[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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