Terminology Tuesday: Corban

CORBAN [Gk korban (κορβαν)]. The word “corban” appears in Mark 7:11 (cf. Matt 15:5), “As a man should say to his father or mother, That which you should have had from me is corban, that is, a gift [to God] …” Matt 15:5 has the same basic text, but without the transliterated Semitic word cōrbān. The equivalence cōrbān=Gk doron [tou theou], “gift [to God],” is also attested by Josephus, Ant 4.73, where he links it with (a) vows and procedures for gaining release from them, and (b) oaths (cf. also AgAp 1.167). This use is now attested in an Aramaic ossuary inscription from Jebel Hellet et-Turi (Fitzmyer 1971), which runs “everything which a man may find to his profit in this ossuary [is] an offering (qrbn) to God from the one within it.” If it is given to God, then it is banned to men, just as appears in Mark 7:11. The terms qrbn and qwnm occur in these senses in the Mishnah and Talmud. Thus, in m. Ned. 1:4 we read, “If a man said, May what I eat of thine be the Korban, or ‘as a Korban’ or ‘a Korban,’ it is forbidden to him.” It thus appears in (a) prohibitions of use, and (b) dedication formulas of the 1st century A.D. Further confirmation comes from the finding of a stone jar from the 1st century inscribed with the word qrbn, and recalling m. Maʿaś. Š. 3:10, “If a man found a vessel and on it was written Korban …” (Fitzmyer 1971: 96). In Mark 7:11 the word may thus represent either Hebrew or Aramaic. Matt 27:6 presents the related form, korbanas, probably reflecting the Aramaic emphatic state (qwrbn), meaning “treasury” and thus equivalent to the Gk gazophylakion. The very same use of the term occurs also in Josephus, JW 2.175, but so far it does not seem to have been attested in 1st-century Aramaic sources.

  Bibliography  Fitzmyer, J. 1971. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament. London.

Wilcox, M. (1992). Corban. In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 1, p. 1134). New York: Doubleday.