Ecrasez L'infame

Well, count 'em. The Gospels have the following (compiled with the help of Odelain and Seguineau's Dictionary of Proper Names and Places in the Bible):

(1) Mary mother of Jesus: the infancy chapters of Mt & Lk, Cana, at the Cross, brief noises-off appearances in Mt 13, Mk 6, Jn 2.12, Lk 11 and elsewhere.
(2) Mary of Magdela: delivered of demons (Lk 8.2 and, in flashback, Mk 16.9), at the Cross, at the empty tomb and a witness to the resurrection.
(3) Mary of Bethany: sister of Lazarus and Martha, at the feet of Jesus, anointing the same, tells Jesus it's payback time when Lazarus dies.
Note: according to Odelain and Seguineau, "the view that sees [Magdela, Bethany, and the unnamed sinful woman of Luke 7] as one and the same person lacks neither defenders nor arguments". Quite.
(4) Mary, mother of James (the Lesser) and Joseph or Joses: at the Cross and the empty tomb.
(5) Mary wife of Cleophas. At the Cross in John's version.
Note: It is usual to identify the wife of Cleophas, the mother of James, and "the other Mary" in Mt as all the same person.

That's between three and five women all with the same name - and there's yet another Mary, the mother of John Mark, from Acts 12. Well, that's a lot. For comparison, how many (named) women in the Gospels AREN'T called Mary? (this is a hand compiled list, so I might have missed a few bit-players).

Elizabeth
Salome of the Cross
Martha
Joanna
Suzanna

About the same number, only Elizabeth of whom is at all important. Sorry - but no writer gives all their characters the same name, unless there's some point behind it, as in (for example) the Comedy of Errors. So... what are the authors of the Gospels trying to tell us? How should this obviously deliberate contrivance by understood?

Gorit Maqueda

I recently read an article somewhere (that's not a good source, is it?) that stated that Mary was a common name in Palestine those days: about one third of all women were called Mariam / Miriam.

If that's true, the deviation you see is not statistically significant.

On the other hand, my wife and two of her four sisters are called Mary. I think I'll check with my father-in-law. Stay tuned :-)

Ecrasez L'infame

I could have made myself clearer. I'm treating the Gospels as a story - not necessarily fiction, but still as something told for the sake of its characters, plot, themes, etc, and not merely its facts (if any). Now, it is a universal rule of storytelling that you keep your characters' names distinct. Not to do so is not only confusing, but breaks the spell of the story, since the reader immediately sits up and thinks "why is the writer trying to draw my attention to this coincidence of names?". The only exception is where the writer IS trying to draw the reader's attention to the coincidence - as in the Comedy of Errors, where characters' names are not only plot devices but also (perhaps!) authorial asides on the nature of human identity and difference.

So, why are the Evangelists trying to draw our attention to all these Maries? What would have jumped out of the page about the coincidence for the early readers, that we can't now see? Because even if there really had been all these Maries around Jesus' ministry, the Evangelists could easily have played down the confusion: drop the mother of James character, either have identified Magdela and Bethany or dropped Bethany in the Synoptics, and in Mark at least there's no need to give Jesus' mother a name. In short, the confusion is there delibrately, it is a literary contrivance. Why?

Ben C Smith

Richard Bauckham in his most recent book (or via: amazon.co.uk) has a chapter on Palestinian Jewish names. He tallies up the extant Palestinian male and female names from Josephus, Qumran, the ossuaries, NT texts, and papyri and runs some rough statistics.

The name Mary was the most popular female name. 70 out of the 328 female names (21%) were Mary/Miriam (with Salome in second place). In the NT and Acts, 6 out of 18 female names (33%) were Mary.

Given the relatively small statistical sample available for female names, none of this is very surprising.

Ben.

Ecrasez L'infame

Thanks for this.

Well, since you're trying to show that we shouldn't be surprised by how common "Mary" is in the Gospels, you have to exclude the NT women from the analysis - otherwise you're arguing in a circle. In fact, several of Bauckham's categories are problematic: what date range does he allow for ossuaries and papyri, for example? Might he be including Christians who were named after NT characters? If he gives separate figures just for Josephus, I'd like to see them. I did a search on the Guttenberg downloads of BJ and Ant, and found only two references: Mary the child-eater and Miriam the sister of Moses - hardly a common name in those two books, then.

With the help of Odelain & Seguineau, I did more analyses. They give separate lists for wives, concubines, sisters, and mothers for the whole (Jerusalem translation) OT. There are just 150 women in those lists, of which ONE is Mary/ Miriam: the sister of Moses (there's another Miriam in the OT, a Calebite mentioned in 1 Ch. - too minor for O&S to list). Then, turning to the Gospels, we have (see the OP) eight to ten women, of which three to five are "Mary" (40 to 50%). Hmm. In the rest of the NT, my rather rough hand count is a total of 22 women, of which 2 are named Mary (the mother of Mark and a Christian woman in Rome). Double Hmm. In all the above, I've been looking for Mariamme and Mariam as well as Mary and Miriam - no dice. Turning to a standard Herodian family tree, I see three or four Mariammes out of something like 13 women, which is more like Bauckham's figures - but those are all princesses. Would it have been common for ordinary people to name their daughters after Herodians?

However you look at the figures, it seems the Gospels are anomalous. But, really, none of this is the point. I'm quite happy to believe that the name became incredibly popular between the testaments, then faded again except among Royalty and the Christians - but the point is that there was no need for the Evangelists to have so many Maries. Matthew and Luke are quite happy to alter Mark if they think it makes a better storytelling, and we have no reason to doubt that Mark did the same with his sources. All they had to do was drop the mother of James character, hide the name of Jesus' mother, and blur Magdala and Bethany - much less than they did to alter the infancy narrative, for example. By not doing so, they are not just breaking the rules of storytelling - they are screaming at the reader: this is not a casual choice of name. This is deliberate, and important. This is something we are specifically drawing your attention to. This has meaning.

