MAMMON

Biblical noun (NT)

1.

Personification of riches (3 Nephi 13:24)

Etymology

MAMMON, a personification of riches, may have entered the English language from Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13 in the New Testament, where the phrase "God and MAMMON" is mentioned (cf. Luke 16:9, 11, 13). The word itself may be of Hebrew or Aramaic origin: According to Marcus Jastrow, the Hebrew word māmōn, "accumulation, wealth, value," (Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature [New York: Judaice Press, 1996], 1:794) is from Hebrew hāmōn, "accumulation; large amount"; cf. M. Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods [Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 2002], 682, who cites mmwn' as an Aramaic cognate; cf. also Syriac māmōnā, "money, riches," J. Payne Smith, Compendious Syriac Dictionary [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998], 279, and Punic mmn, "advantage, profit, fortune," J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionary of the North-West Inscriptions [Leiden: Brill 1995], 2:647.) However, according to Ernst Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Cara, 1987), 352, māmōn may be from m'mwn, "trust, deposit," from the verbal root 'mn, "to trust."

Variants

Deseret Alphabet: 𐐣𐐈𐐣𐐊𐐤

Notes

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