Jesus didn't tap!

Needless to say, Comrade X is more than disturbed by the latest trend among fundamentalist churches which, in order to bring young men back into the fold (after having lapsed, no doubt due to the boring and inapplicable nature of Christianity to their lives), have incorporated mixed martial arts cage matches into their weekly religious festivities (or whatever you call them). Now we begin to see such things as the above-pictured "Jesus didn't tap" t-shirt, in which the quintessential icon of universal peace and love and non-violence is turned into the harbinger of battle and blood and broken limbs. Jesus has been retooled for the 21st century -- no longer the peace-loving hippie beatnik, Jesus is now the Ultimate Fighter, the Cage Fighter Who Does Not Tap Out, the Biggest Bad-Ass of Them All. The iconography of the above shirt is somewhat confusing -- Jesus on the cross casting a shadow of two guys wrestling, with one guy putting an arm bar on another guy, and Comrade X is more than slightly confused as to what this is supposed to mean, so he went to the King James Version of the Bible (not the heavily-edited and misrepresentative NIV version) to see what was going on. And here is what he found:

In St. Matthew (27:46), it says, "And about he ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Okay, here it sounds like Jesus is definitely tapping out to God. And if we look at St. Mark (15:34), we find, "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Okay, a little inconsistency in the quotation, but the sense is the same, and these two writers were pretty coeval. But:

We now move to a writer who wrote rather later than the above two, St. Luke, and here the sense of this scene (and passage) changes significantly (23:46): "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost." Okay, here Jesus is beginning to look like the uncompromising, uncomplaining, undoubting bad-ass the fundamentalists want to paint him as. No more lamentation, just resignation, and, if you will, only tapping out when there is no other option (i.e., he dies). And then, even later:

St. John (19:30): "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." And so you see, Jesus has now morphed into the Ultimate Fighter, who receives the biblical equivalent of a WWF chair-smash from behind after refusing to give in to various stab wounds and assorted beatings-- given vinegar to drink, he says, "Okay, that's it, but not by choice, motherfuckers," and dies. Thus we arrive at the latest trend, all based, it turns out, on what could conceivably be construed as (however thin) biblical evidence. Jesus is the toughest there is, and never gives in, even when the odds are overwhelmingly against him.

So there you go. Jesus didn't tap. Amen for revisionist history.