[B-Greek] MARIAMENOUMARA Ossuary Name

Joseph Weaks j.weaks at tcu.edu
Sat Mar 3 20:17:58 EST 2007


There is one aspect of the popular story regarding the Talpiot tomb  
and its identification with New Testament figures, namely, the  
association of the Greek name MARIAMENOUMARA with Mary Magdalene.
Richard Baukham in his posted response to the story includes a  
lengthy discussion concluding that MARIAMENOUMARA derives from a  
different form and can not be associated with Mary Magdalene. I'm not  
savvy enough in this area to have comment. I'm curious if any here do.
Here's the relevant section of the article. (Full text can be found  
here http://www.christilling.de/blog/2007/03/guest-post-by-richard- 
bauckham.html)

Richard Baukham
March 1, 2007

The six persons named in the ossuary inscriptions (Rahmani 701-706) are:
(1) Mariamenou-Mara (the first name is a unique form of the name  
Mariam, Mary, and will be discussed separately below).
...
The name Mariamenou-Mara

The Hebrew name Mariam was very popular among Palestinian Jews at  
this period, though hardly used at all in the diaspora. It was  
usually rendered in Greek in one of two forms: Maria and Mariamme (or  
Mariame). It could, of course, be simply written as Mariam in Greek  
characters (and this is the practice of the Septuagint, the Greek Old  
Testament, when referring to Mariam the sister of Moses, called  
Miriam in English Bibles). But we know only four cases in which this  
was done with reference to a living person of the early Jewish  
period. (One of these is Luke 10:39-42, referring to Mary the sister  
of Martha, though there is a variant reading Maria).

Much more popular were the forms Maria (the form used everywhere in  
the New Testament, except Luke 10:39-40, for all the various Maries  
it refers to) and Mariamme/Mariame (used, for example, by Josephus).  
Both give the name a more Greek form than the simple transliteration  
Mariam. Palestinian Jewish women who themselves used a Greek form of  
their name as well as a Semitic form (a common practice) would be  
likely to have used Maria or Mariamme. This accounts for the fact  
that the Greek form Maria is often found on ossuaries transliterated  
back into Hebrew characters as Mariah. (Odd as this practice might  
seem, there are examples for other names too.) This is what has  
happened in the case of the woman called Maria (in Hebrew characters)  
on one of the ossuaries we are studying.

It is worth noting that this Greek form of the name Miriam has  
nothing to do with the Latin name Maria, which also existed. The  
coincidence is just a coincidence. It was, however, a coincidence  
that Jews living in a Latin-speaking environment could have  
exploited, just as Jews in Palestine exploited the coincidental near- 
identity of the Hebrew name Simeon and the Greek name Simon. The  
woman called Maria in Romans 16:6, a member of the Christian  
community in Rome, may have been a Jew called Mariam in Hebrew (an  
emigrant from Palestine), or a Gentile with the Latin name Maria, or  
a Jew living in Rome who had the name Maria precisely because it  
could be understood as both Hebrew and Latin.

In the Gospels Mary Magdalene’s name is always given in the Greek  
form Maria, which is the New Testament’s standard practice for  
rendering Mariam into Greek, except for Luke 10:39-42. As we have  
noted it is standard Greek form of Mariam. However, from probably the  
mid-second century onwards we find some references to Mary Magdalene  
(often identified with Mary of Bethany and/or other Gospel Maries)  
that use the alternative standard Greek form Mariamme (or Mariame).  
These references are all either in Gnostic works (using ‘Gnostic’  
fairly loosely) or in writers referring to Gnostic usage.

We find the form Mariamme in Celsus, the second-century pagan critic  
of Christianity, who lists Christian sectarian groups, including some  
who follow Mary (apo Mariammes). These may well be the group who used  
the Gospel of Mary (late 2nd century?), a Greek fragment of which  
calls Mary Magdalene Mariamme. This form of her name also appears in  
the Coptic (a translation from Greek) of the Gnostic Work the Sophia  
of Jesus Christ (CG III,4). The usage may have been more widespread  
in Gnostic literature, but the fact that we have most Gnostic works  
only in Coptic makes it hard to tell.)

This tradition of using the form Mariamme for Mary Magdalene must  
have been an alternative tradition of rendering her name in Greek. It  
most likely goes back to a usage within the orbit of Jewish Palestine  
(since the name Mary in any form was very rare in the diaspora and  
Gentile Christians would not be familiar with the name Mariamme  
ordinarily). But so does the usage of Maria in the New Testament  
Gospels, at least one of which is at least a century earlier than any  
evidence we have for giving her the name Mariamme. It would be  
hazardous to suppose that Mariamme was the Greek form of her name use  
by Mary Magdalene herself or the earliest disciples of Jesus.

The Gnostic use of Mariamme is also reported by Hioppolytus in his  
Refutation of All Heresies (written between 228 and 233). He says  
that the Naassenes claimed to have a secret teaching that James the  
brother of Jesus had transmitted to Mary (5.7.1; 10.9.3). What is  
especially significant is that the manuscript evidence is divided  
between two forms of the name: Mariamme and Mariamne (note the ‘n’!).  
It is probably impossible to tell which Hippolytus himself wrote.  
However, it is easy to see that, in a milieu where the name Mariamme  
was not otherwise known, the usage could slip from Mariamme to Mariamne.

