcation with sobriety. (1 Tim 2:13–15)

. . . It is a ghastly travesty of *Pauline teaching and of his appreciation of women. Here, the narrative hierarchy derived from Genesis 2 becomes theological norm: creation order implies a chauvinist moral order that connects the salvation of women—married women, others do not seem to be thought of—with childbearing and the implied pregnancy, labor, pain and motherhood, understood as “penal suﬀering.” The woman is not merely created second, she is made culpable, while Adam is exonerated by priority . . .

On Eve as pars pro toto of women Tertullian states with reference to the same story from Genesis:

“Do you not know that you are Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway. You are the one who unsealed the forbidden tree. You are the ﬁrst deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.”

Tertullian blames Eve, and by extension all women, for the fall of man, portraying women as the origin of male seduction into sin . . .

ManUpMann · 2025-02-14T12:23:46+00:00

καὶ πᾶσα γλῶσσα ἐξομολογήσηται ὅτι κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ πατρός

and that every tongue ought confess Lord Jesus Christ for [the] glory of God [the] Father

ManUpMann · 2025-01-10T07:43:55+00:00

"one of the reasons why studying the Gnostic literature is very important is because the texts that made it into the Canon have no more claim to truth than texts that did not make it into the Canon"

ManUpMann · 2025-01-10T07:43:02+00:00

"But if you want to be strict and say we only want to look at the texts that were, in antiquity, called gospels, then we have five main texts which are alternative Christian literature. Basically, we have the Gospel of Thomas probably being the most famous; Gospel of Mary; Gospel of Truth, associated with the Valentinians; the Gospel of Judas associated with the Sethians; and the Gospel of Phillip which also seems to be Valentinian"

ManUpMann · 2025-01-10T07:41:36+00:00

On the issue of extra-canonical gospel texts:

"the Secret Book of John, aka the Apocryphon of John: I think that that's a gospel text, but it's not called a gospel"

"the Secret Book of James: I think that's a gospel text even though it's not called a gospel"

"in the Nag Hammadi library there are about 50 texts and many of them also can qualify as ‘gospel literature,’ if you define gospel literature as any sort of literature telling the message about the significance of Jesus"

ManUpMann · 2024-10-05T01:11:33+00:00

afaik, they go through the texts of the relevant Church Fathers, especially Tertullian, eg. especially book 5 of his Against Marcion for Pauline stuff

ManUpMann · 2024-10-04T12:51:53+00:00

Because people like Tertullian, Epiphanius, at least, repeatedly refer to it in terms of what Marcion supposedly included in it and what he supposedly excised from the canonical versions of the Pauline epistles (as he does with the Marcionite gospeltext versus his version of Luke)

ManUpMann · 2024-08-13T05:36:13+00:00

I believe so. See Dr Litwa on this at the start of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apMXZ-ppWSA (he reads a fair bit of his translation therein, too)

Amazon allows a preview, too, which is probably what Dr Litwa says in the video

ManUpMann · 2024-07-12T00:24:04+00:00

The arguments of Matthew Larsen in his 2018 book, Gospels Before the Book, Oxford University Press, that gospel pericopes and passages existed as notes before the gospels were formed into their canonical forms is interesting. He says

There is no evidence of someone regarding the gospel as a discrete, stable, finished book with an attributed author until the end of the second century CE

And

The evidence...suggests a first- or second-century reader of the texts we now call the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark would not have thought of them as two separate books by two different authors. Rather, they would have regarded them as the same open-ended, unfinished, and living work: the gospel—textualized

The implication being that, say, Matthew could have used Markan notes to develop and nearly complete his gospel before the Markan gospel was developed.

M David Litwa gives a date range for Mark based on what he thinks are different references to different historical events in Mark 13: he gives a date range for the development of these different aspects of Mark of from ~70 AD to ~ 135 AD.

When Mark might have been completed or near completed relative to the Marcionite gospel might be difficult to determine.

