"Mary the Master"

The biblioblogosphere has been jumping on the Jesus Tomb documentary with both feet; I haven't seen such a bonanza of crackpot-theory refutation since The DaVinci Code. So there's not much left for me to do. Enjoy Jodi Magness's take on the subject, or Mark Goodacre's, or Ben Witherington's, or Richard Bauckham's at Paleojudaica. Shooting fish in a barrel is fun.

I'll limit myself to a few observations on one point. The sole Greek text among the ossuaries reads Μαριαμηνου Μαρα. (The particle η, said to be present between the two words, is not.) The "Jesus Tomb" scholars would like to understand this as "Mariamene (= Mary Magdalene) the Master." They are taking the word Μαρα to be a transliteration of the Aramaic word meaning "lord, master." However,

1. It is hard to understand why the Aramaic word would be used instead of a Greek one in the Greek ossuary.

2. It's not clear exactly what form of the Aramaic word they are referring to. Μαρα could = מרה ‎, that is, the emphatic state of the masculine form of ‏‎maré. However, this form is only attested centuries later; the usual emphatic masculine form at this period would be ‏מריא‎. It's also not clear why a female would have a title in the masculine gender.

3. The word Μαρα could also = מרה, ‏מראה‎, the feminine absolute form of the word. However, the absolute form would have to mean "a lady" or "a mistress," not "the Master" or "Master." The emphatic form of the feminine would be ‏מרתא‎ = Μάρθα, "the Mistress," "the Lady" (also the proper name Martha).

Therefore the Jesus Tomb scholars seem to be wrong again. "Mara" is pretty obviously either a nickname for Mariamene, or refers to another woman whose bones were also interred in the ossuary.

A Spurious Addition to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan?

I notice that it is common to quote the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 4:1 as Mahlon Smith does at his website, where we find this translation:

And Adam knew that his wife Eve had conceived
from Sammael the angel (of death)
and she became pregnant and bore Cain.
And he was like those on high and not like those below.
And she said: "I have got a man from the angel of the LORD."

My problem with this translation is that the words in italics above are not found in any text of Pseudo-Jonathan. The only surviving manuscript of Pseudo-Jonathan (PsJ), in the British Museum, reads, according to the publication of it by Clarke, "And Adam knew that Eve his wife was pregnant from Sammael, angel of the Lord." The standard printed text (editio princeps) as published in the rabbinic bible reads: "And Adam knew Eve his wife, that she had desired the angel; and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said, I have acquired a man, the angel of the Lord."

Obviously the version with the addition is closer to the editio princeps than to the London MS, but neither text (and they are the only witnesses to the text of PsJ) has the addition. Nevertheless, the belief that the words really are in PsJ is widespread. James Kugel quotes the latter part of PsJ's version as "He resembled the upper ones [angels] and not the lower ones, and she [therefore] said, I have acquired a man, indeed, an angel of the Lord" (The Bible as it Was, p. 86). Birger Pearson, in an essay in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism (1981) quotes the same version (p. 479). And Phillip Davies, in the Blackwell Reader in Judaism (2001), does the same (p. 40). These are all reputable scholars.

As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that any version of PsJ (or any other targum) contains these words. However, another text that has some affinities to PsJ, the Hebrew Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, in relating the story of Cain's conception, says "she saw his likeness that it was not of the earthly beings, but of the heavenly beings." Is that where these words come from? Or is there a version of the text of PsJ that I'm not aware of?

I'm frankly stumped as to the source of this spurious text of the targum. Do any of my readers have any insight?

UPDATE (3/2): Many thanks to those who have left comments below. Andy, can you point me towards a source for that quote?