Mariam/Mary and the Passover/Resurrection

In ‘The Empty Tomb’, Michael Goulder suggests that the narrative of the tradition of the women, two of whom are called Mary, discovering that Jesus’ body was missing from the tomb (which is a later tradition than the resurrection sightings which Paul records in 1 Cor. 15), of which Mark 16 is the earliest witness, was invented (in both the original sense of ‘discovery’ and the now common sense of ‘create’) by means of creative, communal reflection on scripture. Goulder uses the Hebrew term ‘midrash’ (seeking, inquiring, discovering) to describe this process whereby truth (assumed to be) hitherto hidden may be found. In Rabbinic Judaism, it has a narrower, more technical meaning, so whether or not this is the ideal word to use for what Goulder is describing is a good question, but beside the point for now. And whether this was a communal process that happened before the anonymous author of the text we call the ‘Gospel According to Mark’ or was invented by that author, is also irrelevant for this inquiry. Goulder thinks the narrative of the discovery of the vacated tomb by these women – Mary Magdalene, Mary of Jacob, and Salome – was ‘discovered’ along these lines:

‘[T]the great type of the Resurrection is the crossing of the Red Sea at the first Passover, and the great work of Yahweh was then celebrated by the prophetess Mariam who answered the women, “Sing ye to the Lord for he is risen up on high” (ga’oh ga’ah, Exod. 15.21)—the same Mariam who, when Moses was earlier consigned to the water in his ark, watched from afar, to learn what would happen to him (Exod. 2.4). So the witness of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection [sic. w/o the Oxford comma!] must have been women watching from afar, and one of them must have been called Mariam’. (211)

I’m leaving aside his argument about Mary of Jacob and Salome (he thinks Mark combines three traditions, all developed by midrash) to focus on Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, Goulder argues, is so named because she is the antetype of the Mariam of the Exodus.

The key passages from which the Markan narrative was invented/discovered are these. When the infant Moses was placed in a basket in the Nile river to be delivered from the wrath of Pharaoh, ‘And his sister stood afar off, to see what would be done to him’ (Exod. 2.4). When the Hebrews left Goshen following the tenth plague and the proto-passover feast, Yahweh instructs Moses: ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and let them turn and encamp before the village, between Magdolos and the sea.’ Magdolos means the tower and it is how the village by Galilee got its name, Magdala. Finally, ‘When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea”’ (Exod. 14.2). Mary Magdalene is to the resurrection as Mariam was to the Red Sea crossing, the prophet who, between the tower and the sea, led the women in singing of Yahweh’s victory over their enemies. Thinking midrashtically, if the ancient escape from death and victory over Pharaoh is the type of the escape from/victory over death and Satan of which Christ’s resurrection is the antetype. It naturally follows, then, that the prophets who tell of these parallel victories should share a name. As she was witness to the escape/victory, so was she witness to the prior surrender. Mariam watched from afar as their mother surrendered Moses to the waters. Mary Magdalene watched from afar (Mark 15:40) as Jesus (the new and greater Moses) surrendered to death.

Goulder does not press this further back, but the same process may account for the invention/discovery of the name of Jesus’ mother. If the resurrection is the core of the gospel (‘passion narrative with extended introduction’), the foundational component taken over from Paul and developed into a narrative form (perhaps for the first time in Mark – at least its the earliest instance of that we still possess), then we can imagine a writer working backwards from narrating the resurrection to the extended introduction. If the vacated tomb is his re-birth and Mary/Mariam plays a motherly role there as the prophet who ‘shows forth’ this regeneration, then it is apt that the mother who ‘showed forth’ this new Moses also be named Mary/Mariam. A similar reasoning may, in fact, be at work in the Exodus narrative. The author may have made Mariam the protectress of the infant Moses in his ark set among the reeds of the Nile precisely because she was the prophet/witness of the victory at the Red Sea – her song being among the very oldest texts embedded in the Torah. The anonymous author of Mark may have seen that Mariam is both the prophet/witness of the Red Sea victory and the maternal protectress of the infant deliverer Moses, the new Moses. So, when Mark names Jesus’ mother in 6:3, her name must be Mary/Mariam. The parallels are all just right.

Incidentally, this invention/discovery process does not negate the possibility that the author knew a tradition that Jesus’ mother’s name was Mary/Mariam. If he did, it would only confirm for him the aptness of his scriptural invention. If he didn’t (or even if he knew her given name to have been something else), that too would not matter to the kind of typological process in which he’s engaged. The biblical parallels he’s uncovered would, to his mind, be truer, would matter more, than the mere mundane ‘historical’ facts, whatever they may be (and however he may have had access to them, if he had any). Mary/Mariam would be how she ought to be remembered, regardless of what she was called in her lifetime, because she is the antetype of which Mariam in Exod. 2 is the type.

If something like this is right – close to how Mark or the traditions behind Mark developed – then it is also possible the rebuke/rebuff of Mary/Mariam and Jesus’ brothers in Mark 3:31–35 may be based upon the rebuke of Mariam and Moses’ brother Aaron in Numbers 12.