“Concerning the ‘forsaking,’ I suggested to you before that it is a metaphor. If so, the reality may be expressed by other metaphors in the scriptures, such as ‘I have lost the light of thy countenance,’ ‘I am cast away from the joy of thy presence,’ ‘My soul is deprived of the fountain of thy light.’ The Psalms say, ‘O God, my God … my soul is athirst for thee,’ and again, ‘My soul thirsteth for God, … when shall I come and appear before God?’ The ‘thirst’ implies absence from God. It will be satisfied by ‘coming’ to God. Well, John represents Jesus as saying, ‘I thirst,’ in accomplishment of ‘the scriptures.’ Then (as I take it) the soldiers misunderstand this thirst as meaning simply literal thirst. They offer Christ vinegar. Christ ‘took it,’ says the gospel. Then He said, ‘It is finished’ and ‘rested His head’—that is to say, on the bosom of the Father, and ‘delivered over His spirit’.” “‘Rested His head’ is a strange expression,” said I. “It is,” said Clemens, “but it occurs in Matthew and Luke as follows, ‘The Son of man hath not where to rest His head,’ meaning ‘He hath no home, no resting-place, on earth, but only with the Father above.’ One of the ablest Greek scholars among the brethren assures me that John also uses the phrase to mean this; and I believe it is not used in Greek in any other sense. So, too, ‘delivered over His spirit’ signifies that in the supreme moment the ‘delivering over’ of the Suffering Servant was not passive but active. He delivered Himself over. But I ought to add that, in Aramaic, the same verb means (in different forms) ‘finish,’ ‘deliver over,’ and—the word used here by Mark and Luke—‘expire’.” Scaurus had said something of this kind concerning the three gospels, and had argued that it increased the difficulty of ascertaining what Christ actually said. But I had supposed that it would not extend to a gospel written in a Greek city like Ephesus and so long after the other gospels, when Greek traditions might be expected to predominate. I was depressed by this frank avowal on the part of Clemens, and remained in silence for a moment or two weighing its consequences. CHAPTER XXXII CLEMENS LENDS SILANUS THE FOURTH GOSPEL