Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Breaking news in biblical studies. A new woman in the New Testament was just discovered that we didn't even know was there for centuries. The Epistle of Second John, people thought was addressed to an anonymous elect lady or a metaphor for the church. But it appears that New Testament scholar Lincoln Blumel has just cracked the code in discovering that it's actually the name of a real woman, Eclectae, which is super cool, and she may have had certain authoritative functions even in the church. So today we're going to talk with a scholar who cracked the code and his research assistant, Spencer Kraus. So thanks for being on our show today.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk about this discovery.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: I'm excited that we got a new woman in the New Testament before we got GTA 6 and Winds of Winter.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: I don't even know that.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: You don't know the reference. They'll know on the Internet. Spencer knows the reference.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Well, Linka Blumel is a New Testament papyrologist, which is someone who studies papyri. And he has studied classics and Early Christian studies at University of Calgary, Oxford University of Toronto. And currently you are teaching ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. And then, Spencer Krauss, you were his research assistant at the time when Lincoln made this discovery. You were a research associate at Scripture Central, and now you are a research associate at the Ancient America Foundation. So to start us off, who is Lady Eclecte that this Epistle of John is being addressed to? How did you make this discovery?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Well, it's a great question. You know, I made this, as I mentioned the first chapter of the book. I was in Egypt on a dig, part of a dig in Egypt, by ways to dig there in the Fayoum in the spring of 2023. And I was working on some inscriptions and kind of when you work on text, you're kind of searching on online databases, Greek parallels, and somehow got caught up in Clement of Alexandria with some parallels there and kind of began digging more into Clement. I spent some time as a grad student looking at Clement of Alexandria. Really interesting Christian writer. And so over the next few months, when I got back, I began digging into some of his work and just perusing it a little bit more seriously. And what Clement does is Eusebius is an early Christian historian, and in his history of the Church, he talks about Clement and he says he writes this work. It's in Greek, kupotopeses, which just means sketches. It's kind of like one of our earliest Christian kind of commentaries, so to speak. It's kind of a general one where he covers various books in the Bible, but it's been lost. It's never got copied over time, and it's been lost. But extracts of it were preserved much later in a Latin writer, Cassiodorus, who talks about this and talks about that Clement did some good work on the Catholic epistles. And so I came across some of the extracts of this, of Clement that he does on, like, one Peter, Jude, one John, and then two John. And when you was reading through these, they're pretty straightforward. You're like, okay, it's not interesting. Sounds kind of clementine. And when I came across his Clementine.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: That's a good word.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
Brief, you know, discussion of To John, what jumped out to me says, oh, yeah, this is written to a lady called eclectic. And I thought, I've never heard of this before. This is really strange. And, you know, again, one who does a lot with ancient letters, I've done a lot with pair. And two John, three John always kind of jumped out to me because I've edited a lot of letters, you know, done a book on ancient letters preserved on papyrus. And what's interesting about To John, it's the only book in the New Testament that we know the medium upon which it was written. So in verse 12, it says, you know, it's kind of glossy. It says, you know, I don't want to, you know, write anymore. It says, you know, with paper and pen. And pen. That's just, you know, kind of idiomatic. In fact, the word there is papyrus.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Interesting. I didn't know that, you know, the.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Letter is actually written on papyrus. And of course, I've done tons with, you know, Greek letters on papyrus from Egypt.
And so that kind of jumped out to me. And I thought, well, what's he doing here? And so, of course, turn to your New Testament.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: And.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: And I thought, well, what's he seeing here? And the third word in the letter is eclecte. And in every printed modern edition of the Greek New Testament, eclecte is taken as an adjective. And this is a little bit strange because I've read a lot of letters from the Roman period, and it's a very standard opening in Roman period letters. And what's interesting is you find this in 3 John. It just follows the standard where the first element of a letter is always the name or title of the sender. The second element is always the name of the addressee. And then you'll typically have a greeting. Greetings might differ. And this is what you have in three John.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: I have it right here. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. The elder to beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: And that's three John.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: That's Third John. It says Beloved Gaius, which is fine in the Greek. Beloved actually follows the name. Yeah. So essentially the elder to Gaius, the beloved.
[00:04:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: And this is really standard. You'll have addressee addressed always the second element of the letter. But here we have an adjective. And then you follow that with kuria, which.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: So if I can I pause to just read the verse. It says, okay, Second John, this is the kjv. This is like the LDS standard version. The elder unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth. And then it continues the greeting there.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: And so it's kind of strange and a lot of commentators have noticed this historically, saying this is kind of a strange way to begin a letter, which has led to the dominant theory in biblical studies that elect lady is a metaphor for a church.
And so you'll have, especially in German scholarship for the 20th century, all kind of theories, and I would say they're actually quite wild theories. And I don't think.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: What's your favorite one?
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Well, you know, Bultmann has done a lot on the Johannine corpus, and so he's done, you know, commentary on the Johannine epistles. And his was, you know, that this is in fact, this letter's evidence of early Catholicism.
[00:05:28] Speaker D: Oh, wow.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: And so what you have. And so he's the one that really pushed this idea that 3 John is written by an elder, it's an authentic letter. But then 2 John is a forgery written by someone else who's using 3 John to kind of crib off of. And when you actually boil down his argument, it's this unusual beginning. It's kind of strange. Who is this elect lady? And by that point, everybody's taken it as the church. And so he says, well, this is trying to aspire to be Catholic, therefore it can't be the Same author as 3 John, notwithstanding all the similarities between the two, the fact that the elder, they use similar phraseology, you know, a lot of stock phrases.
And so there's. That's kind of spin off in multiple directions. I think modern scholarships kind of pull that back a little bit in terms of it's probably written by the same, you know, elder who wrote three John. But three John, the beginning is kind of standard. And I've read literally, you know, hundreds and literally thousands of papyrus letters from the Roman period we have from Egypt and maybe you're wondering, why do I keep going back to Egypt? The. That's where all our evidence is because of the climate and circumstances. People writing letters all over the Mediterranean world, but they don't survive in the numbers you have in Egypt.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Makes sense. Why Egypt? We get lots of evidence.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: And so as someone looking at this fresh. I see, okay, the elder unto the elect lady. And if this is a metaphor for the church, I'm thinking like, well, you know, in the Old Testament, Christ refers to Israel as the bride of Christ. So maybe there's that feminine metaphor there. But you're saying there's a problem there because there's not necessarily evidence for this in New Testament pepperology.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Well, this is. Number one would be the only time in the New Testament that the church is ever called a lady. Right.
