Awaking early next morning, two or three hours before lecture, I spent the time in examining the gospels, and in particular the accounts of Christ’s last words. So few they were in Mark and Matthew that I could not anticipate that Luke would omit a single one of them or fail to give them exactly. They were uttered in public and in a loud voice. According to Mark and Matthew, they were a quotation from a Psalm, of which the Jewish words were given similarly by the two evangelists. They added a Greek interpretation. Luke, to my amazement, omitted both the Jewish words and the Greek interpretation. Afterwards, Mark and Matthew said that Jesus, in the moment of expiring, cried out again in a loud voice. On this occasion they gave no words. But there Luke mentioned words. Luke’s words, too, were from a Psalm, but quite different in meaning from the words previously given by Mark and Matthew. Still more astonished was I to find what kind of words the two earliest evangelists wrote down as the last utterance of Christ—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That Christ said this I could hardly believe. Reading further, I found that some of the men on guard exclaimed “This man calls for Elias”—because the Jewish word “Heli” or “Eli,” “my God,” resembles the Jewish “Elias.” I wished that these men might prove true interpreters. Then I found that, although Luke mentions neither “Eli” nor “Elias,” he nevertheless mentions “Elios” or “Helios,” which in Greek means “sun.” This occurred in the passage parallel to Eli or Heli. What Luke said was that there was an “eclipse,” or “failing,” of “the sun.” I thought then (and I think still) that Luke was glad—as a Christian historian might well be without being at all dishonest—to find that Mark’s “Eli” had been taken, at all events by some, not to mean “my God.” Perhaps some version gave “Elios,” or “Helios,” “sun.” This Luke might gladly accept. Indeed, in the genitive, which is the form used by Luke, the word “Heliou” may mean either “of the sun” or “of Elias.”