Was Mary's sister also called Mary?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Just like Jesus’ “brothers” were His cousins and kinsmen, Mary’s “sisters” were her cousins and kin. The Aramaic and Hebrew words for brother and sister include pretty much all your relatives who aren’t your dad and mom. 🙂

The traditional story about St. Joachim and St. Anna/Hannah is that Mary was their only child, and like Ss. Zechariah and Elizabeth, they only had her in their old age, after special divine intervention. In thanks, they dedicated Mary to God’s service, just like the prophet Samuel’s mom had done with him.

OTOH, you get a lot of different stories later on, including one that St. Anne had married three times and that she was only having trouble having kids with her last husband, St. Joachim. (Yeah, you read long enough, and somebody’s come up with every weird theory there is.)

There are some very nice paintings of the Holy Family and all the cousins. (The subject is called “the Holy Kinship”, and German and Flemish painters loved doing family portraits that way. You get a lot of medieval daily life moments, too.) It used to be a more common devotion, a lot like the “Holy Hand” devotion in Hispanic countries. (Pictures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Mary’s mom and dad, but superimposed on a painting of a hand, like they’re fingers of God’s saving hand coming into history.)
 
Nelka said:
John 19:25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala.

Was Mary’s sister also called Mary or am I reading it wrong?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
While I have no actual opinion on the question, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. Looking to another Mediterranean culture, the Romans, they tended to be infuriatingly confusing with the naming of daughters. Where males would have the pattern (Pronomen) (Nomen) (possible Cognomen) (for instance Marcus Tullius Cicero or Gaius Julius Caesar), females always took the nomen in the female case, so that ALL of Cicero’s daughters would have been named “Tullia” (he did have one daughter in the final event, who was the apple of his eye) or all of Caesar’s hypothetical daughters being named “Julia”.

You can see where this drives historians up a wall. 🙂

So perhaps “Maryam” was a common name in The Blessed Virgin’s family for some reason.
 
Pat_Payne said:
While I have no actual opinion on the question, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. Looking to another Mediterranean culture, the Romans, they tended to be infuriatingly confusing with the naming of daughters. Where males would have the pattern (Pronomen) (Nomen) (possible Cognomen) (for instance Marcus Tullius Cicero or Gaius Julius Caesar), females always took the nomen in the female case, so that ALL of Cicero’s daughters would have been named “Tullia” (he did have one daughter in the final event, who was the apple of his eye) or all of Caesar’s hypothetical daughters being named “Julia”.

You can see where this drives historians up a wall. 🙂

So perhaps “Maryam” was a common name in The Blessed Virgin’s family for some reason.
Click to expand...
Well, Mariam (Mariamme, Mariah) was the number one female name among Jews at the time. There was really little to no originality in names among Jews in Jesus’ day: they didn’t have a large pool of names to choose from*, and they tended to recycle the same names over and over again, especially within the family, so a baby is often named after its parents, grandparents, or some ancestor (the upper classes were especially prone to this). I don’t know about whether it would extend to sisters though.
  • There was this trend to name children after the Maccabees - Mattathias and his sons Simon, Judah, John, Eleazar, Jonathan - and the rulers of the dynasty founded by them, the Hasmonean dynasty. Salome Alexandra was a Hasmonean queen (141-67 BC), while Mariam(me) was the name of two Hasmonean princesses who became the second and third wives of Herod the Great; it’s no surprise then that Mariam(me) (=Mary) and Salome were the top two female names at the time.
Going by different sources (the NT, Josephus, ossuary inscriptions, the documents from the Judaean desert), the top eleven most attested Jewish male name and the top twelve most-attested female names in that time are (in descending order):

Top Eleven Male Names

  1. *]Shim(e)on (Simon)
    *]Y(eh)osef (Joseph)
    *]Yehudah (Judah/Judas)
    *]Eleazar/Eliezer (cf. Lazarus)
    *]Y(eh)ohanan (Johanan/John)
    *]Ye(ho)shua (Joshua/Jesus)
    *]Hananiah (Ananias, with the variant Hanina)
    *]Y(eh)onathan (Jonathan)
    *]Matityahu (Mattathias/Matthias/Matthew)
    *]Menahem (Manaen)
    *]Ya’aqov (Jacob/James)

    Top Twelve Female Names
    1. Maram/Mariamme/Mariah (Miriam/Mary)
    2. Shalom (Salome)
    3. Shelamzion
    4. Marta (Martha)
    5. Y(eh)ohana (Joanna - female version of ‘John’)
    6. Shiphra/Shapira (Sapphira)
    7. Berenice (Greek name)
    8. Imma
    9. Mara (Short form of Martha)
    10. Cyprus
    11. Sarah
    12. Alexandra
 
I was just reading that last night. The notes in my Ignatius Catholic Study Bible said the sister of Mary was probably Salome, mother of John and James and wife of Zebedee. So, four people at the base of the cross.
 
AKDee said:
I was just reading that last night. The notes in my Ignatius Catholic Study Bible said the sister of Mary was probably Salome, mother of John and James and wife of Zebedee. So, four people at the base of the cross.
Click to expand...
Thanks AKDee.

Those other three women at the cross are
1. Mary Magdalene,
2. the “other Mary” who was the wife of Clopas and the mother of James and Joseph (or Joses), and
3. Salome who was Zebedee’s wife and who is described as Mary’s sister.
However, we know that Mary and Salome were cousins (see family tree below) so this is an example of “adelphos” (actually, the feminine version of the word in this case), being used with a wider definition than just children from the same womb.

Matthew 27:56
“ …among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.”

Mark 15:40
“There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome …”

John 19:25
“So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”
RSV

Read the rest of the article at

defendingthebride.com/ma2/brothers.html

.
 
One must also consider the strong argument in favor of Mary of Clopas being Mary’s sister by virtue of marriage to Joseph’s brother. In other words, Mary of Clopas is Mary’s Sister-in-law. This fits nicely with the list of Jesus’ “brothers” since the names in that list line up with the list of Mary of Clopas’ children. It also fist with James the “brother of the Lord” who is possibly James the Less, Mary of Clopas’ son. It also fits with the lack of a Greek “kai” (and) in John’s Gospel:

“Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister {no and here} Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary of Magdala.”

It seems a bit odd to start a list using “and” then to stop using “and” in the middle and then to use it again at the end of the list.
ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/MARYCLEO.htm

On the other hand, Jesus entrusting his Mother to John seems to indicate some close relation between Jesus and Salome.
newadvent.org/cathen/08279b.htm

Maybe Mary had two sisters and/or sister-in-laws? I’m not sure, but I favor the argument that John lists three women, not four and that Mary of Clopas is the Sister. Salome is possibly a cousin of Mary as the site posted immediately above suggests.
 
May as well ask why one of my clients who is named George H ____ also named his three sons, two of which were identical twins, George H _____, with the same first, last, and middle name.

<_<

Or what everyone else already said.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top