Woman lost for 2000 years has been found!

Here's something to keep your eyes on:
It will be interesting to see what other scholars say about this.
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Woman lost for 2000 years has been found [LINK]
2 John 1 - “The elder to the elect lady…” or is it to a lady named “Eclecte”?

A BYU researcher has proposed a change in the Greek text.

Second John, consisting of a mere thirteen verses, traditionally not garnered much individual attention. While scholars have long noted that the opening address of the letter is ambiguous, in some cases even problematic, the received reading that is printed in all Greek editions of the New Testament for the last 150 years is ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ and is typically translated as "to an elect lady." The nearly universal view in modern scholarship is to take "elect lady" as a metonym for a church that is metaphorically personified as a woman.

Drawing upon a wide range of evidence that includes Greek papyri, New Testament manuscripts, and a host of other sources, this study shows that the received address printed in all editions of the Greek New Testament may not be correct.
Rather, the address should be rendered Ἐκλέκτῃ τῇ κυρίᾳ and translated "to the lady Eclecte" so that the principal recipient of the letter is a named woman. This reading makes far more sense with the letter as a whole and makes it the only text in the entire New Testament canon addressed to a woman.

In the introduction to 2 John in the Greek manuscript, the τῃ at the end of her name was crammed up against the τῃ for “the.” It looked like this, but without the accents:

ὁπρεσβύτεροςἐκλέκτῃτῇκυρίᾳ (in Blumell’s reading, “The elder to Eclecte the Lady”).

A scribe or scribes inadvertently dropped one pair of those letters. The scribes may have wanted to save space, Blumell said. They may have thought the double pairs were a mistake. They may have just read over them or simply skipped them accidentally.

What was left with just a single τῃ was “elect lady”:

ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ.

For more than 1,000 years, most scholars argued the letter’s introduction was a metaphor. The letter’s writer, they said, was referring to the church itself as a lady and to church members as her children.

The omission of the letters was catastrophic. The name of the only woman to whom a New Testament letter was written was lost.
Whatever the cause, scribes copied the mistake again and again, and Electa’s identity was lost for hundreds of years.

Blumell said, “the Greek just got corrupted. I give dozens of examples of the same kind of error occurring in early Christian manuscripts or papyri, where two are duplicated letters get dropped.”

His book: Lady Eclecte: The Lost Woman of the New Testament [link]

Allow me to advocate for the other side if you will.

There are no manuscripts that contain the supposed dropped letters but proving that it was a name at the time brings justification to insert it 2000 years later?

It’s an interesting theory. What does it change? How should I preach it differently to my church? Are there any implications?

just my initial thoughts. It is a habit of mine to resist change.
Correct me if I missed any manuscript evidence. It appears that he just found the name in the time period and not in any manuscript it was supposedly dropped from.

What about verse 13?!

"The children of thy elect sister greet thee. Amen." KJB

LOL, I found this older Catholick note agreeing with this Mormon guy's self-identified 'amazing discovery':

Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 John Chapter 1

"To the lady Elect"...the general opinion is, that it is the proper name of a lady, so eminent for her piety and great charity, as to merit this Epistle from St. John.

Blumell featured on the 'Ward Radio' YouTube channel ("We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints")

Looking through a few commentaries....
This is not a new idea.


This epistle purports to be addressed, as it is in our translation, to ‘the elect lady’—ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ. There has been great diversity of opinion in regard to the person here referred to, and there are questions respecting it which it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty. The different opinions which have been entertained are the following: (a) Some have supposed that a Christian matron is referred to, a friend of John, whose name was either Ἐκλεκτὴ (Eclecte,) or Κυρία, (Cyria.) Œcumenius and Theophylact supposed that the proper name of the female referred to was Eclecte; others have adopted the other opinion, that the name was Cyria. (b) Others among the ancients, and particularly Clement, supposed that the church was denoted by this name, under the delicate image of an elect lady; either some particular church to whom the epistle was sent, or to the church at large. This opinion has been held by some of the modern writers also. (c) Others have supposed, as is implied in our common version, that it was addressed to some Christian matron, whose name is not mentioned, but who was well known to John, and perhaps to many others, for her piety, and her acts of kindness to Christians. The reason why her name was suppressed, it has been supposed, was that if it had been mentioned it might have exposed her to trouble in some way, perhaps to persecution.
Barnes, Albert. 1884–1885. Notes on the New Testament: James to Jude. Edited by Robert Frew. London: Blackie & Son.