The word lady that actually appears or only appears twice in the New Testament in 2 John 1 and 2 John 5.
The other thing, too. And of course, there's metaphor, right? I don't include metaphor in the biblical text. Of course there is. But we're looking at a letter that is 13 verses long.
And what I'll find is that people who will do this, well, if you look back, like, you know, metaphors in Isaiah about Israel or about Zion or they'll go to book revelation. I said, yeah, that's fine. I don't doubt those. But we're dealing with a really straightforward letter. Why would you write a letter with an overarching metaphor that otherwise is so incredibly straightforward?
[00:07:37] Speaker A: This is a long, poetic book.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: A long poetic book. So it's a matter of genre.
And when you look at three John, it's really straightforward. It begins the standard way. And so I began looking at this saying, well, why does Clement read it this way? And in fact, I went through Christian evidence for about the first thousand years, and Clement's the first commentator you get. Jerome says something, but he's talking about the Latin, and it's kind of vague. What exactly, how is he reading this? And then you're into like the 6th and 7th century, and by that point you'll have some catena, which are like comments on verses that are kind of assembled. And, you know, these are from the 6th or 7th century, or some will say, maybe it's a lady. But then you'll see this move to. Or it's the church. And by the time, you know, eighth night, it's got to be the church. And this is. You start to see this dominant interpretation emerge there. And so you will see even in medieval manuscripts of 2 John, that if you go this, they'll have a mark over the word curia. And in the. In the margin which says there's marginal note, it says, he's writing to the church. Yeah. And so this becomes the dominant interpretation, and it is today.
And there may be some reasons for that. We could get into maybe a letter written to a woman later on in the canon may pose some problems.
But I couldn't escape the feeling that Clement was seeing something. Right. He's there. And one of the things that really strikes with ancient Christian writers, I'm like, their Greek is way, way better than ours.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: I was told in grad school, if you're going to question the language skills of the native author of the document, you better have a good reason why you're questioning it, to say, no, they were wrong about it when they wrote it this way. Right. Or when they read it this way.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: No one natively speaks ancient Greek anymore.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're doing your best. And so I. I really need to put some stock in this. What's he seeing now? He does say in this. He says that she was Babylonian and was dressed to virgins. And so it's clear that Clement is reading some things into the letter. I talk a lot about that. In fact, what's probably informing him a little bit is 1 Peter 5:13, where it talks about a joint elect. The joint elect in Babylon, but that's a different word. So he's probably, you know, like all commentators, they do some eisegesis, we'll read into stuff, and some exegesis.
And so virgins, Babylon, are never mentioned in the letter. So clearly he's kind of reading some stuff in there. But still, the one exegetical claim he's making is trust to eclectae.
And so I began thinking, well, what's he saying? And what began first to dawn on me is first of all, well, in Roman period letters, the first word after that of the center is always the name of the addressee. And this is, in this case, eclectae. Now, what's interesting is modern editions of the Greek New Testament.
If you read ancient texts. And so I read ancient letters, I've edited a lot of ancient documents, inscriptions, letters, wills, commentaries, all kind of stuff is there's no word spacing in Greek, so it's written scriptio continua. So again, word spacing is a form of interpretation. Sometimes you can divide things a little bit differently.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: That sounds so stressful. And I'm sure that that was very natural to read that way. But as an English speaker, where all my words are separated by a space and with punctuation, I just can't even wrap my mind around trying to read documents like that.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: It is tricky when I'm editing a text. Often I'll be like, okay, let's recognize some letters, Then some syllables come out, then words come out, and then I'll start dividing the other thing. We have accent marks they've added later on. And that's for interpretive reasons. You don't have accents.
Those are a much later addition of the text and capitalization. So in modern editions, we will capitalize names and things like that. Say, well, this is a name. But in ancient Greek, they're not doing that. It's just undifferentiated text.
And so I began looking at this, saying, okay, let's look at this undifferentiated text. And you have this phrase in Greek, eklecte, Korea, Right? And I thought, what's clement seeing in here? Because as you start, what I did is I put all the text together right, you know, without any spaces, with this all capital script. And what jumped out to me when I began to look at the text is the te kria, we have a definite article, and then Korea. And the reason why this jumped out to me, because in ancient letters, you'll often have people have, like, you know, titles given to names. Like, for example, Gaius the beloved, and in that case, the adjective. The way it works in Greek, it's always given after the name. And there's definite articles you have to Gaius, then you have the. Which in that would just be to, you know, Agapeto the beloved. And that's pretty standard. But a common title of address is actually curios and curia, the lord or lady. It's like the Latin, right? Domina or dominus. And we have, you know, probably, you know, a couple hundred attestations of this. Mostly of Kurios, we have curia. And looking at Roman letters from Egypt, curia never a single time appears as a noun in the opening of a letter. It's always as substantive, modifying a woman's name. And it begins with te, kuria, with the name immediately following that. And so I thought, well, look at this. You look at this, you see a Te, you have a Korea. But now what do you do with the cleck? Because it doesn't make sense. And so I thought for a time, well, could this be a foreign name? So in papyru, if you have, like, Egyptian names or Semitic names, they sometimes won't decline Them, like in Greek, you'll decline a name a certain way, typically os ending.
And you'll find this in the Bible, right? You'll have, you know, Jacob or Jacobus, and they'll do this and it'll not consistent with that. And I thought, no, eclect is clearly Greek.
And what then cinched it for me is I began looking at all these letters in Greek and I came across a letter that was written by a woman to her husband. And it was from German collection, been re edited a few years ago by a group in Heidelberg. And what they did is actually is the writer of that letter they wrote to their husband and then they forgot to put in the definite article before dearest. And what you do when you're editing a text, you put in these kind of brackets. We call them carets. And it means you got to insert text to make sense of this. And they put in the definite article and they're like, oh, yeah, this got dropped because the name ended in a similar sounding way as the article and ended up getting dropped. And all of a sudden it just clicked. I said, this is what's going on. It's not eklecte curia. It's eklecte te kuria, which then means eklecte can only be read as a proper name. And you have literally like 2300 parallels for this kind of address. And the te kuria is how it always appears. Letters is substantive. So it's to eklecte the lady.
