Why the Inconsistency of the name Mary in the NT?

Question

Or rather, why is the mother of Jesus exclusively written μαριαμ, and the others inconsistently either μαρια or μαριαμ?

I was originally prompted by a mini quest into the original meaning of the Hebrew name underlying μαριαμ in the New Testament, and so went a searching.

Now I'm using the Greek from the ISA Scriptura Analyzer because it allows me to profile usages very well, but texts will of course vary. But consulting the Nestle-Aland 28 for Matthew 27:61, however, there seems to be a real convention here, I think, not just sloppy scribal work.

Consider this:

Jesus' mother: μαριαμ

14 occurrences

Matthew 1:20; 13:55; Luke 1:27; 1:30, 34, 38, 39, 46, 56; 2:5, 16, 19, 34; Acts 1:14

Other Marys: μαριαμ

5 times

Matthew 27:61; John 11:28; 20:1, 16, 18

Jesus' mother: μαρια

0 times.

Other Marys: μαρια

15 times

Matthew 27:56; 28:1; Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1, 9; Luke 8:2; 10:42; 24:10; John 11:2, 20, 32; 12:3; 19:25; 20:11

(I've omitted instances of μαριας because sadly they don't help either way: but they are Mt 1:16, 18; 2:11, Mk 6:3; Lk 1:41; 10:39; Jn 11:1; Acts 12:12, of which the last three refer to other Marys)

Based on what seems to be a strong case that the authors of the New Testament made sure Mary was only ever written μαριαμ (for whatever reason, whether her name was actually different from the other Marys, or whatever else; this being extremely unlikely), and the overwhelming amount of times, only calling other Marys μαρια, I conjecture that writing the name of the other Mary's as μαριαμ is a scribal slip in these instances.

How is this inconsistency/strange consistency when it comes to Mary the mother of Jesus' name to be explained?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

To me there is a far simpler and more likely explanation than errors or scribal slips. Especially considering cases like Matthew 27:61, which is surely no slip of the pen:

Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ and the other Μαρία were sitting there opposite the tomb.

Note that the author uses the phrase "and the other...", confirming that as far as they were concerned Μαριὰμ = Μαρία.

To me - as a Steven, but also a Steve - this doesn't sound like an inconsistency. It's entirely plausible that all of these women had the given name μαριαμ, and this was especially accorded by Luke to the mother of Jesus due to age or respect. We find Matthew and John occasionally use this full given name for other Mariam's a couple of times, context dependent. And then all other uses of μαρια would just be the diminutive or commonly accorded name.

Throughout the NT text there are characters with obviously different names:

• Thomas, called Didymus (Jn 20:24)
• Jude, called Thaddeus (Lk 6:16 cf. Mk 3:18)
• Levi, called Matthew (Mt 9:9 cf. Lk 5:27)

It makes sense that when there is a stark difference in the names (or a Hebrew/Greek translated name) then the author will remark upon or explain this. However, it seems unlikely that simple contractions would receive this honour. Nobody in English would bother explaining to their contemporaries that Steve is short for Steven - such a thing is considered common knowledge. Thus, in theory - Mariam could be to Maria as Steven is to Steve - and this type of detail would be so normal and widely understood that contemporary writers wouldn't ever think to mention or explain it.

Answer 2

So, I just wanted to stop by to lend a little support to this stack exchange from the meta.

Numbers in Judaism

In terms of numbers or religious numbers, the actual number for Mary would be either 4 or 40, because those are the two numbers associated with women. In particular holy women have the number 4 associated with them (the 4 original mothers in the Old Testament).

So a numerology explanation would be that they changed Mariam to Mary for Mary to be holy. However, the problem with this explanation is they didn't have English back then. IN fact, the switch from a 6 letter spelling of Mary to a 5 letter spelling does not compute with religious numbers of the time period.

Could there be perhaps etymological reason?:

A long time ago, I remember in little bible school earning some of the authors who translated the bible did not like every Mary in the bible to the point that they treated some "Mary's" as being over-sexual and lacking-morals in nature, whereas in the original document there is no major support of that translation. This got me thinking, maybe this was true and maybe the translators had to get the ideas from somewhere. The clue turned out to be Miriam.

Mary Etymology.com

Meaning of Miriam Answer to perhaps why Mary

In the third link, one can actually learn that Mary and Miriam come from the Egyptian word "mara" or מרה. Mara means to rebel or to be beloved. Thus the name Mara means rebellion or beloved. Back then, the rebellion had a negative connotation for the translators even if it did not in Judaism as we see here. After all, who back then would want their daughters to rebel? Would you marry someone named Rebellion back then? So, in short, μαριαμ and μαρια originally were associated with being evil.

Well as you might imagine the name "Mary" cannot be evil. The literal heavens would smite any lowly church translator who would besmirch the name of the holy mother. How dare they even consider it!

Under thus understandable social pressure, they changed some of the "Mary" names in the Bible. In particular, when they felt that another Mary was being rebellious or "evil", they shortened the name to μαρια. Then, they left all the "good" Mary's alone with μαριαμ thus giving Mary name's a more positive meaning. They transformed the mean of Mary from rebellion to beloved lady, and eventually to mary-iage.(*)

I know this still might not be a satisfactory answer, but I hope you did enjoy reading it.

*Sorry I couldn't help the pun. (The marriage part is a joke)