Mark 5:41

Mark 5:41 Taliqa koum

The reading Tabiqa (without koum) in W 28 245 349 and several Old Latin and Vulgate manuscripts is due to scribal confusion with the proper name in Acts 9:40. The curious reading of codex Bezae r`abbei qabita konmi seems to be a corruption of rabiqa, the transliteration of at'ybir>, an Aramaic dialectal form meaning “girl.” The variation between koum (a B C L M N S ¦¹ 33 892) and koumi (A D D Q P F ¦¹³ 22 28 124 543 565 579 700 1071 most minuscules it^{a, e} vg syr^{p, h, hgr} arm eth) reflects the difference in gender of the forms of the Aramaic imperative singular (~Wq is masculine, sometimes used without reference to sex; ymiWq is feminine). According to Dalman both forms came to be pronounced alike, ⁸ the final i of the feminine imperative falling away after the stressed penult. ⁹ The expansion in it^e tabea acultha cumhi has not been satisfactorily explained. ¹⁰

⁸ M.-J. Lagrange, however, disagrees with this commonly accepted view (Evangile selon saint Marc, ad lac.).

⁹ G. A. Dalman, Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch, 2te Aufl. (Leipzig, 1905), p. 266, n. 1.

¹⁰ F. H. Chase thought that acultha “is a relic of the Syriac word (macultha = food)” (The Syro-Latin Text of the Gospels [London, 1895], pp. 110f.).