And so when I came.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm gonna slow you down a little bit for those of us who are struggle with our Greek here.
So the phrase in John, as it's rendered in the KJV is the elect lady. And in some of these manuscripts, you're saying that that was rendered eklecte curia.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that is how it reads in most manuscripts.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: And that's eklecte is elect. Elect, and then Korea being lady. And you're saying there was actually maybe a definite article, the word the between the word eclecte and the word curia. So it would be eclectee Taylor kuria, eclecte the lady.
Okay. And you're saying because those two syllables, eclect and te, are similar.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: They're identical.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: They're identical.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: They're identical. And when I read papyrus, so when I edit a text, I'm always correcting ancient authors. Right. Imagine writing today without spell checker. Right. Even a spell checker. I'm surprised how to make these errors.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: AI is helping me. I'm, you know, doing these things Grammarly, you know, word. And I still have some errors in there. Well, they don't have this. And so I've edited text where literally every third word, I'm like, no, this is the wrong ending. This is the wrong ending. Got to add an article here. Gotta do this. And so you start. You have a whole apparatus for doing this. This is standard.
And so it became clear this is what is going on. Because the Greek, as it currently stands, doesn't actually make sense.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: So if I pull up a Greek New Testament right now and I pull open, you're saying that doesn't make sense.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: The way it's explained grammatically, it does not make sense. And you know what's interesting from an epistolary perspective, it makes no sense. And here's the reason, number one, is they have to default to a metaphor to explain it. And here's something else really interesting is that I began to look at New Testament scholarship, right, and went through. You know, I kind of did a cutoff. I'll go back 150 years. And I went back to Westcott and Hort, who were two Cambridge scholars who were remarkable New Testament textual critics.
They were the ones that actually kind of, you know, really challenged the received text, which is the basis of the King James. And so they issued a new textual edition, 1881, in the New Testament, which, of course, we've updated it. But their work is really remarkable. And when they came to this passage, they realized there is a problem here. And they said the only way grammatically we can get around this is we capitalize eklecte incuria and make it a double name to eklecte curia, which is a double name, because then grammatically it works. Because in letters, you don't have to have a definite article before the name, because it's definite by nature. But they said this essentially doesn't make sense. And in three, John doesn't do this. And it's interesting, Westcott, a couple years after doing this monumental version of the New Testament, goes on and he writes this really nice commentary, which is still incredibly useful on the Johannine epistle, certainly on a textual level, where he says, grammatically, a double name works. But it's strange. And he says, currently this is an insoluble problem. We don't yet know how to solve this, but something's going on. But he then just prints, right? Here's the standard reading. Eclectic to the elect lady.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Okay, I'm not entirely sure I'm following exactly what the grammatical problem is. So you're saying that if I go to a Greek New Testament today, it says eklecte kuria, and that doesn't make sense grammatically. Why? Can you explain that a little bit more?
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Well, when you look at letters and you have other letters, you never start a letter with an adjective with the addressee. Okay. You don't do this. And if you were, you didn't have a definite article in front of eclecte.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: So instead of saying so, it would.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Be like, greetings, elect Lady Korea. So the elder to the elect lady.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Okay, so right now the English says the elder to the elect lady. But you're saying that that was kind of implied that the translators added that the. But in the Greek it was like to elect lady. And that grammatically, yes, it's not actually there. Okay.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: They add that definite article there. And I will make a note. There is Raymond Brown, who's a really good biblical scholar.
He wrote a commentary on the Johannine epistles, and he deals this issue. And he's one of the few that actually he all says, yeah, this Greek doesn't really work. There should be a definite article. If it was going to be the elect lady or even just elect lady, there should be an article there. But he says the writer deliberately dropped this because this was a circular letter. It was going around to all elect churches. Right.
And people just kind of keep. It's just like. It's like Galatians, a circular letter. You know, it's to various churches.
The argument doesn't work at all. Number one, it is total special pleading. It should be in the plural. Right. If you're new to, like, Galatians, but at least give Raymond Brown credit for recognizing that also. But the reason why there's no definite article like you should have before is because it's a proper name.
Proper names never have definite articles. And again, I would go back and say we have like 2300 Roman period letters and there's always the name never has.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Definitely 2300.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: From about letters in Egypt. In Greek, from about the 3rd century BC from Ptolemaic up to the Arab conquest, we hit about 4,500. Wow.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: So we have a substantial body of evidence we can pull from here. It's not just one or two isolating things.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: We have a ton. And so from the Roman period for about two centuries, we're up over 2,000.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: And so that grammatical norm also works in English, too. I would never say writing a letter to the Jasmine. I would just Say to Jasmine.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: To Jasmine, Right. You wouldn't do this. And so this is what you have in Greek.
You know, most New Testament scholars, I have to be honest, really have not paid much attention to the Greek grammar.
And you know, Brown, at least he tried to address this, but I think in a totally way that's not even believable at all. But at least he tried to address this. And it's got to then be right. The elder Tu eklecte, the lady. And we have all these parallels for this.
Now, of course, when you start reading it this way, you say, okay, well that's interesting now, but does this reading appear in manuscripts and does this name exist and what does this mean? And that opens up a whole other set of questions. Now for the letter, once you say this is not a metaphor for a church.
[00:19:31] Speaker C: That's exactly where I was going with this. As I'm thinking about this. Right. Do we have manuscript attestation or are there other names? Maybe we can touch that. But Spencer, do you have something you want to add?
[00:19:39] Speaker D: I was just going to add one thing that you do really well in your book is you have a.
You talk about 2,300, you know, examples of this and you cite a ton of them. You have, you know, chart after chart of how to John fits the context of these letters, you know.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Speaker D: In phrasing throughout, in the opening address. And even, you know, with the fact that people have had to default to a metaphor to explain this. You know, one of the things that I believe Raymond Brown also did was he, he tried to say, well, Korea could be used in this other instance to be the lady congregation. But even then, kyria there didn't actually mean lady. It meant principle or choice.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: You know, so the metaphor is strained, in other words, to make it work with this Greek grammar.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: It's very strange. And I have to, Sorry, I have to throw in one more note. One note of Greek, but I'll do so Brown and others to do this, they'll say, well, sometimes, you know, churches are called like ladies.
