Boanerges is full of mysteries, to be sure. The classic discussion of this issue is Boanerges, by J. Rendel Harris, which is online at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/boanerges00harr.
But Harris does not deal with the preliminary linguistic issues in any depth (I think he devotes less than a page to them). The derivation of Boanerges from a Hebrew "sons of thunder" is beset with difficulties.
First, the construct state of "sons" would normally be rendered as bene or some such, not boane. That weird oa is, well, weird.
Second, the usual Hebrew word for thunder is רַעַם. Did this come out as -rges in the Greek transliteration? The rg is no problem: the Greek rho is the usual for the Hebrew resh, and the Greek gamma is a common transliteration of the Hebrew ayin (which also commonly goes untransliterated), as when פְּעוֹר (Phə'ôr) comes out as Φογορ (Phogor = Peor) in Numbers 23.28; 25.5, 18 (×2); 31.16; Joshua 22.17 LXX. The issue is the final mem in "thunder" as contrasted with the sigma in -rges: complete mismatch. However, a Hebrew final mem looks similar to a samek, so perhaps the issue is one of transcription, not transliteration, and precedes the Greek text entirely:
Another option is the Hebrew word רֹגֶז, which offers its own transliteration problems, since a zayin would usually be represented in Greek by a zeta. Another issue here is that the meaning "thunder" is secondary to this word; it usually means wrath or an uproar of some kind. It can, however, be used symbolically or poetically of thunder, as the RSV of Job 37.2-3 recognizes: "Hearken to the thunder [רֹגֶז, commotion, wrath, roaring] of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. Under the whole heaven he lets it go, and his lightning [אוֹר, light] to the corners of the earth." But, again, the transliteration is not clean.
Yet another option is the transliterally clean one, רֶגֶשׁ, which seems to have a range of meanings covering tumult, throng, motion, movement, sensation, feeling, and sound. It would have to be a metaphorical sound, though, and one for which I do not readily have an example (to match with Job 37.2-3 above).
So option 1 requires a scribal mistake in Hebrew before getting to the Greek; option 2 requires an unusual transliteration for zayin; and option 3 stands as the longest stretch in order to arrive at the meaning "thunder". None is perfect.
Thing is, though... I do not think that the other kinds of explanation I have heard are any better; and usually they raise more questions than they answer.
One such class of explanation holds that Mark wrote in code, as it were, and that the word Boanerges had little if anything to do with the purported meaning given at Mark 3.17: "sons of thunder". Now, I myself would not take the option that the entire gospel of Mark is written in code off the table: maybe that is what Mark 4.11 means. But I seriously doubt, if Mark was indeed written in code, that said code would finally be cracked, after nearly two millennia, by some modern lone wolf in his or her study. No, I suspect that, if Mark is in code, either the Gnostics (or similar groups) preserved at least some of that meaning for us or it is lost to us forever. Cracking a code, by the way, is a very different thing than tracing a tradition; in both cases modern investigators are filling in details that were probably missed by readers of the text whose codes or traditions are being evaluated; the difference is that an encoded text would be intentionally obscure, whereas traditions, even when their original meanings have been forgotten by their own tradents, are not intentionally so.
Another such class of explanation derives Boanerges purely from Greek words. Not only does this kind of explanation create a single exception of how Mark elsewhere uses the phrase ὅ ἐστιν; it also ignores that, however difficult the vowel combination oa is in boane, we still have the Greek phrase "son of" linked with the consonants and one legitimate vowel sound for the Hebrew phrase "son of"; the weird vowel sound in the middle may mean that the author or redactor was not fluent in Hebrew, but it does not mean that anything other than "son of" is a likely source for the first morpheme of Boanerges. To explain the name by reference to "loud work" or "energetic oxen" or what have you is to create a coincidence (boane/bene = "son of") that is, frankly, too much for me to swallow; usually it will be too much for anybody other than the originator of the hypothesis to swallow, as well, which is why those kinds of explanations have not caught on.
The Greek hypothesis may possibly be salvaged by assuming that the redactor or author of Mark did not understand the original Greek allusion (whatever it may be) and thought that boane was a representation of the Hebrew construct state of "sons". This would be a variant of the usual idea that the redactor or author of Mark did not know Hebrew well enough to get Boanerges just right.
Some of the above kinds of explanations also seem to lean into the notion that Paul was the only Christian who wrote about theology in early Christianity and Mark was the only one who turned that theology into stories in early Christianity... until Matthew and Luke came along. I myself regard this minimalist scenario as wholly improbable on external grounds (from an investigation of what earliest Christianity probably looked like) and as quite unfeasible on internal grounds (from an investigation of the texts of Paul and Mark on their own merits). But that is probably a debate for another time.
