This opinion, however, may be said to be at length extinet in scholarly circles. It is not only confessed to be without intrinsic or historic founda- tion, but it conflicts with the intimations afforded by the independent use of the word in early
iristian documents. The earliest is that in The Teaching of the Apostles, a document belonging to the early part of the 2nd cent. or possibly even to the Ist. The thanksgiving in connexion with the Eucharist, as there given ch. 10%, closes as follows : ‘May grace come and may this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. If any man is holy, let him come; if any man is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen.’ Plainly, then, the term has an inherent meaning wholly detached from an anathema; and the preceding words here, though permitting this meaning to be admonitory, are remote from any suggestion of imprecation. But in the Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 26, p. 209, 26, ed. Lagarde), where the same thanksgiving is substantially reproduced and expanded, any thought of malediction is conspicuously out of ᾿ ace: ... ‘Gather us all together into thy king-
om which thou hast prepared. Maranatha. Hosanna ww the Son of David; blessed is he that cometh,’ ete.
But the acknowledgment that the term must be taken and sunt by itself has rather increased than diminished the perplexity respecting its com- position and meaning. Passing over attempts to analyze it which have found little favour, we may say that scholars now almost unanimously agree that the first part of the expression is the Aramaic word for ‘Lord’; though as to whether the n is
MARANATHA
a formative appendage (cf. rabban), or belongs to the pronominal suffix ‘our,’ they are not so harmonious. That it should be connected with the first half of the word and not the last is sup- ported not only by the earliest MSS that divide the term, but by the use of marin by Philo (in Flaccum, § 6, ed. Mang. ii. 522, 47) as the current Syrian appellation for ‘ Lord,’ as well as by extant Aram. inscriptions (see Néldeke in ZDMG for 1870, p. 101). The chief problem, accordingly, lies in the last part of the term. If the second half of the compound is held to be atha, the Fathers were right in taking it as a past tense (ἦλθεν, ἥκει, ete.: ‘the’ or ‘our Lord has come’), and understanding the advent in the flesh as referred to. But the explanations they give of the apostle’s reference to this past event are far-fetched and unsatisfying ; such as, ‘whoever does not love him waits in vain for another,’ or ‘he has come; hence the folly of opposing him’—the words being assumed to be addressed to Jews: if spoken to Christians, they were thought to be designed to shame them for withholding love from one who has so humbled himself on their behalf, ete.
The obvious inappositeness, however, of an allusion to the past early began to tempt ex- positors to force the verb into a future reference, viz. to the final coming in judgment. This result has ordinarily been reached, at least in later times, by taking the past tense as ‘ prophetic,’ 7.e. as an emphatic declaration of the certainty of the future event by representing it as having already occurred: ‘has come,’ i.e. ‘most certainly will come.’ The incipient stage of this opinion appears in the ‘in adventu domini’ of certain Latin texts, and the ‘donee adveniat’ (or ‘redeat’) of Augus- tine and some later Fathers. But a prophetic or anticipatory past tense here is more than question- able grammatically ; and its inappropriateness is indirectly conceded by modern expositors, who, as with one consent, substitute for it a present or a future in their translations: ‘Our Lord cometh,’ ‘is at hand,’ ‘will come,’ ete. Under these cir- cumstances, certain Aramaic scholars have pro- posed to restrict the verbal part of the expression to the final syllable ‘tha,’ and understand the whole asan ejaculation : ‘Our Lord, come!’ Com- pare ἔρχου Κύριε᾿ Ἰησοῦ, Rev 22”; and the Amen bo of the Jewish liturgies. See C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, p. 77 ff. One of the first to make this suggestion seems to have heen Gustav Bickell of Innsbruck in the Ztschr. Jf. Kath. Theol. for 1884, vol. viii. p. 403, n*. During the same
ear, however, this opinion was shown by Halévy in the Rev. des études Juives, vol. ix. p. 9, to have the support of sundry Breen from Arabia, and was also advocated by Néldeke in the GGA p. 1023 (in a review of Kautzsch’s Grammatik, u.s.w.), Where Wellhausen is cited as making the same suggestion (yet ef. GGN, 1895, p. 3, n. 2). Siegfried, also, in reviewing Kautzsch’s work in Hilgenfeld’s ZWTh., compares the frequent
hrases ἽΠ xn ‘come and see,’ yov’ xn ‘come and near,’ and proposes to take μαραναθά as equiv. to μαρανθά, signifying “Ὁ (or ‘our’) Lord, come!’ This supplicatory sense has been accepted by G. Wohlenberg (Die Lehre der Zwolf Apostel, u.s.w. 1888, p. 82 sq.), Arnold Meyer Ὁ: Mutter-
prache, 1896, p. 50), who Soc (p. 156 1.)
Tarna or Marnas (xi ‘our lord’), the name of the chief deity of Gaza (cf. the new edition of the deacon Marcus’ life of Bp. Porphyrius of Gaza, Leip. 1895 ; also Stark, Gaza, u.s.w. 1852, pp. 576- 583); and is sustained by G. Dalman in his Gram- matik des Jiid.-Palist. Araméisch, 1894, pp. 120, 297, ef. 162.* It will doubtless prevail.