Maranatha

For those who may ont be aware, maranatha is a word based on what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 16:11:

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha (KJV).

Unfortunately, maranatha is not a single word in Aramaic. It’s a combination of two words, and the correct division of them here is not clear.

This has not stopped countless Evangelical ministries from slapping Maranatha on all kinds of things, though.

Now, with that as introduction, a reader writes:

How does not pronounce:  Marana tha and Maran atha?

And am I correct that it was used as a short prayer?

I assume that the first question is "how does one pronounce" these two phrases.

The easies way to answer that is to simply show you how they’re pronounced, so I did a quick audiopost over on my audio blog.

LISTEN TO IT HERE.

As to its use as a prayer, we need to go into what it means. 

The early manuscripts that we have do not have spaces between the words, and so we have to guess at word division.

It’s clear that the first word of the phrase means "Our Lord," rendered here as Mar (the ordinary Aramaic word for "Lord"), with the possessive suffix "our" tacked on to it. The question is: What is the suffix? Is it -an or -ana? This is what causes the two word divisions as marana tha and maran atha.

The first of these is commonly understood to mean "Our Lord, come!" and the second clearly means "Our Lord comes" (or "Our Lord has come.")

My Aramaic instructor (who is a native speaker of modern Aramaic and who uses classical Aramaic professionally) is utterly convinced that the first division of the word is wrong. In fact, he is contemptuous of those who use the first division as know-nothings on Aramaic.

If I recall correctly, he has three arguments for this:

1. -ana simply is not a pronoun suffix in Aramaic.
2. Putting the verb atheh into the imperative form would not cause the first letter (which is a consonant in Aramaic) to drop off.
3. Even if the first letter did drop off, the pronunciation rules of Aramaic would require the resulting word to be pronounced ta, not tha.

Normally I generally defer to my instructor on such matters, but let’s look briefly at his arguments.

1. I do have at least a couple of grammars of early Aramaic on my shelves listing -ana as the suffix meaning "our," so there may have been some dialects of Aramaic where "our" was -ana rather than just -an.

2. This seems to be the weightiest argument. I’ve consulted multiple grammars and lexicons, and unless the verb atheh had a really, really irregular imperative form in Paul’s dialect, it just should not become tha (or ta). It should be atha, and I can find no indication in any of the lexicons that it had an irregular form in in the imperative. Some lexicons explicitly list atha as the imperative form.

3. This argument also has weight, though it could be gotten around if marana ta had already become perceived as one word, in which case the usual pronunciation rules would change it to maranatha. The problem is that this seems to be a distinctively Christian phrase (applying specifically to Jesus and not to God as "Our Lord"), and there just weren’t that many years between Jesus’ ministry and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. It’s hard to imagine marana ta becoming one word that fast.

I think there’s also exegetical evidence that points to the correct reading being Maran atha. Paul has just issued a "Let him be anathema." It seems to me that it makes more sense to say "Let him be anathema [because] Our Lord comes" than "Let him be anathema. Come, Our Lord!"

The first would make Maran atha an affirmation of the Lord’s future coming, when those who have become anathema will be judged. The second would be a vengeful calling down of divine judgment upon them.

As to its use in prayer, if Maranatha is understood as "Our Lord, Come!" then it’s a prayer on its face.

Even if not, it still became part of Christian prayer via the liturgy. In the Didache ("did-ah-khay") the instructions regarding the Eucharist include what seems to be a part of a prayer which reads in part:

10:12 Hosanna to the God of David.
10:13 If any man is holy, let him come;
10:14 If any man is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen [SOURCE].

In this case Maran atha isn’t a term addressed directly to God but is an affirmation term, like Amen, which functions at the end of a prayer to mean (roughly) "So may it be" or "It is so." This also is not a word addressed directly to God on its face, but is an affirmation that one has confidence in what God will do. Maran atha, like Amen, thus may be a prayer affirmation addressed indirectly to God.

The Didache is a first century Christian document that may not have been written very long after Paul lived. Some even argue that it was contemporary with Paul’s letters. However that may be, neither Paul nor the Didache are the likely source of the phrase. They are both probably drawn on an earlier source, possibly the first liturgies celebrated in the Aramaic-speaking Christian community.