You know, they'll give an example for the shepherd of Hermas.
And yeah, it would actually. You will get this. But what's interesting is you only get this metaphor after it's very clear they're talking about a church. So we'll talk about ekklesia and then we'll start using it can use this. You don't get this in 2 John.
And it's just. And the other thing is in 3 John, the word ecclesiast used. So if you're linked. Writing to a church, the elder. Why not just say church at start? There's no problem doing that because they do it in 3 John.
The other thing is the way they read this as a metaphor. And people will pull up and say, well, you'll find in Greek, ancient Greek, they'll have this phrase, curia hay ekklesia, and they'll say, there it is, the lady, you know, congregation. But there it means like, you know, a council.
The problem there again is when they give this example and I address this, curia can appear as a noun. It also appears as an adjective. The way they're reading it in 2 John, one is as a noun, the way it's always used in inscriptions. And that thing is as an adjective. Actually, it's a different meaning altogether. It has no metaphorical meaning. So it's a totally erroneous comparison. It means the principal assembly. You know, Aristotle does this.
Aristophanes does this. In fact, there's literally hundreds of inscriptions from Greek that use this. And it never means lady assembly. It means the principal or the supreme, the chief.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, one more Greek question for you, then we'll go on to is it a real name? Is it attested? Right. Because. And I'm sure people have brought this up, and they will bring it up, verse 13 of 2 John, because it ends, the letter ends, and I'm reading the new Revised Standard Version, the children of your elect sister send you their greetings, and we have their tais eklectes, right? So some might point to this and say, hey, wait a second, we have another instance of an elect, elect person being addressed here. And it's an elect sister, right? A feminine, I guess, implying no adult face. Okay, so like, you know, the elect sister, right. How do you deal with this? Because, you know, and I know you address it in your book, but is.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: That the name of a person?
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Is that the name? Or rather, I have to say, why would they have two people named Eklecte here? The elect lady, the elect sister. That seems kind of strange. So would you address verse 13 of 2 John for us to give your perspective on it?
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yes, I would love this. That's a great question.
When this has come up, people will often say, you know, if this were to be a name, and again, they never add the definite article. It's never been in any conversation with the restored reading is they'll say this impossible, because then you would have two sisters of the same name.
Well, first of all, as you would know from Egypt, I can think of A lot of papyri where she have multiple children, son named Ptolemy. Oh, yeah. Other examples.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: So you would actually name multiple children.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: You can actually have children, same name again. It is rare, but that's not the major issue. It's. Once again, you have to look at the Greek text. There you have Tes, eklectes. It can only be an adjective modifying sister. It's the second right attributive position. And what they assume is whatever you read verse 13, you have to read verse one and verse 113. No, in fact, you can read. You look at the grammar, verse one, it can only be read as a proper name. The grammar verse 13 is only as an adjective. And what I then see here with this is, okay, you might say, well, the elder's being redundant, and certainly you can do that. But I would say, in fact, it's a deliberate choice saying you have a sister who is actually elect. In fact, there's a pun on the name going on here. In fact, we have this example in Matthew, Peter.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: And upon this rock, you also have a pun on a name in Philemon. And so this is not evidence of a high literature. This is very common, and it's especially common in Greek literature. You have two kinds of names. Typically in Greek, you have compound names like Nicodemus, right? Names made of two nouns, two adjectives, and simple names which are names that are identical to a noun or an adjective. And most often, when you actually go back and look in Greek literature about, you know, puns on names, there are names that are undifferentiated from a noun or adjective. Think of the name Stephen. Yeah, it is context. Is it the name Stephen or is it crown? So context will tell you how to.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Because Stephen means crown in Greek.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: It means crown in Greek.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Trying to bring this down to Greek 101 over here.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: And so when you read it in Acts, you're like, oh, this is a person. Stephen. When you read it in one Timothy, oh, this is a crown.
But context tells you in the same way I go back and say, well, to John, context says this can only be read as a proper name.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: So in the beginning of first John, it says eklecte, and at the end it says eklectes. So you're saying the addition of that S at the end is what makes it an adjective.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah, the definite article before it comes after sister. So it's modifying text.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Adele.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, And I would say if you look historically at commentaries, right? The two, you know, by Brown and Boltman, they both act again, they are a rare exception of people who actually pay attention to close grammar. A few others, and they recognize saying you can only read this as an adjective in the last verse. And they say, well, therefore it's adjective in the last verse. Then even though grammar's odd, it's got to be an adjective in the first verse.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: So they're making that leap. You're making that leap.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: But I'm like, no, you actually look at the grammar more possessed.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: I like that explanation that it's a pun because we see it in the Hebrew Bible all the time doing puns and names. Egyptian literature does puns on names.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Well, in root too. You have these things. Absolutely unusual.
[00:25:42] Speaker D: Yeah, and it's even common in epistolary, papyri as well.
In your book, you mention a letter from a guy named Barris who's. It's a simple Greek name that means to be. To weigh down or to be burdensome.
And he's writing to his friend and he makes this request and he says, now in this, I hope I'm not weighing you down or overbearing you. And he uses a form, a verb that uses the same root as his name. So, you know, you can see that people are making these puns all the time in the same types of literature that to John is, you know, that's great.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: I love the pun explanation. It ties it all together. You begin and end it right, with the sort of theme that sort of bookends and inclusio for the letter.
But maybe we should discuss.
Do we actually have the name Eclectic?
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Is that an actual name?
[00:26:33] Speaker C: Because it's all fine and good to say. Maybe it's a name grammatically. But like, if you can show me. No, we have other women named Eclectae, then that would seem to shrink the argument. So, Lincoln, what do we have?
