MAMMON

Biblical noun (NT)

1.

Personification of riches (3 Nephi 13:24)

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). Tyndell and KJV________ . The word itself may be of Hebrew or Aramaic origin: According to Marcus Jastrow, the Hebrew word mamon, "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 hamon, "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 mamona, "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, mamon may be from m'mwn, "trust, deposit," from the verbal root 'mn, "to trust."

form the Aramaic mammon, "wealth, riches" (possibly from ma'mon, from ’amn, "to trust," and meaning, literally, "trust, deposit" (see E. Klein, CEDHL, p. 352; cf. also discussion of Biblical Hebrew root ’amn in Köhler-Baumgartner, s.v.

If this is not an adoption of the English, then we can appeal to the Aramaic. Aramaic was already in currency before the Babylonian exile, thus explaining the appearance of this Aramaic word in the Book of Mormon.