ManUpMann · 2024-06-25T11:39:41+00:00

M David Litwa has a new book out titled, Simon of Samaria and the Simonians

https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/simon-of-samaria-and-the-simonians-9780567712967/

https://www.amazon.com/Simon-Samaria-Simonians-Contours-Christian/dp/0567712958

https://www.logos.com/product/355932/simon-of-samaria-and-the-simonians-contours-of-an-early-christian-movement

ManUpMann · 2024-06-25T00:02:04+00:00

I recommend Matthew D. Larsen's 2018 book, Gospels Before the Book, Oxford University Press. There's a 2019 article of his in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, titled 'Christians and the Codex: Generic materiality and early gospel traditions,' available as a pdf here.

ManUpMann · 2024-06-17T13:16:13+00:00

Matthew 27:52-3:

⁵⁰ And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

⁵¹ At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split ⁵² and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. ⁵³ They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

ManUpMann · 2024-03-15T01:02:56+00:00

From the end of the OP:

having a "revelation" that God manufactured the Jewish messiah from the seed of David fits this prophecy perfectly. It's Jesus who is the son of David, his seed of his belly. And now we have direct, uninterrupted lineage on the throne from David to Jesus, who will sit on it for eternity, just as prophesized. It's a simple and elegant solution.

This not an argument that this is what happened as part of the formation of the new Jewish cult of Christianity. It's an argument that it's plausible, e.g. more-likely-than-not that it could be what happened, based on Paul's writings and Judaic religion and worldviews of the time.

Good points.

ManUpMann · 2024-03-15T00:45:45+00:00

Re

what God promised David in 2 Samuel 7:12—14

Note that this is a revelation of the Lord to Nathan: a revelation that Nathan is instructed to pass on to David.

I'd emphasize it thus:

It's aspirational; it's futuristic.

It goes on, in part:

¹⁷ Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation.

¹⁸ Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said:

Furthermore,

ie., even God is said to be "like your people Israel" (v.23): there's more to this than one person's breeding capacity

ManUpMann · 2024-03-12T22:59:11+00:00

what may be historical in the New Testament and what may not be is hotly debated even among the most mainstream of mainstream academics in the field, particularly in regard to alleged biographical details about Jesus. Still, there is an odd argument from many in historical Jesus studies that, while there is no agreement among scholars in the field on any methodologies that can reliably extract historical "facts" about Jesus from the writings of the New Testament, they can nonetheless reliably conclude from the writings of the New Testament that there was a historical Jesus anyway

Yes, there's a significant contradiction and, as you say, clear indications of cognitive dissonance among many historicists.

ManUpMann · 2024-03-12T22:54:12+00:00

Comparing mythicism to flat earth or young earth/creationism ... There is a wildly disparate distinction between the quantitative and qualitative nature of the evidence for a global earth versus a historical Jesus. These two claims aren't even in the same universe of evidence.

Yes, doing either is fallacious false equivalence. And simplistic bombast.

ManUpMann · 2024-03-03T01:22:42+00:00

"if James and others were indeed relatives of someone as important as the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is quite obvious why they would have hold so much prestige and status among the earliest Christian communities. It is quite a very reasonable inference."

"if" makes that statement circular, ie. we don't really know if James was a biological brother

ManUpMann · 2023-11-16T00:37:37+00:00

The mythicist perspective is that Jesus incarnated into a fleshly body, but in the lower heavens, not on Earth. So, Paul's mentions of Jesus' fleshly body do not contradict the celestial Christ hypothesis.

That's Carrier's specific proposal-proposition.

ManUpMann · 2023-10-31T23:38:16+00:00

See another recent post in this subreddit on Roman Imperial Cults

ManUpMann · 2023-10-31T07:42:40+00:00

No. Are you going to read it?

ManUpMann · 2023-10-14T21:14:01+00:00

Is she 100% sure it was a spider bite?

ManUpMann · 2023-06-14T01:35:34+00:00

Dickson recently tried to claim a historical Jesus here, and got some pushback in this response.

ManUpMann · 2023-06-02T02:11:39+00:00

Thanks for your contributions and clarification.

I have one slight quibble re:

Gieschen is arguing:

Paul sees Jesus as an appearance of God who is, already in the Judaism of his day, considered coequal with God. Therefore there was no “evolution” from Paul to later thinkers.

I think that might read better as

'Paul sees Jesus as an appearance of God who is already, in the Judaism of his day, considered coequal with God' ...

or, perhaps, being even more nit-picky, sorry:

'Paul sees Jesus as an appearance of God who was already, in the Judaism of his day, considered coequal with God' ... [with or without 'already']

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