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah, we do have the name. And this is interesting because some commentators will say, oh, this name doesn't actually exist. Right. There's no such name. And of course, whenever I hear stuff like this, whether it's or biblical studies, I'm like, okay, I really want to check the evidence, you know, myself on this. Now, what's interesting is if you look at like a Latin database of literary texts, you only have one attestation of this name in Clement. So you have the one Clement talks about, this name. If you go to Greek, right, The standard Greek database of literature that covers like 8th century BC to the 14th century, this name is not attested in any ancient literary text. But that is only a small fraction of the automatic evidence from the ancient world. In fact, most of our evidence for ancient names comes primarily through inscriptions or through papyri. And so that's where I turn to inscriptions, both in Greek and Latin.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: And those aren't included in those standard.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Names, and those aren't included in those databases. So when you go there, you actually find this name actually has nearly 20 attestations, all of which come from the Roman period in both Greek and Latin.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: And so you have Those there from 1st century have it in Greek, you have it in Latin. And what's interesting with this is some people might say, well, you know, if you only have nearly 20 attestations of a name, this is such a rare name. This, you know, it probably is not the name. A name here.
What I did is you have. By my count, you know, there's. By my count, there's about 37 named women in the New Testament attesting 33 names using that same databases. And go looking at those names. Of course, names like Mary or, Right. Julia, Claudia, they appear like thousands. They're way up there. But after that, you get a huge drop. In fact, most women's names in the New Testament in those databases have less than 200 attestations. And so this name, Eclectae, would be in the bottom quarter of names for New Testament names would actually be in the top quarter of that last bottom quarter. Like, it's more common than, like Lois, for example.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Now, I'm making an assumption here, but I would just guess that women's onomastics in the ancient world in general are probably less attested than men's names. Would you say that's.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Yes, they are. They are less, mostly male, because the nature of the evidence, military, things like this. But it is interesting when you look at onomastics, women's names, even children and slaves, some of our best evidence actually comes from inscriptions, like burial inscriptions, things like that. We actually do get views of these people, much more so than in literary sources. So the numbers are down, but it's very clear the name exists. In fact, we've known about the name, by the way, from like the middle of the 17th century.
It was first attested in an inscription published from Rome. It was published in an Italian edition, and then kind of made its way into a standard 1890s. And then, you know, there's been other attestations of this.
So it was surprising when people made this claim.
And I began looking at the evidence and finding all these attestations of the name that no, this name actually exists. And of Course, in Greek names, they often come in pairs, right? And Latin names, the same. Right. You know, Julius, Julia, Claudius, Claudia. Well, you have the masking name eclectus, and that actually is quite widely attested. You have nearly 100. So you actually have this pair. Right. Eclecta and eclectus, both in Greek and in Latin. And so, yeah, the name absolutely exists. And it's tested in the time in which this letter roughly would have been written.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Does the name actually mean elect, or is it like Brockinsley in Utah, where it doesn't mean anything? But we like the way it sounds.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Well, it literally means elect.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: It is elect.
And like a lot of these, you know, names that are simple names, they carry this meaning here. But you would call the person just like, you know, eclecte, or the Latin term would be, you know, electa for this. And so for me, it was really kind of interesting looking at the scholarship and just saying, like, oh, my goodness, we have all these attestations of the name. Why haven't people pointed this out?
[00:30:26] Speaker C: That's good to know. So that's not a problem. That's not a burden having it attested.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: The burden is not there. The position is exactly what you'd expect. And we have the name in the period we'd expect.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: Great.
[00:30:37] Speaker D: It is just always interesting to me to see people still repeat this claim that it's not attested anywhere. You find this in Bible commentaries. I mean, we looked at the past 150 years of printed commentaries on it, and it seems to just stem from someone who made this erroneous claim in 1909. And people have just kind of repeated it and just gone with it. And, you know, at first I was like, well, I could forgive him because, you know, who in 1909 would be familiar with Aladdin Edition in 1650? But then you realize, well, this was also known in 1890 and, you know, through this. And it's just kind of interesting to see that some people just never, I guess, checked their sources and their sources. Sources.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: So are you guys saying that reading this as a woman's actual name was accepted earlier, but then we went away from that? And you're reintroducing this idea, or is this a completely new argument?
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Well, it's. On one level, it's a completely new argument because the Greek now makes sense, I will point out. So when you get printed editions of the New Testament, so the first one's done by Erasmus in 1516. He printed edition.
He will print it as we have in ours. Eclectae Curry. And this has been the dominant one for the last 400, 500 years.
What you do have is there is a French printer, Robert Stephanus, or lesser known as Etienne, who does a lot of New Testament work. He prints in the middle of the 16th century, some additions of the Greek New Testament. And one of the ones that he does, his third edition, it's called the Editio Regia, called the Royal Edition, he actually capitalizes eclectic. Now, he articulates it as a.
As an adjective, which, by the way, all New Testament scholars do, except for Westcott and Hort, who actually know the articulation between the difference between adjective and name. But I'll leave that aside. A little jab there, but he capitalized it. And so for a time, you'll, oh, this is written to a woman called Eklecte. But people like Theodore Beza and others said, no, this doesn't work. And so for a time, you know, for about a hundred years, it was kind of in vogue and then kind of faded out.
And so it was there. But again, even with that, it doesn't solve the problem because the Greek still doesn't work.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: You can't just gloss over it with a capital letter.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: And so what's interesting is after that, when you get later on, people start capitalizing Korea and say it's elect Korea, like Korea is a lady's name. But again, that doesn't work. Again, capitalizing doesn't solve the problem. You actually have to deal with the grammar. And so it had come up popular for about 100 years, but the grammar did not work. But now the grammar actually works. Eclectae, te curia. Yeah, and so, yeah, this is where.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Okay, so you're saying that before, they still just didn't recognize that there was a definite article, the in between the word eclecte and kurtia.
[00:33:29] Speaker D: Correct.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: And you're the one who kind of recognized that in the manuscripts.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Well, you'd have to have it at for this to make sense. And that, in fact, this is the reading and the man. The article even exists in some manuscripts.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Okay, so let's get to that point. Let's turn to the manuscripts then, because.
[00:33:41] Speaker C: It'S all fine and good. And you make a very persuasive case in the abstract grammatical sense of why this would work. But. And okay, the name is attested. So we've got strike one. Strike two. What's our manuscript evidence? What papyri? Or later, you know, we have parchment, different kinds of writing media. What do we have in our manuscripts from the New Testament. And for people that know New Testament history, we have a lot of New Testament manuscripts right. From many centuries. So could you briefly walk us through some of our earliest manuscripts to when we now get an attestation of Eclectae te curia.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: I would argue that Clement is actually reading this. So.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: So you think he probably has a manuscript?
