The following is a note from Darrell Post on the text and correction of P66 at John 11.3. —Ed.
One of the more interesting corrections found in P66 came from John 11:3, απεστειλεν ουν μαρ[.]α προς αυτον λεγουσα (“Then Mar[.]a sent to him saying”) written first, then changed to the reading familiar to us, απεστειλαν ουν αι αδελφαι προς αυτον λεγουσαι (“Then the sisters sent to him saying”).
Which sister was penned in the first writing? The initial mu and alpha are barely visible and the rho is clearly visible. The final alpha was not erased but instead incorporated into the correction as the second alpha in αδελφαι. Elizabeth Schrader Polczer has argued that the original name was “Maria” and this nicely fits her theory that Martha was a second century interpolation.
But the space between the partially erased rho and the final alpha would be unusually wide for the iota, and in fact is exactly the same width as the space between the same two letters in Martha’s name as written in 11:5. The INTF’s Manuscript Workspace has the best images available for P66, and in the animation below, there are two images that flip back and forth. One is the original image where the theta appears to be hiding behind the phi, and the second is the same image except I have digitally removed the theta.
The back and forth action between the two enables one to see the place where the theta crossbar started at the left and continued through to touch the alpha on the right. Several portions of the forward slanting oval from the theta are still clearly visible. Furthermore, the later phi was written with a flat top to the circle, suggesting it was inked this way to cover a previously written crossbar. Below the animation is a clip of Martha’s name written in John 11:30 where the style of theta written is a match to the theta in 11:3. These observations might explain why NA28 affirmed the first writing was Martha, whereas prior editions had proposed Maria.
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| μαρθα at John 11.3 in P66. Images used by permission of the Martin Bodmer Foundation, Geneva. |
Nice work!
ReplyDeleteThough others know better about this than me:
ReplyDeletea) has Elizabeth S. P. been invited to comment?
b) is it fair to speculate or even assume that whoever changed the text from one named sister (either one) to sisters plural was aware of differing texts or traditions?
Hi Stephen, everyone is free to comment, and free to speculate, though it is difficult to prove what scribes were thinking as they penned mistakes and corrections.
DeleteHi Darrell. Thanks. I agree. I forfend from claiming proof on this. Though is the change to sisters plural plausible?
DeleteYes, if I understand your question correctly. It is acknowledged by everyone I have read that the scribe first wrote either Maria or Martha, and then corrected the writing to αι αδελφαι, while also including the minor change of the verb and participle from singular to plural. In 1965, Fee must have been looking at a grainy B/W facsimile because he only cautiously identified the mu, but refrained from saying he saw the following alpha. But the debate here has always been around iota or theta resulting in either Maria or Martha. But the change to αι αδελφαι is not in dispute.
DeleteThank you. Given that non-dispute, is there a consensus view (I guess not), or else you own view, on the reason for the change?
DeleteThe scribe in P66 made many mistakes that were corrected. Much has been written about this. The scribe had just written verse two where Maria by name was the one who anointed Jesus. So starting into verse three, the scribe may have only glanced at his exemplar, tried to store too much information in his mind, and then after penning the singular verb form instead of plural (a 1-letter error), mistakenly wrote Martha as the subject (contrasting verse two) who sent to Jesus. Then some time after writing the singular participle "saying," the mistake was noticed and corrected. That's one possibility. I am open to hearing other possibilities.
DeleteSee my 2023 TC article here: https://jbtc.org/v28/TC-2023_Fellows.pdf The proposed series of cascading adjustments in the ancestors of P66 are shown in the bullet points in the conclusions. After the changes at 11:1 and 11:5 there were no longer two sisters, so 11:3, which mentioned sisters, did not seem to fit. I had thought that P66* had Mary at 11:3, but Darrell persuades me that it was Martha, which also works. After the elimination of Martha at 11:1 it was necessary to introduce Martha before her mention at 11:5. This, and/or the fact that there were no longer two sisters, caused someone to add Martha at 11:3 to replace the sisters. In any event, the series of changes was kicked off by the change of the pronoun in 11:1 from feminine to masculine. This was done so that Martha would be defined by her relationship to a man rather than a woman.
DeleteRichard, thanks for sharing this.
DeleteHello Darrell and thank you for this post. You also provided a nice table with similar evidence in your Bible and Spade article. However, both publications omit the highly relevant evidence of John 20:11, where the transcription of the name μαρια has a very wide space between the ι and α. A high resolution image is available on the CSNTM website: https://manuscripts.csntm.org/manuscript/View/GA_P66_Bodmer
ReplyDeleteNote that there is a faint downward diagonal line between the ι and α of μαρια at 20:11; the Bodmer was kind enough to examine the leaf for me with high resolution and infrared imaging, and they confirmed that this is a loose fiber.
Since the exact same scribe occasionally left quite a bit of room between the ι and α of μαρια, it seems that μαρ[1]α is all we can be certain of in John 11:3.
Any comment on the changes in John 11:3 must also engage with the dative feminine singular being transcribed in 11:4 of P66* (i.e. ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν *αὐτῇ* · ἡ ἀσθένια...). The wide space in 11:4 immediately before Jesus speaks the words η ασθενια, as well as the hypodiastole correction after ειπεν (presumably after the woman was split in two), indicate that P66* had only one woman in mind for *both* 11:3 and 11:4. Perhaps the scribe was storing too much information in his mind - but considering the length of this passage, it is also possible that he had access to a different text form of the Lazarus story.
ReplyDeleteSorry that comment was from me!