Electa or Eclecta (Ἐκλεκτή, Auth. Vers. “elect” lady). According to Grotius, Wetstein, and some other critics, this word is used as a proper name in the address of John’s second epistle, Ὁ Πρεσβύτερος Ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ—“The Presbyter to the Lady Eclecta.” This meaning is advocated by bishop Middleton, in his treatise on the Doctrine of the Greek Article (2d edit. Cambridge, 1828, p. 626–629). He adduces in support of it several epistolary inscriptions from Basil, in which the name precedes, and the rank or condition in life is subjoined, such as Εὐσταθίῳ ἰατρῷ—Λεοντίῳ σοφιστῇ—Βοσπορίῳ ἐπισκόπῳ—Μαγνημιανῷ κόμητι: none of these, however, are purely honorary titles. To meet the objection that the sister of the person addressed is also called Eclecta in verse 13, he suggests that the words τῆς Ἐκλεκτῆς are a gloss, explanatory of σοῦ. But this is mere conjecture, unsupported by a single manuscript; and such a gloss, if occasioned (as bishop Middleton supposes) by the return to the singular number, would more naturally have been inserted after σε, in which position, however unnecessary, it would at least produce no ambiguity. Some writers, both ancient and modern, have adopted a mystical interpretation, though contrary to the usus loquendi, and to all apostolic usage, and suppose with Jerome that the term ἐκλεκτή referred to the Church in general, or with Cassiodorus, to some particular congregation. The last-named writer (born A.D. 470, died 562), in his Complexiones in Epistolas, etc. (London, 1722, p. 136), says, “Johannes—electæ dominæ scribit ecclesiæ, filiisque ejus, quas sacro fonte genuerat.” Clemens Alexandrinus, in a fragment of his Adumbrationes, attempts to combine the literal and the mystical meanings—“Scripta vero est ad quandam Babyloniam Electam nomine, significat autem electionem ecclesiæ sanctæ” (Opera, ed. Klotz, iv, p. 66). The Auth. Version translates the words in question “the elect lady,” an interpretation approved by Castalio, Beza, Mill, Wolf, Le Clere, and Macknight. Most modern critics, however—Schleusner and Breitschneider, in their lexicons; Bourger (1763), Vater (1824), Göschen, and Tischendorf (1841), in their editions of the N. Testament; Neander (Planting of the, Church, ii, 71), De Wette (Lehrbuch, p. 339), and Lücke (Commentary on the Epistles of St. John, p. 314–320, Eng. transl.)—agree with the Syriac and Arabic versions in making Κυρίᾳ a proper name, and render the words “to the elect Cyria.” (See Gruteri Inscript. p. 1127.) Lardner has given a copious account of critical opinions in his History of the Apostles and Evangelists, c. xx (Works, vi, 284–288).—Kitto, s. v. See also Heumann, De Cyria (Gotting. 1726); Rittmeier, De ἐκλεκτῇ Κυρίᾳ (Helmst. 1706); Knauer, Ueber ἐκλεκτῇ Κυρίᾳ (in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. vi, 452 sq.); Amer. Presb. Rev., Jan. 1867. See John (Third Epistle of).
M’Clintock, John, and James Strong. 1891. “Electa or Eclecta.” In Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 3:124. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.

Clement of Alexandria (Hypotyposes) assumed that the addressee was a Babylonian woman named Electa, hence “lady Electa.” However there is insufficient evidence to assume that electa was a proper name. Clement is probably not dependent upon historical tradition, but instead on 2 John 1 in light of 1 Pet 5:13 where he found reference to a syneklektē (“chosen together”) in Babylon. The concluding greeting from the children of an elect sister (2 John 13) would necessitate that the supposed Electa had a sister by the same name.
Athanasius called the addressee “noble Kyria.” Kyria is attested as a personal name and there are early Christian examples of eklektē modifying a proper name (Rom 16:13; Ign. Phild. 11.1). A related proposal suggests that the identity of the woman is unknown, “elect lady” being equivalent to the expression of courtesy “dear lady.” Ruling against literal interpretations is the fact that if it is a name, the phrase would be kyria tē eklektē, not eklektē kyria (cf. v 13; 3 John 1; Rom 16:13).
Watson, Duane F. 1992. “Elect Lady.” In The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 2:433. New York: Doubleday.

Also note in:

Alford, Henry. 1976. Alford’s Greek Testament: An Exegetical and Critical Commentary. Vol. 4. Grand Rapids, MI: Guardian Press. Volume 4, Page clxxxv

Campbell, Constantine R. 2017. 1, 2 & 3 John. Edited by Scot McKnight. The Story of God Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Smith, David. n.d. [1897?] “The Epistles of John.” In The Expositor’s Greek Testament: Commentary, 5:162. New York: George H. Doran Company.

Strecker, Georg, and Harold W. Attridge. 1996. The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John. Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Jobes, Karen H. 2014. 1, 2, & 3 John. Edited by Clinton E. Arnold. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

I believe it references the Gentile church and the Jewish church--sisters.