WORD STUDY – MARY – מרי
Matthew 1:18. “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”
There is the general belief that the name Mary in the Hebrew is Miriam. The problem with this is that Miriam means rebellious or bitter. In the Greek the word that is used is Maria, which passed into the Latin pretty much unchanged but when we get into the English it becomes Mary.
However, within Christianity, especially with the Catholic Church the name of Mary is so revered or considered holy that no one cares to really mess with this name. So I hope my Catholic readers will not be offended if I just journey down a little linquistical history of the name Mary.
The people of Judea and really in the area of Palestine spoke Aramaic not Greek or Latin. The Peshitta uses the Aramaic word Marim. It could come from the root word marah where we get Miriam which means bitter or rebellious. We have the story of Mariam’s Moses’s sister who rebelled. Another possible root word is ra’a’ which means broken and is used to describe a heart that is broken or a sad and sorrowful heart. Names in Semitic literature often were allegorical. That is their name described the person’s character and told a story.
We have in the old Testament and even in Matthew 1 a list of begats. Nobody reads the begets unless they are trying to trace a genealogy. Otherwise who cares who begets who. What we fail to realize is that names meant something much different in ancient times than they do today. If Archaeologist one day dig up evidence of King David, it is very doubtful you will find the name of David inscribed. The name David means a beloved friend. When God gave the inspired Scripture He did so from a spiritual perspective and hence the name given at birth by the parents are likely not the same name that God gave them. God has a different name, a spiritual name for us. If you name is George you may not find it in the Book of Life. What you will find is maybe Helpful, Giving, Trustworthy etc. When we accept Jesus there is a new name given to us. Spiritually our name might have been Lustful but when we accept Jesus as our Savior we are no longer Lustful but He gives us a new name perhaps Respectful.
Thus the mother of Jesus might have gone by an entirely different name than Mary but God gave her the spiritual name of Mary for she was asked to bear a child who would suffer and die a cruel death so all her life her heart would be sorrowful for the son that she bore. Then again we can not be sure what the root was. This is only a good guess.
As I said the Peshitta uses the word Marim. Vowel pointings were not found in first century documents so we really are unsure what vowels were used. What we really have in the Aramaic is Mry or Mem, Resh and Yod. This is not really an Aramaic word or even a Semitic word, but appears to be a loan word from the Middle Egyptian which was really an Afro-Asiatic language. Modern Egyptian is more of a modern Egyptian Arabic and was Copic prior to that.
MR in Middle Egyptian means love or MRY which means beloved. It could very well have been pronounced as Mary as you can readily see. The point is this would fit the Semitic tendency to use a personal description of a main character rather than their given name. I mean I would much rather see the mother of Jesus being known as beloved rather than bitter or one with a sorrowful heart.
I hesitated to put this little study on my blog as I really do not see any spiritual edification from all this other than to point out that when it comes to names in the Bible, things can really get a little messy.
I once had someone who read my blog question why, I, as a Hebrew teacher did not refer to Jesus by his real Hebrew name Yeshua. Did I not think it would insult Him to use a Greek name, when I really knew what his real name was? For one thing we really do not know how to correctly pronounce His Hebrew name as we are not sure how it was pronounced in those days.
But really, Jesus is the name I grew up with, it is the name I called out to be saved. It is the name I fell in love with. It is a name I speak with love. It is a name that thrills my heart when I hear it. To start calling Him something else, even if it is His correct name would be like a man who has been married fifty years suddenly calling his wife by her real name, say Gloria rather than that loving little name he whispered in her ear for fifty years: Poopsie Doll.
Anyways, among the many arguments that she could have used to express the name as Yeshua (and I have heard quite a few) she uses the argument, “How would I feel if someone referred to you by another name than Chaim.” Really bad argument, Chaim is not my real name.
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