DeleteSpacing comparisons are of course best argued by averages. There can always be an outlier. The average of the examples closest to 11:3 show the space between the rho and alpha is, on average, unusually wide even for a theta, much more so for iota. And the space between rho and alpha is an identical match to Martha’s name in 11:5. But the question of spacing is only supplemental to the primary evidence from the image of 11:3 in P66. There are the clear traces of a prior forward slanting oval, matching the theta as written in Martha’s name in 11:30.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the space between rho and alpha at 11:3 is unusually wide. That said, even though the transcription of μαρια at 20:11 is an outlier, it's still a documented example from the very same scribe where the tendency occurs on the name μαρια rather than μαρθα. It's a bit odd that you omitted this directly relevant evidence from your chart in Bible and Spade.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "clear traces of a prior forward slanting oval," or "the place where the theta crossbar started," these are overstatements of the evidence. All we have here is a grainy black and white picture; as my fellow papyrologists are well aware, what seems at first to be an ink trace may simply be a shadow, an ink smudge, or an idiosyncrasy of the papyrus itself. I encountered something similar when I was investigating the μαρια of John 20:11; I contacted the Bodmer because I suspected that the faint downward diagonal line was an ink trace of an erased letter (keep in mind this is a recent, high resolution photo from one of the loose leaves!). The Bodmer needed to go to the lab to use infrared imaging; only then could we determine that it was a misplaced fiber. If scholars can't tell from a high resolution image whether something is an idiosyncrasy of the papyrus or an ink trace, how much less certain our conclusions must be by relying on a grainy black and white image. I also note that what you call the "crossbar" of the theta looks very much like dozens of other black spots on the very same papyrus page, most of which are unrelated to ink traces. I write this as someone who has been similarly certain when looking at a photograph of a manuscript, only to be proven otherwise when looking at the manuscript in person, or under different imaging.
You do have a good point about the phi being phi written with a somewhat flat top to the circle. Of course the scribe is doing something quite awkward here, so I'm not sure it proves anything, but I agree that it could be an attempt to overwrite a theta. One other possibility to consider here is whether the scribe wrote *both* women's names (i.e. first μαρθα, then erased it and wrote μαρια, or vice versa); this would make sense if the scribe is aware of multiple text forms and attempting to negotiate them. It's not unlike the activity we see in 11:2 where the scribe is trying out different possibilities mid-transcription. Certainly the smudging between the rho and alpha is significant, and could indicate multiple reworkings.
"It's a bit odd that you omitted this directly relevant evidence from your chart in Bible and Spade."
DeleteThis is not odd at all. I included all the relevant images from John 11 and 12, the data involved in the narrative at hand. Including an image from chapter 20 would not really move the average that much, and in fact the space in 11:3 is unusually wide even for the theta.
I have not overstated the evidence at all. A better image could be taken for sure, but what is seen here is enough. The curves of the oval are nearly identical to the theta in 11:30. I have spent decades looking a manuscripts including papyri, and am well aware of what ink smudges look like along with random marks, shadows, and so forth. There are simply too many pieces of this remaining theta for it to be ignored. The INTF transcription is correct to put a dot under the theta, like they do with the mu and the alpha, indicating that the letter is not entirely visible, but it is indicated by the evidence.
Another chart has just been added to this page showing the evidence from the perspective of looking at the phi. This highlights how the top of the phi's circle is flat, as if to hide a previous crossbar. Looking at this photo with all the phi's from chapter 1 and chapter 11 surrounding the phi in 11:3, this helps the viewer see the background theta pop out visibly in this image. When better imaging of P66 is done, the letter will stand out in sharper detail.
Your phi chart (ha!) is useful, but inconclusive and incomplete. See e.g. the phi of βλασφημεις in 10:36 (just one page before the correction in 11:3, on line 2), or ενταφιασμου in John 12:7, which is also quite blotchy (pg. 86 line 2), or φως in John 12:35, also flat and blotchy at the top (pg. 92 line 3). Even in your chart, the phi two rows directly below the highlighted example provides an example of a more horizontal stroke at the top. I agree that it's possible that in 11:3 "the phi was written in a way to conceal a previously written theta crossbar"; and yet, the scribe may just as well have written the letter in an awkward and blotchy way due to multiple erasures. Your thesis is valid; it's the assertion of certainty that is problematic here. (Even I am not certain that Martha was an interpolation into John! It's simply a competitively plausible hypothesis to make sense of the significant uncertainty around these women's identities in John 11-12, which happens to line up with an established Sitz im Leben of second-century controversy around Mary's leadership.)
DeleteThanks for explaining why you didn't think to include the μαρια of John 20 in your study. I'm not sure the ancients made such a clear delineation between Lazarus's sister Mary and Mary Magdalene (see e.g. Hippolytus's Commentary on the Song of Songs 25.2-3 or the Gospel of Mary) – but your assumption of a clear distinction between Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene clarifies your methodological choice.
What is visible in the image is enough so that theta cannot be ignored, and as I said, the INTF was right to include a dot under the theta in the transcription. I included all the phis in the image even noticing that one that had a blotch. But again, the point is the overall testimony of the evidence, which should not be discarded by finding an outlier.
DeleteAs to significant uncertainty around Martha, I will say more later, but for now, I found after the examination of 2,249 manuscripts there were more anomalies found around Maria's name compared to Martha.
In 2019 you invited the "guild" to take this question up, and I have. I spent 6 years looking at actual manuscripts, and I did not rely on published transcriptions which are often faulty. I know that you would be thrilled if I could come here and report that checking all these witnesses revealed strong evidence for your "competitively plausible hypothesis" but its just not there.