These variant readings in Hippolytus are the first known occurrences  
of the form Mariamne (which the Discovery Channel programme claims is  
the same name as that on one of the ossuaries). Since it occurs in  
Hippolytus as a variant of Mariamme, and since the latter is well  
attested in Jewish usage back to the first century CE, it seems clear  
that the form Mariamne is not really an independent version of the  
name Mariam (independent of Mariamme, that is). But a late  
deformation of the form Mariamme, a deformation made by Greek  
speakers not familiar with the name. This must also then explain the  
usage in the apocryphal Acts of Philip (late 4th or early 5th  
century), where Mariamne is consistently and frequently used for the  
sister of the apostle Philip, apparently identified with both Mary  
Magdalene and Mary of Bethany.

We can now turn to the inscription on the ossuary, which has, in  
Greek: MARIAMENOUMARA. The two words Mariamenou and Mara are written  
consecutively with no space between. This makes it rather unlikely  
that two women are named here. But Rahmani takes a small stroke  
between the last letter of Mariamenou and the first of Mara to be a  
Greek letter eta (long e). He takes this to be the relative pronoun  
he Ieta with a rough breathing), reading: ‘Mariamnenou who [is also  
called] Mara.’ (Note that this is different, it seems, from what the  
Discovery Channel do when they read the eta with a smooth breathing,  
meaning ‘or’.) There are parallels (I gather from Rahmani) to this  
abbreviated way of indicating two names for the same person.

The form of the name on the ossuary in question is Mariamenou. This  
is a Greek genitive case, used to indicate that the ossuary belongs  
to Mary (it means 'Mary's' or 'belonging to Mary'). The nominative  
would be Mariamenon. Mariamenon is a diminutive form, used as a form  
of endearment. The neuter gender is normal in diminutives used for  
women. But the name Mariamenon is found only here in all our evidence  
for ancient Jewish names. It is, of course, a specifically Greek  
formation, not used in Hebrew or Aramaic.

This diminutive, Mariamenon, would seem to have been formed from the  
name Mariamene, a name which is attested twice elsewhere (in the  
Babatha archive and in the Jewish catacombs at Beth She’arim).  
Mariamene is an unusual Greek form of Mariam, presumably invented  
because it has a rather elegant hellenized form. When I first looked  
at this issue I was rather persuaded that the form Mariamne was a  
contracted form of Mariamene (which I think is what the Discovery  
Channel film claims), but I then found that the second and third  
century evidence (reviewed above) makes it much more plausible that  
the form Mariamne is a late deformation of Mariamme that occurred  
only in a context outside Palestine where the name was not known. So  
the Discovery Channel film’s claim that the name on the ossuary is  
the same as the name known to have been used for Mary Magdalene in  
the Acts of Philip is mistaken.

But we must also consider the rest of this inscription. The Discovery  
Channel film proposes to read Mara as the Aramaic word ‘the  
master’ (as in Maranatha). But, since we know that Mara was used as  
an abbreviated form of Martha, in this context of names on an ossuary  
it is much more plausible to read it as a name. This woman had two  
names: Mariamenon and Mara. It could be that the latter in this case  
was used as an abbreviation of Mariamenou, or it could be that the  
woman was known by Mariamenon, treated as a Greek name, and the  
Aramaic name Mara, conforming to the common practice of being known  
by two names, Greek and Semitic.

If the woman, for whatever reason, is given two different names on  
the ossuary, it is very unlikely that she would also have been known  
as Mariamene, even though this is the form of which Mariamenon is the  
diminutive. One other point can be made about Mariamenon. As a term  
of endearment it would be likely to have originated in the context of  
her family. But in that case, we probably need to envisage a family  
which used Greek as an ordinary language within the family. This does  
not mean it did not also use Aramaic, which would probably be the  
case if the names on the other ossuaries are those of family members  
closely related to Mariamenon. The family could have been bilingual  
even within its own orbit. Alternatively, the ossuaries in Aramaic  
could come from a branch of a big family or a generation of the  
family different from that of Mariamenon, such that their linguistic  
practice would be different. In any case, it is unlikely that the  
close family of Jesus would have spoken Greek within the family, and  
so it is unlikely that Mariamenon belonged to that close family circle.

The conclusion is that the name Mariamenon is unique, the diminutive  
of the very rare Mariamene. Neither is related to the form Maramne,  
except in the sense that all derive ultimately from the name Mariam.  
There is no reason at all to connect the woman in this ossuary with  
Mary Magdalene, and in fact the name usage is decisively against such  
a connexion.




--------------------------------
Rev. Joseph A. Weaks
Minister, Raytown Christian Church, 	
	Raytown, MO
Ph.D. Cand., Brite Divinity School
	TCU, Ft. Worth, TX

The Macintosh Biblioblog  http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com
"All things Macintosh for the Bible Scholar"


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