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]
It will be interesting to see what other scholars say about this.
~~~~~~~~~
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]