See my comment below - unless you do a similar study on the manuscripts of Luke 10 and discover comparable results, your data simply confirms that there is a real problem of instability around the women's names in John 11 and 12.
DeleteThe comparison to Luke is not a fair comparison. Luke presents a short vignette of 5 verses, where Maria is a foil who never speaks. John 11 and 12 is a major narrative where both sisters speak and do similar things, and in several places one is named and the other is 'the sister.' Their scenes are separated by other scenes setting up a scenario where they can be confused easily. Each are mentioned 9 times in John 11 and 12, whereas the five verses in Luke mentions Martha 4 times and Maria twice, and their behaviors are contrasted--they don't do similar things like Maria and Martha in John 11. Luke's account is one where they would not be so easily confused.
DeleteIn your words: "Maria and Martha are each mentioned nine times in 11:1-12:3 and the story switches back and forth between the two, so one should expect scribes to sometimes wrongly write Maria for Martha or vice versa." In Luke 10, the story similarly switches back and forth between the two sisters' names (Martha is mentioned five times and Maria twice). By your own reasoning, "one should expect scribes to sometimes wrongly write Maria for Martha or vice versa." Your central argument is that the Maria/Martha variants are purely due to nonsensical scribal confusion - that is, wholly unrelated to the content of the narrative. See e.g.: "Manuscript family Kr illustrates how easily any scribe could write the wrong name...The scribes conducted their work with considerable oversight and care, limiting the number of differences. But even under these conditions, some still penned Martha for Maria or Maria for Martha, including one who wrote that Maria served in 12:2. These are simply mistakes." Similarly: ""two scribes from the 11th century and one from the 12th century wrongly note Martha instead of Maria, illustrating how the confusion went both directions and that these were scribal mistakes." It seems that you are now changing your argument.
DeleteI am not changing my argument at all. As I have pointed out, the two narrative are not even close to the same for use of statistical analysis. Luke's account is a short vignette of five verses, where Maria and Martha do different things, and Maria is a foil who never speaks. It's really a story about Martha and Jesus.
DeleteThe back and forth with John is over the span of 60 verses, with lengthy intervening scenes that do not involve them, and when they are re-introduced in a new scene there was greater danger a confused scribe might pen the wrong sister. In John 11 when one is named and the other is "the sister," or when just one is named and either name would not be nonsense, then we should expect some errors around the names.
Maria and Martha were named 9 times each in the larger narrative, and considering 2,249 manuscripts were checked, there were an astounding 40,482 possible places where the names could be swapped, omitted, or malformed. Taking out the examples where manuscripts were lacunose, there were about 38,900 places where the names appeared. When I tallied the numbers I found overall 99.5% accuracy on the two names, and it goes higher when the examples where the first hand corrected himself are removed. Then some omissions did not result in nonsense readings, meaning that really the omission of Maria in 11:28 by the Theophylact copies could be taken as one. Factoring these in the equation raises the accuracy to 99.8%. You are certainly free to call this "confusion and instability around Martha and Mary," but I would call this a high of percentage of accuracy, given the nature of the Lazarus narrative and the way the names were recorded.
All right. But if these are the central factors for scribal confusion, I'm wondering why your Bible and Spade article didn't mention them (e.g. the length of the pericope, the sisters' reintroduction into a new scene, or the "greater danger a confused scribe might pen the wrong sister"). Forgive me for wondering whether your current line of reasoning is primarily attempting to justify avoidance of engagement with the transmission of Luke 10.
DeleteYour statistics here are valuable - I look forward to seeing what you found in the Theophylact copies! - but of course manuscripts should be weighed, not counted (what percentage of those manuscripts include the angel at the pool in John 5, or the Pericope of the Adulteress?) I'm quite interested in the possibility that the corrections seen in P66 give us a direct window onto the Ausgangstext, i.e. the historical moment when copyists such as P66 were choosing between a one- and two-sister text form of John 11–12, and preferred the more conservative choice of narrative inclusion rather than omission.
As another side note - the editors of Biblical Archaeology Review were the ones that put forward the idea of a "secret text of John 11." The side box in the BAR article is wholly the editors' creation - an interpolation that has falsely been attributed to me! ;)
Also my apologies - Martha is only mentioned four times in Luke 10:38-42.
Well it is a "secret" text, so secret that I wasn't able to find it.
DeleteBut seriously, yes, I get that periodicals like BAR may tend to sensationalize a bit for their readers. Although I am not sure that there is anything wrong with the term "secret," especially if the intent by the alleged second century editors was to hide it. Perhaps the term alleged "Proto-Lazarus" narrative would be preferred.
DeleteI agree that the term “Proto-Lazarus” would be preferable! And yes, the sensational title of the sidebar was BAR wanting to make the topic more interesting for their readers.
DeleteAs for your not being able to “find” a one-sister text form, in my view your expanded study does provide additional evidence of an alternate circulating text form of the story. The degree to which these idiosyncrasies are “mistakes” can be determined by a direct comparison with the Lukan transmission (adjusted for length and number of times the women’s names appear). Evidence is there; you and I simply disagree in our interpretation of the data.
It should also be underlined that your study was limited to Greek copies and my study included the Old Latin copies. Quite a substantial chunk of “Proto-Lazarus” can indeed be reconstructed if you include the Old Latin.
