Maranatha and the Identity of Jesus

What does the Maranatha Prayer Tell Us About Jesus?

Photo by Zachary Olson on Unsplash

What does the prayer maranatha mean? What does it mean to pray “Our Lord come?” and what does it tell us about Jesus?

Towards the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes:

Let anyone be accursed who has no love for the Lord. Our Lord, come! (1 Cor 16.22)

Paul’s closing remarks in 1 Corinthians include a curse, an anathema, for those who do not love the Lord Jesus, as well as a prayerful petition to the Lord Jesus for his return using the Aramaic formula marana tha, “our Lord come!”

Similar language is found in the Book of Revelation and the Didache:

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22.20 (NRSVue)

May grace come, and may this world pass away.
Hosanna to the God of David.
If anyone is holy, let him come;
If anyone is not, let him repent.
Maranatha! Amen.
Didache 10.6 (trans. M. Holmes)

Importantly, we have in 1 Corinthians 16 concrete proof here that Jesus was acclaimed as “Lord” in the earliest days of the Aramaic-speaking church. An old theory is that the Jerusalem church thought Jesus was a prophet, maybe a Messiah, but he was only acclaimed as “Lord,” much later, when the Jesus movement spread into a Hellenistic setting when the devotion to Jesus, calling him kyrios, Greek for “Lord,” only happened when people started supposedly mimicking the language of ancient mystery cults. But that theory is busted because the early church, the Aramaic-speaking church, was calling Jesus marêh, “Lord” very, very early.

But there’s more! The maranatha prayer of 1 Cor 16:22 could be identifying Jesus with the “Lord” of Israel, kind of like how Paul does in 1 Cor 8:6 and Phil 2:11. That would make sense because we know that some Jews, in their sacred literature, inscriptions, texts, and papyri, often addressed God as marêh and kyrios, even as a translation of the divine name “YHWH.”

But even if Jesus is addressed as “Lord” in Aramaic or Greek that does not necessarily means he is identified with or as the Lord God of Israel.

The late Maurice Casey believed that confession of the risen Jesus as “Lord” indicated that “Jesus was viewed as a superior heavenly being, and a central figure of identity and authority to whom the church was subject” but it did not “equate him with God.”[1]

In support of Casey’s contention of identifying Jesus a lesser-divine lord, we should note that it is possible to locate the Aramaic marêh and the Greek kyrios in the context of Syro-Palestinian ruler veneration. There is ample evidence for the use of kyrios and marêh for non-divine figures, specifically, Nabataean kings and Herodian rulers who were designated as “lord” in numerous inscriptions in the southern Levant and Palestine. The inscriptions demonstrate, says Clint Burnett, that “those living in the southern Levant could distinguish between a human, non-divine kyrios who is king and a god kyrios who is divine.”[2]

In addition to that, sometimes the titles “Lord” and “Messiah” were used in an over-lapping and mutually reinforcing way in Jewish and Christian literature. Which means “Lord” might not be a divine title, it might simply be a royal title, which would fit the practice of Syria, Judea, and the Trans-Jordan.

If so, the designation of Jesus as marêh, does not necessarily mean that Jesus is part of a divine identity, or is even receiving divine worship. On a minimalist reading, Jesus is an exalted royal ruler, the marêh mesiha (see Luke 2:11 “messianic lord”) who has been received into heaven.

If that is where it’s at, then maybe that “high” Christology we’ve been reading in Paul’s letters needs to come down a notch!

But, I think 1 Cor 16:22 is part of Paul’s divine Christology and it’s pretty high, so high in fact that I might even open a dispensary in Colorado and start selling it.

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There are at least three factors which I think show that the maranatha prayer is a feature of Paul’s Jesus-devotion and implies his divine status, divine that is beside God the Father.

1. In 1 Cor 16.22 we have a continuation of the pattern of Jesus devotion exhibited across the letter.

Across 1 Corinthians, Paul binds Jesus to Israel’s God in relation to divine worship (1 Cor 1.2; 11.26; 12.3), divine faithfulness (1 Cor 1.9; 10.13), divine oneness (1 Cor 6.4-5), enduring faith (1 Cor 2.5; 16.13), loving loyalty (1 Cor 1.7-8; 12.3; 16.22). Let me add too, that normally in Israel’s sacred traditions, you are cursed if you fail to show love and loyalty to YHWH and you hope for YHWH to come and deliver you by destroying your enemies. But here, at the end of 1 Corinthians, loving loyalty is oriented towards Jesus and Jesus is the come who is to come in judgment. That demonstrates that the lordship of the Lord Jesus and the type of loyalty which is appropriate for him is determined by Israel’s traditions of monotheistic devotion and obligations of covenantal loyalty to Yahweh.

2. The application of lordship language to Jesus is made in a “cultic” setting, calling on Jesus as to a deity, indicating that Jesus is the object of divine devotion.

The prayer to the Lord Jesus corresponds with other such prayers made to Jesus in the early church, notably Paul’s prayer to the Lord for respite (2 Cor 12.8), Stephen’s prayer for the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit (Acts 7.58), and Ignatius assumed the Ephesians prayed to Jesus for Ignatius to write to them (Eph 20.1). In a similar pattern, Paul’s prayer in 1 Cor 16.22 evidences a sense of personal urgency and feverous passion for Jesus to return as one might call for a deity to intervene in some crisis.

3. The prayer-petition for Jesus to “come!” puts Jesus in the same position of the coming of the Lord God in judgment.

The marana tha petition is analogous to biblical and second temple Jewish texts that look forward to a divine theophany for the purpose of divine retribution (found across the Psalms, Isaiah, and 1 Enoch). This was arguably the background from which Christians deployed the imagery of Jesus’s “coming” in judgment (Acts 17.31; Rom 2.16; 1 Cor 4.4-5; 2 Cor 5.10; Jude 14-15; 2 Tim 4.1). The eschatological sense of marana tha is proved by the similar prayer language used by the apostle Paul and John the Seer for Jesus’s return (1 Cor 11.26, 16.22 and Rev 22.20). The prayer for Jesus to come is a prayer for the coming of God in judgment.

In sum, 1 Cor 16:22 shows that the early church, the Aramaic-speaking church identified Jesus as “Lord.” Referring to Jesus as “Lord” was not a title only applied to Jesus on the basis of a much later encounter with Hellenistic mystery religions. That thesis is busted. Jesus was addressed as “Lord” in Aramaic by the earliest churches of Judea and Syria! But, as we noted, calling Jesus “Lord” whether in Greek (kyrios) or Aramaic (marêh) could be used as a royal title or as part of messianic discourse.

That said, we’ve also shown that the way Paul describes Jesus as “Lord” across 1 Corinthians is consistent with Israel’s monotheistic confession and call for covenantal loyalty toward YHWH, Jesus is made the object of personal prayer in a cultic setting, Jesus is ascribed the theophanic role of God coming in judgment, and Jesus is correlated with the kingship of Israel’s God.

The relationship the Corinthians have with Jesus is analogous to the relationship ancient Jews had with YHWH (Chris Tilling is good on this point!). The Israelites had covenant love for YHWH, curses for not keeping covenant with him, and they prayed for the coming of God to save them by bringing judgment on their enemies.

All of which corresponds to the maranatha prayer that Paul makes in 1 Cor 16:22: love for Jesus, loyalty to Jesus, and longing for the return of Jesus.

For more on this topic, see my books:

Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World
Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology
Jesus is the Christ: The Messianic Testimony of the Gospels

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[1] Casey, Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, 110.

[2] Burnett, Inscriptions, 74.