Could Jesus’ cry on the cross be translated ‘Why didst thou forsake me?’?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1994.

You raise a very interesting point. The Greek aorist, certainly in its majority use, refers to a point of action in the past, and therefore is more appropriately translated by an English past definite than by a perfect. It is therefore certainly open to you to translate the cry of dereliction as, 'Why didst thou forsake me?', rather than, 'Why hast thou forsaken me?'

One slightly complicating factor is that, in Greek usage, the aorist tense is used on occasions where English idiom uses a perfect tense. In these instances, a Greek looks to the past point of the ingression of an action, whereas English tends to view the action as a whole. A Greek businessman might well say to the bank manager, 'Why did you ruin me by calling in my loan?', whereas an English businessman might say to the bank manager, 'Why have you ruined me by calling in the loan?'.

A further complication is that the Greek of Matthew and Mark is based upon the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew. Is it your impression that, in the Hebrew of Psalm 22, the forsaking is already over; or does it last until about halfway through the Psalm, as many commentators feel?

Obviously, the meaning of the Hebrew will determine whether you translate the Greek aorist as an English past definite, as you are perfectly entitled to do, or as a perfect, which again is legitimate in many instances in Greek.

To sum up these brief remarks then, this seems to me to be yet another case in which the Greek grammarian cannot have the last say: it must be the exegete and expositor who should have the final word.

With warmest greetings,