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Well, he would have to read it this way because he's writing. He's in the Roman period. That's how they write letters. So. And he says this. So I would say, yes, that he's actually a witness for this.
[00:34:24] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: And we can come back to emendations that we make based on a patristic reading. Origen does some of this, and there's readings, say, in the Bible that only appear in much, much later manuscripts. But Origen said this is the reading and they actually include it.
[00:34:35] Speaker C: Oh, interesting.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Here's early readings. So we could come back and revisit that. But you have for New Testament evidence, you know, it begins in the second century.
You know, sake of argument, New Testament texts merge in the first century.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Can I ask, when do you suppose that second John is written? Maybe. Let's start right there. You know, to our best of our ability.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: You know, I would probably say sometime in the first century.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: I would not, you know, say, well, you know, A.D. 65 or 85 or something. I have no idea if I.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Yes, probably after AD 33. Right. So between AD 33 and 8100, let's.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Say, you know, somewhere in that period.
[00:35:09] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: I would say a first century text for this letter. And then what you get for New Testament remains. Right. We don't have any autograph copies.
The copy that, you know, the Elder.
[00:35:21] Speaker C: Himself, whoever it is, you don't have his handwritten color copies.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Beginning in the second century, we get some small fragments, you know, kind of like the size of like a credit card for a few things. And these are hard to date because you're dating paleography. So based on handwriting styles. So it's definitely an art, not a science. It appears by the time you hit the third century, we have larger remains of manuscripts, like on papyrus. And again, really for up until the beginning of the 4th century, all our evidence is from Egypt because the dry sands preserved text of the New Testament.
And so it's really, once you hit kind of the later 4th century, 5th century, where you get like complete books or even like pandect Bibles, like entire Bibles, like the very most famous ones, Codex Vaticanus, which includes the Greek Old Testament, most of the New Testament, of course, it's damaged in places.
Codex Sinaiticus, which is like Vaticanus. You move, like, to Alexandrinus. These names at the end often is where they were found. And then as you get into, like, you know, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, you have more manuscripts.
What will eventually happen is they'll do a different kind of Greek writing. So in early manuscripts, it's all scriptio continua, right? It's all written capitals. When you get to write later Byzantine, they'll go to minuscule, where it's kind of more of a cursive writing. And you'll have, you know, written manuscripts up through the 16th century. And so if you look at this, you know, cumulatively, for the New Testament, you know, of, you know, minuscule manuscripts, we have over 2,000 of these. But again, they're not starting until probably, you know, seventh, eighth century.
Unsealed manuscripts. We have, you know, some fragments written on, like, you know, parchment, and then complete copies, but they're not really. We have some evidence, like third century and then kind of fourth, fifth, and then you have some papyri.
And what's interesting, you have. Look at, you know, to John 1, there is at presently no papyrus that attests this reading.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: Okay, so. So no papyrus.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: No papyrus.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: No papyrus for the first few centuries.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: For the first few centuries attesting to John 1.
Our earliest attestations of II John 1 are in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which date to when, you know, most people place these probably in the second half of the fourth century. Okay. And that our first copies. And these are really important texts, you know, of course.
So you have that, and both of them have the shorter reading. Eclectae, Korea. So they both have that.
So you're like, okay, earliest reading is actually the shorter reading. When you then get to Codex Alexandrinus from the next century, you know, people assume it has a shorter reading, but in fact, if you actually look at the manuscript where the letter appears, it appears in the top, right outside column of the page. And the top corner of the page got torn off.
[00:37:56] Speaker D: Oh, no.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: And so it's actually torn off right through the word eklecte.
[00:37:59] Speaker C: Oh. So you can't know for sure.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: You can't actually know because it's only two letters. I've edited New Testament manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus, where you have some letters, and it's always hard to say, well, how many letters are. You have an idea. You take, you know, it's kind of a standard text. You kind of plug it in. But you could easily have a two or three letter difference. And so it could very easily be there, but it's not there. And then when you go through our other early evidence, we have a couple unsealed manuscripts of this.
It is all. It's all damaged. And so you can't actually say how verse one reads. And I should go back to Pyrus. We do have Pyrus, it's a Bodmer papyrus, but it doesn't date till like the seventh century. And you only have for the first verse, about four extant letters. Oh, okay.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: So not too helpful.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: So you only have those two and they have the shorter reading. And so once you get beyond that body of evidence, you're now into minuscule manuscripts, right? These later manuscripts. And you have a lot of minuscule manuscripts. What is interesting is this reading now starts to emerge in some very important manuscripts.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: And the dates of these are they.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Begin in the 11th century. You start to see this reading. And what's interesting with this, at least in the first manuscript it appears in, you know, people will judge these manuscripts and say, well, some are of not all manuscripts are created equally. And so some will have, like a Byzantine. It's a later reading, you know, the way they present the text. Well, in this one, in the Catholic epistles, you have, you've heard of the Aland was a very famous German textual critic in the 19th century. In fact, our Greek New Testament is called the Nestle Hollande Edition.
And he, you know, goes and kind of categorizes manuscripts. And this one minuscule manuscript, he says it has a ton of ancient readings in the Catholic epistles, where the evidence should be what he calls category one should be on par with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Pyrite, and it has this reading.
Now what's interesting is you have this then appear in five manuscripts, you know, with the first one being from the 11th century, in the 12th, 13th and so forth. But what's fascinating about this, which even strengthens a reading, is that all these manuscripts are related.
They begin to form part of a family. And in textual criticism, what you find is when you start to have a family attesting a reading, it's no longer just some strange variant where you could say, oh, this is a case of dittography, meaning a te got recopied eklecte te. It was an accident. It's clear scribes are deliberately copying that reading. We're dealing with a genuine variant.
And so you have it in this group of manuscripts. And so it is actually attested. And in the one case, I want to say, manuscripts number 1243, it is one that is really, really important. And then all these manuscripts are related. And so you're saying, no, this is a deliberate variant that's being copied. People are making this reading because that.
[00:40:42] Speaker C: Was the thing I was going to maybe think about for our viewers who aren't as keen on textual criticism as Lincoln Blumel is here.