"your expanded study does provide additional evidence of an alternate circulating text form of the story. "
DeleteWhat was published in Bible and Spade is only a small representation of what came from a collation of 2,249 manuscripts, and yet it seems you have already decided that it provides additional evidence for your thesis. And once again, the comparison to Luke is not a fair comparison for the very reasons I have pointed out. The burden of proof is on you to show second century editors changed the narrative that was already in circulation. The burden of proof is not on me to show it did not happen. And yet after collating all these Greek manuscripts, I have actual numbers and statistics around how many manuscripts that might allow for a Martha-less, or Maria-less original in one given place. The data is simply not impressive toward supporting the existence of a Proto-Lazarus text.
Appealing to Latin and later translations only moves to data further removed from the alleged historical event, an event that would have involved the Greek text. The examination of the Greek manuscripts returned so little allowance for a Martha-less text, and even what little was returned would only support a Martha-less text by disregard of the principles of Occam's Razor. I can confirm that there is no pattern of variations that point logically to such an alleged earlier version of the narrative.
Not quite. You can only confirm that *you do not interpret* your data as supporting a circulating one-sister text form. My own interpretation of the same data will likely differ from yours. Your labors are highly valuable - and, your interpretation of the evidence you have gathered is not neutral. (Nor is mine, of course; the primary difference between us seems to be an acknowledgment that multiple reasonable interpretations are possible.)
DeleteAs for the value of the Old Latin, many textual critics these consider witnesses to preserve older layers of text than even the oldest extant Greek witnesses, particularly since these translations were based on second- and third-century Greek copies.
It's the raw data itself that does not provide evidence for your thesis. It's not an 'interpretation' that NO Greek witness moves seamlessly from verse 27 to verse 30 or 27 to 33. And verses 28, 29, and 32 represent 70% of the changes needed had your theory been true. The burden of proof is on you to show why your thesis is true, not on me to show why your thesis is false. The lack of evidence from the actual Greek manuscripts is simply astounding.
Delete"many textual critics these consider witnesses to preserve older layers of text than even the oldest extant Greek witnesses"
DeleteBut this is a consideration especially for those passages where early Greek witnesses are lacking. Houghton talks about this, and the point is stressed by Jeremiah Coogan in Myths and Mistakes, p. 285. John 11 does not lack early Greek witnesses, leaving the Old Latin in a confirming role, rather than one where an Old Latin reading would supersede the entire witness of the Greek. The Old Latin presented readings with significant diversity and a greater propensity for Latin vernacular with more formal equivalency coming later.
In John 11, when you examine evidence other than the Greek, you move further away from the alleged historical event--a rewrite of the Greek narrative.
Furthermore, it is not an "interpretation" to point out that no manuscript has been found to move directly from John 11:27 to 11:30 or verse 27 to 33. It is not an "interpretation" that verses 28, 29, and 32 were never found omitted, and that statistically, these verses were no more or less stable or unstable compared to the average of other verses in John 11. And these verses represent 70% of the difference between the text as we have it and an alleged Martha-less original. It is not an "interpretation" that in 11:19 only one 14th century lectionary was found to have omitted Martha's name, likely due to homoeoteleuton on the first three letters of the name. That particular lectionary agrees with the Majority Text at 99%. These statistics are all neutral facts, and I am preparing to present many more like these. The proposed theory of a Martha-less original is yours, meaning the burden of proof is on you to explain why these facts should be ignored and your theory should be advanced.
As a side note, I was a bit puzzled by your comment in Bible and Spade that it is a "speculative idea that there was a serious conflict between the legacies of Peter and Mary Magdalene." Are you unaware of the Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Thomas 114, and the Pistis Sophia? The extant manuscripts of these texts were found in different locations and copied over the course of several centuries (3rd-6th). A remembered conflict between the legacies of Peter and Mary is well-established in Nag Hammadi studies; your comment indicates lack of familiarity with this body of scholarship. Antti Marjanen, Ann Graham Brock, Silke Petersen, Christopher Tuckett, Karen King, and Sarah Parkhouse all have respected monographs on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI am well aware of the gnostic gospels. In my article I also said, "If this conflict between the legacies of Mary Magdalene and Peter were true, no evidence exists that a dispute escalated to the point where church leaders considered altering John 11 as a resolution."
DeleteAnd that is the question at hand. Was there an altered version of the Lazarus narrative or not? The places in the narrative where there needed to be the greatest instability, entire verses like verses 28, 29 and 32, there were no manuscripts found that omit these verses, and no evidence was found that these verses had a checkered textual history. You checked 300 manuscripts, I checked 2,249, and found nothing to suggest these critical verses were omitted or altered.
Hmmm. Being "aware of the gnostic gospels" is not the same thing as having familiarity with the scholarship discussing second-century controversy between Peter and Mary. (By way of comparison, "awareness" of Matthew, Mark, and Luke does not equate to familiarity with the Synoptic Problem.) If you haven't read any of the six monographs listed above, your position on the place of Mary in early Christianity is not very well-informed. The most ancient textual transmission of the Gospels was *in Egypt*; P66 was found a mere two hours' walk from Nag Hammadi.
DeleteThe most ancient *extant textual transmission :)
DeleteI am aware of and have a familiarity with the argument of the monographs you listed. That doesn't mean that I have to find it compelling as representing mainstream Christianity. But the question at hand is whether or not the manuscripts give weight to the hypothesis of a Martha-less original.
DeleteAnd how many manuscripts of Luke did you check? Without any comparable data demonstrating a similar trend of confusion around the women's names in Luke, your Bible and Spade article has actually provided even more data demonstrating that there is a major problem around the presentation of Lazarus's sisters in John. Believe it or not, if anyone can demonstrate a similar trend of confusion and instability around Martha and Mary in the Lukan transmission, they could actually change my position on this.