As for MacDonald's Homeric thesis, I do not think, even if James and John are everything that Harris and MacDonald argues for, that Homer is really involved. That is, twin children of thunder, lightning, or storms were a cultural force of which Homer becomes only an instance. Aramean kings, for example, sometimes went by the appellation Ben Hadad, or "son of Hadad"; and Hadad was the storm god, known also as Ramman, or "thunderer". The place name Hadadrimmon appears in Zechariah 12.11. There is a village called Bene-berak listed as a Danite possession in Joshua 19.45; Bene-berak literally means "sons of lightning". (It is of interest to me that Samson, so similar in various ways with Heracles/Hercules, was also a Danite. Perhaps the region identified with Dan, situated on the coast, was the special recipient of various such syncretic Mediterranean traditions.) Harris gives other examples.
But overall I am pretty sympathetic to this line of inquiry. The concept, including the specific and most famous instantiation in the form of the Dioscuri, was certainly available; in Acts 28.11 Paul sails on a ship protected by a figurehead of the Dioscuri. I mention protection because of course, as sons of Zeus, they would have a direct helpline to the god most directly responsible for storms at sea; no wonder the Dioscuri would be especially popular with sailors.
Let us look at the parallels themselves.
James & John were by birth the sons of Zebedee; Castor & Pollux were by birth the sons of Laertes.
Not exactly sure why this is a parallel of any significance. All male humans are sons of somebody.
James & John were renamed as Boanerges ("sons of thunder"); Castor & Pollux were renamed Dioscuri ("lads of Zeus").
Yes. Obviously the $100 match on the list goes to what the name Boanerges is said to mean compared with the Dioscuri being the sons of the thundering god Zeus. I was unsure about Castor and Pollux actually being renamed Dioscuri until I found Diodorus Siculus writing at Library of History 4.48.6: "The god [Triton] accompanied the ship [of the Argonauts] in its voyage without ceasing for two days and nights and foretold to Heracles his Labors and immortality, and to the Tyndaridae that they should be called Dioscuri and receive at the hands of all mankind honor like that offered to the gods."
James & John were both fishermen; Castor & Pollux were both Argonauts (sailors on the Argo).
Well, yes.... But the nautical associations for Castor and Pollux go well beyond their having sailed with Jason on the Argo. They became the deities of salvation at sea, essentially, and Harris traces their influence even up rivers and such.
James died a violent death; Castor died a violent death.
According to Acts 12.2 James was murdered by Herod Agrippa.
John was thought to live till second coming; Polydeuces could have lived forever.
This opens up huge questions. In John 21 it is not "John" who was supposed to live until the second coming; it is the beloved disciple. That the beloved disciple was John is a commonplace in later Christian exegesis, but it is not clear that this was so when the gospel of John (or its appendix) was penned.
James and John requested to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in glory; Polydeuces/Pollux asked Zeus to allow Castor and him to share immortality.
Not sure how close this one really is; but refer to the next one.
Jesus refused the request (they were replaced by 2 thieves at the cross); Zeus granted their request (in art they are depicted on the right and left of Zeus).
The real parallel here is between the previous James & John one (the request to sit at the left and right hand of Jesus) and this current Castor & Pollux one (how they are depicted in art). A frieze above an arch (which I think is dated to the third century before Christ) in Perugia, Italy, apparently depicts Jupiter in between Castor and Pollux (and their horses):
So where does this leave us?
I find it interesting that, despite the fact that the main parallel is found only in Mark (the name Boanerges itself), a couple of the parallels do not involve Mark at all. For example, does Mark differentiate between the death of James and that of John? No, not at all. Famously, he depicts Jesus as lumping their deaths together in imitation of his own in 10.39. Similarly, Philip Sidetes writes that "Papias in the second volume says that John the theologian and James his brother were done away with by Jews." And does Mark mention John's presumed longevity? No, at least not in the extant text. (But is John 21 based on a lost ending of Mark as some argue? And would that missing ending have included this detail? The issues get very complicated at this point, with lots of moving pieces.) Also, Castor and Pollux were known for being able to call on their father, the god of lightning and thunder, to calm stormy seas; so does Mark (or any of the evangelists, for that matter) give James and John any special role in the pericope on the calming of the sea? No. None at all. Does Mark even call them twins? No (though admittedly they do appear together a lot more than Peter and Andrew do). If the brothers Boanerges are indeed a parallel to the Dioscuri, Mark seems to be taking very little advantage of the fact.
On a related note, both Matthew and Luke omit the detail about the name Boanerges; yet Luke has the brothers offering to call fire down from heaven at Luke 9.54. Is fire a cipher for lightning? Is this hot temper of theirs a reflection of one possible way of interpreting "sons of thunder", even though Luke fails to preserve the epithet itself? Or is the whole thing based on the famous miracle by Elijah instead?
I like the hypothesis that the brothers Boanerges were named after or even designed after the ancient motif of the Gemini or divine twins. I am not committed to it, but I like it. However, I think it has little or nothing to do with Homer, and I suspect that the redactor or author of Mark either did not notice or did not care about the implications of the name: too many easy, easy opportunities missed. That means that the name preceded our redactor or editor, who passed it on without fanfare.
I would love to see a few of the mysteries surrounding this name cleared up. I would also love world peace. I am not sure which of the two wishes I am more likely to see fulfilled.
Ben.