One thing the texture kits will do is they look at manuscripts. They'll try to look for scribal, sometimes mistakes or idiosyncrasies. Right. As you're copying something, you may accidentally copy extra letters or you may actually. That's called dittography, or you may accidentally drop letters. Haplography. Right. We even do this today very commonly when you're copy pasting things or, you know, trying to especially hand copy text. Right. And so what you're saying here is based on our textual evidence from this important manuscript family, it does not appear to be evidence of dittography where they were accidentally copying those two extra letters, Te on the end of eclecte. They were instead preserving the full reading. Eclecte, te curia.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: They were preserving that. They're related. So this then says, yeah, we're really dealing with a genuine.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: A genuine reading of it. Not a mistake, not a mistake.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Appears in a couple random manuscripts. And so this is quite significance. And again, I'd go back and say are evidence for hundreds of years, only two manuscripts for 2 John 1. Now, again, maybe we'll find another copy of 2 John 1.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: Maybe you'll find one. That would be great. Next time you go to Egypt.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: I would love to.
So I think you got to put that in that context. Okay. And just one point I just want to add on this that, you know, people might say, well, you know, gee, it would be nice if it was in Codex Vaticanus. Idea. Because it would be.
There's a couple things. So there's been work done on how early Christian scribes copy manuscripts. And James Royce has done a lot of work on this. Really good work. And, you know, typically, you've probably all heard this. They say, well, in the canons of, you know, textual criticism or the older New Testament, they'll say, you know, the shorter reading is the better reading.
[00:42:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: You know, they'll say, this is the old. And what scribes are actually expanding it.
[00:42:24] Speaker C: It's a cliche at this point. I heard it when I was going through my graduate Jasmine did Spencer. We've all heard it.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: The harder reading is the better reading. I've heard too.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Yes. And honestly, and Royce has totally overturned this in the New Testament.
That in fact, he says no. In fact, the longer reading in a number of manuscripts in study, New Testament ones was actually the better reading. In cases where, you know, it was like two letters dropping out or an article, it's clear the scribe dropped this out because of haplography. And he showed this. Really, no one's going to dispute this anymore. This is precisely what I'm arguing. The longer reading is preferred because it's so common to drop off like two letters. Yeah. The other point I just want to mention here is I mentioned Clement just to go back to him, because this is early evidence.
Origen of Alexandria, right. Really famous Christian writer in the third century. He writes a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew and his commentary on Matthew, when he gets to Matthew 27, he's writing. He says, oh, yeah, in some copies of Matthew, it mentions that Barabbas name was Jesus Barabbas. And he says, but no one who is a good person could possibly be called Jesus, therefore this could not be the case. Now, when we go to our copy of the scripture, it mentions Barabbas, but it's very clear that in his own day, in fact, Manchu had Jesus Barabbas. What's interesting is if you go and you look at Sinaiticus Vaticanus, in fact, a number of early manuscripts, none of them have the reading Jesus. When you get to the 9th century, it appears in a family of manuscripts today in the New Testament Critical Edition, they include the reading Jesus. And they say we include this because even though the evidence is late, it would make sense for scribes to remove this. And so we have the evidence of origin in the 9th century. I would argue the evidence for reading Eclectae for a Varden is way stronger than the reading Barez.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Oh, okay, Interesting.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Or Jesus.
[00:43:59] Speaker C: Yeah, Jesus Barab.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: So to summarize that one, dittography is when you accidentally copy letters as a scribe, and haplography is when you accidentally drop letters.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: You drop letters.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: And we're saying that this is probably a case of haplography, where they accidentally dropped off.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: They dropped two letters. I see this all the time. And I think this helped me spot this. Just dealing with ancient texts where I look at a text, I'm like, okay, how would this look anciently? And you see these kind of errors. And so I think there is a very, very strong case that, yes, this is the reading and it makes sense of the Greek.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Wow. We've been belaboring the minutia of The Greek and the manuscripts and all that. But like. But so what? How does understanding that a clecte is actually a name as opposed to an adjective change? Maybe our reading of this epistle.
[00:44:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:44:42] Speaker C: In short, why should we care? Right? Because I could see some people. I mean, I know why I care. I find this very interesting. But some people might say, so what?
[00:44:47] Speaker D: Big deal.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Her name's eclecte versus elect lady. How does this change, as Jasmine saying, the context of 2 John? How does it affect our understanding, our meaning of this text? Could you walk us through that a little bit?
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd be happy to. I think. First off, I would say despite some modern scholarship that sees 2 and 3 John written by different authors in part because the strange address. No, they're clearly written by the Elder, right? These are two letters written by the Elder.
[00:45:11] Speaker C: So same person. That's one way it affects our reading.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Same person again, the collocation is the same. It sorts out that problem.
I think, too, is significant because this is now the only letter in the entire New Testament canon whose principal addressee is a woman, which I think is quite significant. And so when you start reading in this light, as I read the letter, you know there's a warning by the Elder, right? It begins, we probably at some point maybe should talk about the children. Because that's the second part of the address, right? You have the lady and her children, but you have a house mentioned in verse 10.
And we know that Christians predominantly would congregate in homes of its members earlier on. We see this from Paul's letters primarily.
What seems to be going on now is, I would see, is that a collect day is likely the proprietor of a home in which some early Christians are meeting and has some position of authority. And the Elder can write to her because she has this position of authority and say, here are some important instructions you need to be aware of. If people come along bearing a certain doctrine who are antichrists, don't welcome them and don't let them in the house.
And so she seems to be act as a gatekeeper in a way. And furthermore, it says, when I come, I will speak with you face to face.
And so I think what we're seeing here is a woman who's playing an important role in an early congregation and probably maybe some kind of a missionary setting, because it seems that people are going to maybe come by this home, not unlike what you have, like in Lydia in the Book of Acts with Paul, where he'll go and stay with her and use her home. As kind of a missionary base you also have. And it's not in the King James, but in Colossians 4:15, it talks about. Well, in the King James, the church in the house of Nympha takes as a man. It's actually. It's likely a woman. It's nympha. There's a house church in the home of Nympha. We have now another early Christian woman who is playing this important role in a congregation, like a couple others that we have, and she can be trusted.