DeleteIt is indeed interesting that verses 28-32 are stable in the transmission of John 11. Then again, those are the exact verses that would need to have been composed (or duplicated) by the interpolator, i.e., those are the only verses featuring Lazarus's sisters that may have never circulated in an alternate form. That factor could also explain their stability in the transmission.
I don't think we're going to persuade each other on this one. Your position is reasonable, even though I do not find it very persuasive.
Oh my, I don't think Mary's prominence represents "mainstream" Christianity either ;) The question here is whether mainstream Christianity felt the need to alter the narrative of the Fourth Evangelist because it was considered problematic for emerging an Petrine primacy. Are we most interested in the words of the Evangelist, or the words that the emerging mainstream was able to receive?
DeleteAs noted above the comparison to Luke is not a fair comparison. If I had time, I would collate manuscripts of Luke 10 and I would expect to find errors there. But the concise nature of the five verses and the contrasting behavior of the two sisters would be a limiting factor in the number of errors.
DeleteEven if the transmission of Luke has limiting factors, the scribal activity there is directly relevant; by your reasoning that "these were simply mistakes," we should expect some sort of proportional trend in the transmission of Luke 10:38-42 (i.e. perhaps 1/4 the amount of confusion, or a tendency to accidentally write Martha's name more often). In the 134 Greek and 36 Latin witnesses I surveyed for the Lukan verses, 0% contain an unexpected “Maria” transcribed instead of “Martha,” or vice versa, either corrected or uncorrected. But perhaps my sampling data wasn't large enough. You and I are in agreement that a more complete collation of manuscripts of Luke 10 would shed substantial light on this issue.
DeleteSee reply posted above... I do recall your footnote 75 where you did note a Coptic example of an error in Luke 10:40. A larger survey would likely return more, but I would not expect many, given the differences between a large narrative and a small vignette as I noted above.
DeleteClever. Had I found significant instability and omissions in John 11:28-29 this would have affirmed your thesis. But having found no instability, this also affirms your thesis. There was apparently no option but to affirm your thesis. Furthermore, I found a total of 11 instances where an entire verse was omitted by a given manuscript. And these are unexplained omissions, not due to the common error of homoeoteleuton. Not one happened to omit verses 28, 29, or 32, which together represent about 70% of the alterations required if a Martha-less original existed.
DeleteFurthermore, I can assure you that I did the analysis around the verses in John 11 involving the sisters against the verses that did not involve them, and the rate of variations per word was almost exactly the same, the non-Maria/Martha verses being slightly more varied.
“There was apparently no option but to affirm your thesis.” ? Not sure what you mean here. You don’t need to affirm my thesis; I’m simply stating that there is more than one reasonable explanation. Copies of John with a one-sister text form may have circulated briefly, then eventually dropped out of the transmission. That initial circulation would reasonably create textual mixture only with the verses that overlapped between the two text forms. My reasonable argument doesn't equate to a demand that others agree with it.
DeleteAs a side note, I am very interested in the unexplained “11 instances where an entire verse was omitted by a given manuscript.”
DeleteRe: “I do recall your footnote 75 where you did note a Coptic example of an error in Luke 10:40.” Indeed! Yes, let’s include the early versional evidence in our analysis. There is striking and significant instability around the women’s names in the versional transmission of John 11-12 (much more significant in John than in Luke).
Delete"'There was apparently no option but to affirm your thesis.' ? Not sure what you mean here."
DeleteHad the data collected in the collation demonstrated significant instability in the verses where Martha speaks to Mary, and Mary responds by going out (28-29), then this would have been taken as support for the theory of a Martha-less original. But no manuscripts were found that seamlessly moved from verse 27 to 30. No unusual instability was found in these verses, and they were never omitted. But rather than conceding that the data from 11:28-29 has not aligned with your thesis you said:
"It is indeed interesting that verses 28-32 are stable in the transmission of John 11. Then again, those are the exact verses that would need to have been composed (or duplicated) by the interpolator, i.e., those are the only verses featuring Lazarus's sisters that may have never circulated in an alternate form. That factor could also explain their stability in the transmission."
So what could have possibly been found regarding these verses that would have not in some way aligned with your thesis?
Instability would have affirmed, and you are saying that stability affirms, or is at least compatible with your thesis. The most logical reason why these verses were normal/average in their stability is because there was nothing abnormal in the history of the narrative.
Hi Darrell - my point is that your evidence is inconclusive. It can be argued in favor of either thesis. Hope that's clear.
DeleteThe evidence from verses 28-32 is not inconclusive. These verses simply do not support the theory of an original that lacked Martha.
DeleteThe evidence from verses 28-32 is not inconclusive. There is simply no evidence from these verses that supports a Martha-less original.
DeleteIn my view, the evidence does quite logically support my theory (vv. 28-32 are stable precisely because they are the only verses with no textual mixture between the two text forms). Just because it’s logical doesn’t mean it’s exclusive. By contrast, you seem to be asserting that your own interpretation of the data should be equated with fact.
DeleteTo be clear, verses 28, 29, and 32 are stable, but not unusually stable compared to the average of other verses in John 11. Nothing stands out as different about these verses. I am not asserting an interpretation of the data with the observation that no manuscript was found to omit these verses, and that statistically, these verses are no more stable or unstable when compared with other verses. It is instead incumbent upon you as the presenter of the theory to explain why your theory should continue to be advanced when it is a fact that not one manuscript was found to omit these verses, and that there is nothing unusual about the stability of these verses. Saying only that it's "because they are the only verses with no textual mixture between the two text forms" does not suffice when you have not demonstrated the existence of the very text form you are arguing for. No manuscript was found to demonstrate an alleged Martha-less text form in verses 28, 29, and 32, and these verses amount to 70% of the minimal changes needed had your theory been true.
