Mark as a Title in Aramaic

Can I remind you again of my casual remark that it seems to me, on the evidence I have gathered, that although Mark is a personal name in Latin and Greek, an Aramaic-speaker would have taken it as a TITLE if it had been useful to do so. When I said that the Samaritan Targum translates Sh-L-M as maroq or mirroq, this definitely doesn’t mean that the Samaritans would have expected to use either of these two specific forms as a name or a title. These two forms are only the infinitives of the root M-R-Q, and the form marqa would have been felt as the ABSTRACT NOUN from the same root. As for speakers of what is attested in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and Jewish and Samaritan speakers of Hebrew, they would have felt the form marqa to be the abstract noun from the root M-R-Q meaning in legal usage “signed, sealed, and delivered”. None of the extant Jewish Targums use this word in this place, but the LXX has a translation that looks like the equivalent, which means there was probably once a Jewish Targum with this form. Besides, how else can you explain why it is that the massively important figure Mårqe is not known to us by his Hebrew or Aramaic personal name? So” John Mark” would be a personal name followed by a title. As for the importance of the name John (Yohanan “the Lord is gracious”) here is a plausible route back to the Torah. Note the words “Grace and Truth” right at the start of John’s Gospel, and note that what is meant is that the insight once limited to Moses will be accessible to everyone, the reference being to Exodus XXXIV: 6 IN ITS CONTEXT. The words “Grace upon Grace”don’t mean, as the Evangelicals think, “lots and lots of grace”. They mean Grace on top of Grace or Grace in addition to Grace, i.e the universal awareness of grace going beyond the awareness once limited to Moses. This is what the Greek preposition plainly means, as Francis Moloney (an Australian now working in the U.S.A.) has pointed out in his commentary on John. This makes me wonder just how much Sprachgefühl for Greek most N.T. scholars have. (You can see why I despair when N.T. scholars show their ignorance of the depths of the Torah, or the fact that the N.T. makes no sense without the Torah). I would guess that when Samaritan tradition stresses the numerical equivalence of Mårqe and Mûshi (Moses) it makes a reference to this interpretation or connotation, but with the original significance forgotten.