And in fact, when you get to this word now, children, you know, the elder will talk about his children. They say, well, eclecte has children, you know. Now, are they literal children of eclecta? I guess that could be. I'm more inclined to think metaphorical Christians will use this like the elder, he'll talk about, you know, children or brothers and sisters in 3 John, where it clearly has to be metaphorical, where it's very clear. Just like Paul talks about Timothy, my child. Not his literal child, biological kid, no, but it's kind of like spiritual child, where she has this authority, where there are people congregating, where she's revered as a person of authority and could help, you know, carry out the injunctions of the elders. I think this is really interesting to have kind of a new kind of view into women in the early church. Kind of help us round it out a little bit.
[00:47:51] Speaker C: So what you're saying here, Lincoln, you've discovered evidence for the first Relief Society president in early Christianity? No, I just kind of teasing, I.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: Think, along the lines, a Lydia or an Impha.
You know, it's interesting because this word, Korea, you know, it means lady, but you do have an ancient writing. Well, sometimes they'll talk. They'll use it specifically for, you know, the mistress of the home who's overseeing the home. And there may be an element why the elder used this because she's the one acting as the gatekeeper. If people come by, you don't greet them, you don't let them in the home, that she can go and do this. And so I think it's significant. I know in late antiquity, curia can sometimes refer to, like a deaconess.
I wouldn't go that far at this point. I think I want the word there. But, yeah, we're seeing a person of authority.
And this communication is getting kind of, you know, it's a quick view of the elder communicating with her, giving her instructions, saying, I'll come and I'll give you more instructions.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Well, I was just thinking about how interesting it is. Whenever I've studied ancient history, it does seem very dominated by male narratives because of military, government positions, things like that. And yet in the New Testament we see a very different side of that where Jesus is. Is ministering to people like Mary, like Martha, and there's people all these interactions. And so to me it just, it's cool to see that consistency that it's not once Jesus dies and exits the scene, it's not like the apostles instantly develop into this thing where we only talk to men for men. All of like clearly women are very much part of the conversation and like one of the apostles is directly addressing her as if she is in authority. And I just think that's really cool to see that women's voice kind of come forth, even in a subtle way.
[00:49:29] Speaker D: I was just going to go back to. I know you were joking, Stephen, that this is evidence of the first Relief Society, but I think it is kind of worth bringing up because when Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society, he actually did turn to. To John as evidence for some ancient organization of the women. You know, interesting where he, Emma Smith is elected to be the president of the 25.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Right. The elect Lady Emma Smith.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:54] Speaker D: And he cites DNC25.3 and says, you know, this, your calling as the president is fulfillment of you being called an elect Lady. And then the minutes say he also opened to 2 John 1 and read the Elder to the elect lady and said this is proof that the same thing we have now was had then. And you have people like Eliza R. Snow who reflect back on this later in life. And they say even though the name is of modern origin, the organization itself is a restoration of something ancient.
And so however it was, you do have in Joseph's mind this, that to John and the elect lady and her prominent position served in some sort of capacity, like a relief system.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:42] Speaker C: Catalyzed at least that restoration. And it comes full circle that way.
[00:50:45] Speaker D: I love that. And with. With that too. You know, even though we don't have to John one being to the elect lady anymore, Joseph's words would still fit in with this reading because for one, we can actually show that this is to an actual woman and it's not a metaphor. And the pun on elect is still preserved in verse 13. So Eklecte would still be an elect lady. You know, it's just literally.
[00:51:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: I think the pun is saying you're also true to your name and your sister's also with this pun. I think this is kind of. It reflects on the sister and then on her. And coming back to this idea of kind of relief Society. It's interesting because it says, if somebody comes, don't greet them. And Jesus is something similar in Matthew.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: If you go to somebody's house and they don't give you a greeting. Right. Don't stay there. It's assuming that, in fact, she in some ways will be offering hospitality, that people can be expected. I think you can kind of see this reading between the lines is that people might come by and she'll be the one to say, yes, come stay at the home. We'll offer you hospitality while you're preaching, while you're moving through. Right. This, you know, through town. And so you do see this element, I think, clearly, and I put it out in the book of there's a service that she will be the one also allowing who's coming in or out and also extending some hospitality to people who might be passing through. Yeah.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: So it's not that, you know, we're just being cruel, merciless, like, oh, reject people at the door, but rather, this is an actual, like, hospitality service. So there's a little bit more involved here. So John sounds like he's trying to just give instructions on where the limits of that are.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Well, where the limits are. If there's people who are teaching this, don't let them in. Probably fearing, because this is a center. Right. Like a congregation, that these people might start maybe spreading that teaching here in the center. It doesn't want them to be infected.
[00:52:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: And so don't greet them. Because a greeting is the first part of letting somebody in your home. You greet them, you let them. He says, don't do this. Don't allow them in the home. So I think when you read it down with a woman, it makes way more sense of the letter. Instead of trying to do these gymnastic. Well, it's a metaphorical church. It's a metaphor for this. No, it just makes sense. And it's interesting. It seems when you read 3 John, you have the character Diotrephes, who apparently is kicking people out of a church and doing things. It seems that Eclecte has an authority not unlike him. So I think there's kind of these added parallels between the two letters that you're seeing, has some authority there, albeit exercising, it seems, in a good way.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: So what's the main thing you hope people take away from this discovery?
[00:53:07] Speaker B: Well, I really hope just the reading, that, yes, there is a named woman, and we have one letter in the new testament addressed to an early Christian woman. And, you know, one of the things I hope they take away is I think. And I know we spent a lot of time on Greek. I've loved that. But I think now I've kind of just made the first stage. I think the grammar, everything works now. And what I hope now is that people will take this and really kind of flesh this out far more than what I did, because I think there's a lot of room for this and say, okay, now what can we say about this person? Or even more generally about women in general? So I think that's really exciting. And, you know, when I edit ancient texts, I just love learning about ancient people. I love reading ancient letters and especially editing them, because all they might have from somebody who lived 2,000 years ago was just one papyrus fragment. And so this is all that we have, but it attests, right, an important person in an early Christian community. So for me, that's just really satisfying that we can now kind of say, look, let's look at this person a little more carefully now that we know they actually exist and this letter is written to them.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: And if you want to learn more, Fortress Press has published his research called the Lady Eklecte, the Lost Woman of the New Testament. You both are now also working on a commentary of the New Testament at byu, right? The BYU New Testament Commentary. So you'll have to check out their work doing that, too. Remember that you can study deeply and still believe boldly. And we'll see you next time, Sam.