Now, why should they do that?

(BTW - that's not rhetorical - I have no pet theory on the matter ready to spring on you in my next post. All I know is that rule one of storytelling is the same now as it's always been: you don't wheel a cannon on stage if you're not going to fire it.)

Robert

Ben C Smith

Sure, if you like, but since the NT names comprise only about 4% of the total, and since all the stats are rough-cut to begin with, their omission is not going to affect very much.

330 BC to 200 AD. See pages 67-68. Bauckham is using the statistics compiled by Tal Ilan in Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity. The period is from the Hellenization of Palestine to the end of the Mishnaic period.

(Bauckham modifies the stats from Ilan in various ways, but he explains these ways and why they matter pretty thoroughly.)

Given those dates, I doubt it. These are Palestinian names only.

Pages 85-92.

Bauckham, using Ilan, gives 7 as the number of Maries in Josephus.

You are counting the OT here?? The change in nomenclature is so pronounced from before the Hellenization of Palestine to after that I cannot see how the OT is going to help very much. (For example, the name Simeon in the OT almost always refers to the tribe or its namesake. One would never guess from the OT that Simon/Simeon would become by far the most popular Jewish name in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Mishnaic periods.)

Based on your own impromptu handcounts? In English translation? :huh:

Unless that was how many Maries they were given.

These rules of storytelling... where might I look them up?

It may have. But I would suggest that figuring out whether having this many Maries is anomalous or not should precede figuring out what that meaning may be.

Ben.

Ecrasez L'infame

Ben, thanks for your good arguments. I'm still standing, though.

Actually, there's quite a few Simons/ Simeons/ Shimeons in the OT, especially if you allow 1 & 2 Maccabees. There's also several in the Gospels, and I'd agree that there's the same problem there as with the Maries: too many Simons (don't get me started on the completely unnecessary Simon the Zealot). The difference is of course that there's also (at a rough guess) forty men in the Gospels NOT named Simon; whereas there's hardly any woman there not named Mary. Let's take gMark alone, as the first Gospel. In it, there are three Maries and (as far as I can see) only one non-Mary (Salome). gMatthew doesn't even have Salome, while making Jesus' mother much more important; and it is only in Luke that all the minor non-Maries get mentioned (along with Mary of Bethany). Around the Cross, we have:

Matthew - 2 Maries and no other named woman;
Mark - 2 Maries, Salome, and no other named woman;
Luke - no named women;
John - 3 Maries and no other named woman.

Hmm. As I say, I'm prepared to concede that "Mary" suddenly became a common name in late second Temple times... but dammit, there's something odd here. Can't you see it?

I'm surprised. I think he must be counting Mariammes - which is fair enough, providing you remember they were all Herodian princesses, and perhaps not reflecting how common the name was among poor fisherfolk. How many of Jesus' followers were called "Antipas" or "Agrippa" - or even "Herod"?

The people on IIDB are a pretty literate lot. How many novels, films or plays can anyone think of where more than one character has the same name? Off the top of my head, the only one I came up with (besides the Comedy of Errors) was Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter Catherine Linton in Wuthering Heights. Oh, and Earnshaw dies as Linton is being born, so they're never on stage together at the same time, unlike the women around the Cross. The rule is, confuse your reader and the spell of the story is broken. You might want to do that anyway - Bronte did - but you ought to have a good storytelling reason (in her case, providing Heathcliff with a constant reminder of how much he hates the younger Cathy).

So no, it still seems to me the Gospel Maries are anomalous, they are deliberately so, and that that fact needs explaining. On the other hand, I'm beginning to think that the explanation won't be all that interesting - something personal to Mark, perhaps, or an in-joke among the early Christians. Very difficult for us to know, and not all that interesting when we do. At the same time, it feels so odd.

Reluctantly agreed.



Thanks again

Robert

Ben C Smith

The Maccabees come from the early Hellenistic period. I have no trouble counting them in with the rest. It was the actual Jewish OT I objected to.

Aside from the Maccabean books, about how many Simeons would you count besides the tribe or its namesake?

Well, yes, but I think the answer may be far simpler than you seem to be allowing.

I think he may be; I do not have the book in front of me right now, but I know he discusses whether or not he counted that name. I just cannot remember at the moment whether he did or he did not.

You mean besides Herod the tanner, Antipas the zealot, and Agrippa of Jerusalem?

Just kidding. None, as far as I can tell.

Okay, now we are driving at a good point. Perhaps the gospels were not intended as novels, films, or plays. Perhaps there are so many Maries in the gospels and their names are so hard to keep straight without elaborate identifiers (Mary the mother of James and Joses, the other Mary, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary who anointed Jesus, and so forth) because that is just what the evangelists had to work with; there just happened to be a few Maries in the tradition who had been with Jesus.

I do not think the confusion is deliberate. I think that the evangelists went to some lengths to keep all the Maries straight.

Or perhaps there were indeed a few Maries in those early Jesus circles. I agree that this explanation is not very exotic.

Ben.

BrianJ

Isn't Mary the wife of Cleophas the sister of Mary Jesus' mother, making her Jesus' aunt?

In John 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.

Two sisters called mary is a bit unusual, and extremely lazy :Cheeky:

Joan of Bark

You're forgetting Marie of Antoinette, who turned bread into cake to feed the multitudes.

Lucifer, that's a bad joke. Forgive me.