Martha
biblical figure
Martha (Aramaic: מָרְתָא) is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary of Bethany, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem and witnessing Jesus resurrecting her brother, Lazarus.
Etymology of the name
The name Martha is a Latin transliteration of the Koine Greek Μάρθα, itself a transliteration of the Aramaic מָרְתָא Mârtâ, "the mistress" or "the lady", from מרה "mistress", feminine of מר "master." The Aramaic form occurs in a Nabatean inscription found at Puteoli, and now in the Naples Museum; it is dated AD 5 (Corpus Inscr. Semit., 158); also in a Palmyrene inscription, where the Greek translation has the form Marthein.
Biblical references
In an episode from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the home of two sisters named Mary and Martha. While Martha is "encumbered about many things" as she worriedly attends to their home and guest, Mary had chosen "the better part" by sitting at Jesus's feet and receiving his teachings with attention. The name of their village is not recorded, nor (unlike in John 11:18) is there any mention of whether Jesus was near Jerusalem. Biblical commentator Heinrich Meyer notes that "Jesus cannot yet be in Bethany, where Martha and Mary dwelt [according to the Gospel of John]". However, the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges claims that it was "undoubtedly Bethany".
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q232453. VIAF identifies the subject as 70419468. The Library of Congress control number is n86141621. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.