DeleteIn 2019 you invited the community of text critics to further study your thesis. Having checked 2,249 manuscripts, not one was found that illustrates the existence of a Martha-less text in 11:28-29, and 11:32. That is a fact, not an interpretation. But you instead move the goalposts so that either lack of evidence or evidence can be taken to affirm your thesis.
Thanks for your work on this Darrell. To me it is very convincing, and I totally agree on the transcription of the INTF as reflected in NA28.⸂ απεστειλεν ουν Μαρθα προς αυτον λεγουσα 𝔓66✱vid.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tommy, one thing I also wanted to mention on a personal note is that the process of collating 2,249 manuscripts was invaluable. I would encourage anyone who can to take on a project like this to do so. There is no better way to master all unique features of manuscript copies. After a while I came to the point where I had memorized the entire Greek text in John 11, and all the major variations. I can see ligatures in my sleep. I hope to have the full collation published soon.
DeleteWell, when I worked on Jude back in the days, I knew that letter by heart... it is gone now (20 years later...).
DeleteDarrell, thank you for your important scholarly contribution of collating 2,249 manuscripts of John 11 and 12. Obviously we have different interpretations of the data, but you have realized an important scholarly desideratum here. I look forward to seeing your publication.
DeleteTommy, I think you are speaking too soon ;)
I have also indexed and prepped for collation another 246 lectionaries, and this preparation included a spot check of the text that confirmed each likely agrees with the majority base text at 98% or higher. By my count there are another 125 possible lectionaries that could include portions of John 11, and I have not looked at any of these 125 yet.
DeleteThis is my interpretation of the evidence, the traces of a theta, the phi written to cover the crossbar, so I absolutely agree with the INTF transcription as reflected in NA28. Moreover, as do you, I greatly appreciate Darrell Post's full collations, and I was already convinced from previous discussions, that the data does not support your bold hypothesis.
DeleteTommy, may I ask exactly what part of the photograph you think is a “trace of a theta”?
DeleteSee main post
DeleteI'm just a scientist who looks at Bible translation like a detective investigates a hit and run death. He has 4 witnesses to the crime. One witness says the male perp who fled was with a women. Another witness says he fled alone. The third witness says he fled with a black dog in his car. As to clothing. One witness swears he was wearing a grey hoodie. Another is certain that the hoodie was a light brown. The other two witnesses have no opinion. Now despite there being minor differences in the details of the story...NO ONE denies that a man driving a car hit a pedestrian, he fled and the pedestrian was killed and thrown into a ditch. And frankly, it is the major details of this event and not minor details which are important. Such is what is happening in this comment section.
ReplyDeleteAn article at Ancient Jew Review by Ally Kateusz, "Art as Text: When Mary Was Lazarus’s Sole Sister," Sept. 12, proposes a reaction by some art historians' descriptions to Morton Smith's 1973 publications on "Secret Mark." (I regard the Smith-published "Letter to Theodore" to be a 20th-century pseudo-Clement text.) Since it may be that Elizabeth Schrader Polczer is still reading here, I ask, if I may, do you affirm that hypothesis?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2025/9/8/art-as-text-when-mary-was-lazaruss-sole-sister
Thanks for the link to Ally's article, Stephen. Your question to Elizabeth does not seem relevant. Ally wrote, "Men only with Jesus was common in other scenes of his miracles". Therefore it seems that there was a reluctance to depict women, at least in scenes of miracles, except when she could be given a submissive posture. This might be simple sexism. It seems that this would explain why it was rare to show two sisters, for only one sister kneels in the gospel account. The image of two prostrate sisters, with no women in the crowd, in Ally's figure 22, illustrates the point.
DeleteHi Richard,
DeleteThanks for bringing to my attention that my AJR article is being discussed here.
I think in the context of the above discussion string, the key takeaway of my article is that 96% of 3rd and 4th-century scenes of the Raising of Lazarus that include at least one sister depict only one sister, not two. Two sisters become more frequent in 5th-century scenes, and very common by the 6th.
This trajectory, from one sister in the earliest art, to two sisters in later art, seems to comport with Elizabeth Schrader’s hypothesis.
Figure 22, which you mention above, is 6th-century and depicts two prostrate sisters. You are correct that this appears to be a sexist rendering of the scene.
However, some earlier examples illustrate the solo sister upright and full-sized (Figures 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10). Also see the arms-raised women in Figures 6 and 7, as well as the full-sized women in the 3rd-century gospel scenes of Figures 11/12, 19, and 21.
Over time Christian artists not only added a second sister to the Lazarus scene, they also depicted women smaller and more subservient. By the 6th-century, almost all artists were depicting two sisters, both in submissive poses, as seen in Figure 22.
For those who would like to see the art (or read the article in full) google “Kateusz” and Ancient Jew Review” — or cut and paste this link:
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2025/9/8/art-as-text-when-mary-was-lazaruss-sole-sister
Hi Richard - your position does not account for why several ancient sarcophagi depict two jailers from the Acts of Peter's water miracle, but only one sister from the Lazarus episode (see e.g. the sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus, fig. 6 in Ally's article).
