Tenorikuma

I'd like to get your thoughts on where and how Mary was introduced into the Jesus story.

Let me start with a rather surprising verse that escaped my attention until recently: John 19:25b.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

Here as elsewhere, John completely omits the name of Jesus' mother. But even more astonishingly, he says that Jesus' mother had a sister named Mary. Now, I know that Mary was a common name in first-century Palestine, but unless people were in the habit of giving all their own children the same name, we can only conclude that in John's version of the story, Jesus' mother was not named Mary.

Going back to Mark, the earliest extant version of the Jesus story, we find that Jesus' mother is named in only one passage: 6:3. ("Is this not the carpenter…?") If this verse were an interpolation, we would be left with no references to Mary the mother of Jesus in Mark. Furthermore, Mark has another Mary in 15:40 who is not Jesus' mother, and who has children named James, Joses and Salome (just like Jesus' mother in 6:3).

So who invented Mary the mother of Jesus? Was it a natural confusion arising from the myriad of Marys in Mark and other early Gospels? Or was it an invention of Matthew, who based Jesus' nativity on that of Moses and introduced another Miriam to look after the divine child?

And is Mark 6:3 a retrojection of later tradition into the Gospel — an attempt to authenticate later claims about the names of Jesus' brothers and mother? After all, Mark mentions Jesus' family elsewhere with no attempt to give them names.

TedM

One solution to the issue of having a sister named Mary is that 'sister' and 'brother' was used in place of 'cousin' in Aramaic--there was no word for cousin. If it means cousin then there is no confusion in gJohn, nor in gMark since as 'James, Joses and Salome' could then be cousins(2nd?) of Jesus.

Tenorikuma

Thanks for the reply, Ted.

I tend to find recourses to Aramaic somewhat weak, since the Gospels were clearly authored in Greek, and Greek has a word for cousin. The more parsimonious explanation would be that Jesus' mother was simply not named Mary, and that Greeks-speaking communities were actively inventing new traditions about Jesus. After all, this is not the only example of familial relationships evolving and getting fleshed out as the story is retold. (Consider Luke's obviously contrived familial connection with John the Baptist, for example.)

Besides which, Mary the mother of James and Joses is not related to Jesus' mother in Mark. John seems to have invented that connection.

TedM

ok, but it makes little sense to me to have names for his mother's 'sister' but no name for her, and to have to postulate an interpolation. How hard is it to create a name if you(Mark) are creating everything else?

Tenorikuma

Be careful not to mix the two Gospels up.

Mark doesn't mention Jesus' mother having a sister. He simply mentions another Mary whose children were named James and Joses. And outside of 6:3, the names of Jesus' family are utterly inconsequential to Mark. They are outsiders to Jesus' mission, and not part of his inner circle.

Admittedly, proposing an interpolation isn't ideal — but it is unavoidable at times, since we know they are numerous (and there are almost certainly many that have gone undetected). I will have to do more study on the passage in that regard.

It is John who seems to have turned this other Mary into Jesus' mother's sister. We might say it "makes little sense" for John to do so, but there are certainly reasons why he might. His Gospel refutes many of the traditions adhered to by the authors of the Synoptics, and this could be seen as a refutation that Jesus' mother was named Mary. Knowing why that tradition was invented might help explain why John would deny it. One possibility is that that the Matthean or Lucan community had a founder figure named Mary whose credentials they wanted to inflate.

TedM

Good thoughts. Very interesting -- I didn't know that gMark doesn't mention Jesus' mother by name anywhere.

aa5874

The Gospels were composed in Greek and it is seen in the writings of Josephus that the word 'cousin' is found many times so you have not offered any solution.

See "Antiquities of the Jews" 18.5 which mentions the word 'COUSIN'.

Antiquities of the JEWS 18.5 4

TedM

As I said to you before, aa, some argue for Aramaic origins of gMark and GMatthew. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Gospel_hypothesis Papias explicitly says that Matthew wrote in the Hebrew tongue, so it may well be that at least some early material started out in Aramaic. IF that's the origin then the Greek writers wouldn't necessarily know to change 'brother' or 'sister' to 'cousin': They may simply not have known the relationship.

Tenorikuma

Apparently there is some funny business in Mark 6:3. P45 reads "Is this not the son of the carpenter (and Mary)?", and Origen stated that in no Gospel used by the church was Jesus said to be a tekton. Furthermore, the parallel passage in Luke does not mention Mary.

stephan huller

Yes it is true there is no Aramaic word that corresponds to our 'cousin' but there are countless ways that one could express that relationship - brona d-ammeh “the son of his uncle” or kinsman. The same thing seems to exist in ki-swahili. If Kenyans or Tanzanians are asked to use an English word to denote such a relationship they might mistakenly take 'brother' to mean 'cousin.' But they have a wealth of words to describe familial relationship. I also know that in Chinese there are similarly a wealth of terms to describe 'brother of the husband' etc. Languages don't always have exact translations.