CHRISTIANITY | PALESTINE

The Christian Goddess

A Palestinian girl from Nazareth becomes the best-known woman in the world. Meet Icon of Palestinian identity #14 — MARY

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Orthodox icon of Madonna and child (Photo by the author)

The most popular girl’s name across three cultures — Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, and Islam, Maryam and its variants have more ancient roots. In Aramaic, the common language of Palestine at the time of Jesus, which survives embedded in the Palestinian dialect of Arabic, “mar” is how we address saints, “holy ones”. “Yam” in all Semitic languages is the sea. Mar-yam is the linguistic descendent of the Mesopotamian sea goddess, Tiamat. Though Tiamat was slain by the patriarchal supreme god, Marduk, Maryam lives. Her Latinized name, Mary, resembles mare, again the sea, and she is always portrayed wearing dark blue.

Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine (Photos by the author, 2017)

Her Greek designation, “Theotokus”, or “mother of God,” encodes the paradox of what was there before “In the beginning.”