DeleteHi Stephen - I agree with your position that the "Letter to Theodore" is a 20th-century creation. I've never published my thoughts, but the Mar Saba letter was "discovered" right after P66 was published. Morton Smith could easily have seen the sister split in two in P66 at 11:3, which may have inspired him to create the one-sister version of his story.
DeleteHi Richard, I was looking in my article to find what you quoted from my article, and I see that it is from an endnote, Endnote 9.
DeleteI hope you are going off my final article, which was posted Monday on Ancient Jew Review, not the very early version that I sent to you and to Elizabeth Schrader for your feedback. As you can see from the list of reviewers who I thank at the very end of the posted article, yourself included, I received feedback from a large number of reviewers, including from two very detailed peer reviews. Accordingly, because the topic does cross several disciplines, I expanded the final article to include and address double the number of examples of art. The final version, published Monday, is the one to quote from.
Also, in looking through my article, probably the best answer to your above question related to the arrival of the second sister and the sexism evident in some of this art is my final paragraph:
"Did the addition of Martha to texts and iconography correlate with a change in women’s agency and authority in the broader culture? The trajectory of female postures—from one woman standing tall with Jesus, to kneeling at his feet, to two women prostrate with a crowd of men towering over them—is shocking. This trajectory appears to reflect changing cultural perspectives regarding the proper place of women in Christian society as held by artists, their patrons, their churches, or communities. Artists mapped these social views onto the bodies of biblical women, and this art performed as a model for how actual women should comport themselves."
You mentioned in your email that you and Elizabeth have responses forthcoming. Please let me know when they post. As always, I am interested in the work of both of you, and I hope you find more common ground.
Thank you, Elizabeth. That's a new aspect for me to consider.
DeleteHi Elizabeth. Your observation supports my point. The two jailers were depicted because they were male. The second sister is usually omitted because she was female and not kneeling.
DeleteHi Ally. You wrote, "However, some earlier examples illustrate the solo sister upright and full-sized (Figures 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10). Also see the arms-raised women in Figures 6 and 7, as well as the full-sized women in the 3rd-century gospel scenes of Figures 11/12, 19, and 21." Figure 4 is a plate with symmetry. A second sister would have made it unbalanced. Figure 5 has two sisters, not one. Figure 7 has no onlookers to the Bethany episode and there was not space for a second sister. The sister is stooped in Figure 8. Much too little of the painting in figure 10 has survived. The images that show a crowd on onlookers tend to show men. As far as I can tell, the reluctance to depict women, especially in a non-submissive pose, and constraints of cost and space, fully explain why there are so few images with two sisters.
DeleteYes, I have been looking at the version of your article on the Ancient Jew Review website.
Hi Richard,
DeleteI think I understand your theory.
You said, “It seems that there was a reluctance to depict women, at least in scenes of miracles, except when she could be given a submissive posture. This might be simple sexism. It seems that this would explain why it was rare to show two sisters, for only one sister kneels in the gospel account.”
You also said, “As far as I can tell, the reluctance to depict women, especially in a non-submissive pose, and constraints of time and space, fully explains why there are so few images with two sisters.”
I would agree with you that there was sexism in both art and text in early Christianity. However, it seems to me that the following three important trends in the art, which I detail in my article, contradict your theory:
1. Third-century Christian art is rare, but it does not evince a “reluctance to depict women, especially in a non-submissive pose.” The four third-century pieces of art that I include in my article (Figures 10, 11/12, 19, and 21) all depict women standing with Jesus.
2. 96% of third and fourth-century scenes of the Raising of Lazarus that include a sister include only one sister. Most commonly these solo sisters are not portrayed standing with Jesus, but sometimes they are.
3. Fifth and sixth-century (and later) scenes of the Raising of Lazarus commonly depict two sisters, typically kneeling or prostrate, with men towering above them, as in Figures 22 and 23. These later scenes with two sisters are the most pitifully sexist of all.
Regarding the individual pieces of art, some of your explanations are not complete, and more detail illustrates where the theory falters, but there is not room here to provide my answer to all of them for you. In a nutshell, you did not answer how the solo sister standing erect in some of this art comports with your theory. I also contest your idea that artists did not have enough "space" for a second sister or that they could not balance a composition with a second sister. Artists had leeway in the design of their art. Two fourth-century sculptors carved two sisters and other artists could have made "space" for a second sister as well.
Finally, I agree with Elizabeth’s comment. Many fourth-century sculptors, as seen in Figures 3 and 6, carved two jailers on one end of a sarcophagus, one kneeling and one standing, and on the opposite end, carved one kneeling sister. These sculptors could have carved two sisters if they had wanted to. There was room. In this case you propose, “The two jailers were depicted because they were male. The second sister is usually omitted because she was female and not kneeling.” If the reason the second sister was omitted was that the jailers were male whereas the sisters were female, why not simply omit both sisters? That is what some artists did (Figure 1). If the second sister “not kneeling” was the reason she was not included, then why not simply portray both sisters kneeling or prostrate? That is what fifth and sixth-century artists did. Additionally suggesting that the sculptor of the sarcophagus in Figure 6 did not have a problem carving a standing woman, a standing woman is in the center of the sarcophagus.
In a Sept. 12 article in Ancient Jew Review, "Art as Text: When Mary Was Lazarus’s Sole Sister," by Ally Kateusz, it is proposed that some art historians responded to the 1973 publication of "Secret Mark." I consider the Morton Smith-published pseudo-Clement "Letter to Theodore" to be a 20th-century fake. On the chance that Elizabeth Schrader Polczer is reading here, if I may ask, do you agree with that article?
ReplyDeleteIn a Sept. 12 article in Ancient Jew Review, "Art as Text: When Mary Was Lazarus’s Sole Sister," Ally Kateusz proposed that some art historians responded to the 1973 publication of "Secret Mark." I consider the pseudo-Clement "Letter to Theodore" published by Morton Smith to be a 20th-century fake. If Elizabeth Schrader Polczer is reading here, if i may ask, do you agree with thar article?
ReplyDeleteThis comment is a reply to Stephen Goranson's comment above, which I just noticed, but could not Reply to.
ReplyDeleteStephen, I agree with Richard that your comment is not relevant. You will note that in my article I do not advocate for the antiquity or veracity of SGM.
I simply point out that some third and fourth-century art of the Raising of Lazarus could be interpreted as mapping onto SGM and that this could have raised some anxiety in two Vatican archeologists who, in two 1970 articles, wrote without any explanation that there was a second sister in a third-century painting that previous art historians unanimously agreed had only one sister.
Given the prevalence of the solo sister in third-and fourth-century art of the raising of Lazarus, and given that an estimated 85% of the early Christian writings that the fathers of the church wrote about have been lost, in my opinion, a version of the miracle of the raising of Lazarus with only one sister more likely would have been known from a popular, widely known gospel, not some esoteric secret gospel such as SGM (if it were not a 20th-century forgery).
Accordingly, I would suggest a literary source for the solo sister such as the widely known Gospel of the Hebrews, which a variety of very early fathers, in East and West, mentioned and seemed to accept as truthful, but which did not survive.
In response to a portion of the Elizabeth Schrader HTR 2016 article, Andrew Criddle elsewhere online commented:
ReplyDelete"Our only basis for regarding Martha as present at the tomb when Jesus raises Lazarus (as distinct from sitting quietly at home mourning her brother) is verse 39" and "If, as seems from this article plausible, Martha is not original here (the original maybe just reading the sister of the dead man with no personal name) then we have an original text which even if it included Martha in the narrative did not have her at the graveside. This would explain the artistic representations."
Stephen, with all due respect to Richard, whose research on sexism I usually love, your hypothesis for the prevalence of the solo sister in third and fourth-century scenes of the Raising of Lazarus is in my opinion more consistent with the art than Richard's.
DeleteAlly, I did not suggest that you did "advocate for the antiquity or veracity of" Morton Smith's publication of pseudo-Clement letter with "Secret Mark." I do suggest that art historians in 1970 were quite unlikely to change their opinions due to anxiety caused by it, especially since Smith did not publish it until 1973.
ReplyDeleteStephen, Thanks for that clarification.
DeleteAlthough Morton Smith did not publish the SGM until 1973, its contents were not a complete secret. According to Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau in their 2023 book, Morton Smith read the SGM out loud to a crowd of biblical scholars in a 600-person auditorium at the 1960 SBL meeting. He was in conversation about SGM with several colleagues. He first submitted his book manuscript to Oxford University Press, where it underwent extensive peer review. After OUP rejected it in 1964, he submitted it to Harvard, which, again after peer review, accepted it. But nine years passed before it was finally slated for publication in 1973.
Nothing else is in evidence to explain why two Vatican archeologists, with the means and opportunity to touch up the Cappella Greca painting with a second sister, would, in two separate 1970 articles, casually state without any accompanying explanation, that Mary and Martha were in a painting where every previous art historian had identified only one sister.
In any case, even if we were to believe that all earlier viewers of the Cappella Greca painting were wrong, and that there was always a second sister in it, that would only change my statistics from 96% to 95% with respect to the percentage of third and fourth-century scenes of the Raising of Lazarus that depicted only one sister.
Didn’t Smith get it on the front page of the New York Times in 1960? His 1973 monograph was an expansion of an SBL presentation he delivered over a decade earlier.
DeleteThat two art historians in 1970 knew about Morton Smith's bogus text, and then became anxious about it, and then responded to it by altering a painting to counter it, seems to me a rather far-fetched conspiracy theory.
DeleteAs I state in my article, I, too, would like to believe de Bruyne and Tolotti. However, they were not just any art historians. They were Vatican specialists. Each published an article in two different PCAS (Vatican) journals in the same year, suggesting a collaboration. But most importantly, neither gave any explanation whatsoever for why they briefly mentioned that both Mary and Martha were in this painting when previous art historians unanimously identified only one sister.
DeleteAs I detail in the article, there was disagreement afterwards even among Vatican specialists. In 1973 the PCAS published that there was one sister in the photo of the painting taken after its restoration. In 1975, Aldo Nestori, another Vatican specialist, published that there was one sister in the painting. Still today the PCAS online image of the painting specifies one sister.
For a different case study where it appears that some Vatican specialists collaborated on redefining archeological remains while others disagreed, see Endnote 49, Kateusz and Badini (OUP 2021).
Although I was more diplomatic in my article, not everyone finds it far-fetched that Vatican personnel would conspire to conceal evidence that undermined church ideology about same-sex sex. The touch-up of a catacomb painting that might support a secret gospel that said that Jesus spent the night with a young man (!) pales in comparison to the network of conspirators -- priests, bishops, archbishops -- who in recent decades attempted to protect the Catholic Church by concealing the sexual abuse of boys.
And Stephen, I might add, as I wrote above:
Delete"Even if we were to believe that all earlier viewers of the Cappella Greca painting were wrong, and that there was always a second sister in it, that would only change my statistics from 96% to 95% with respect to the percentage of third and fourth-century scenes of the Raising of Lazarus that depict only one sister."
Admittedly, I am not expert on the painting at issue.
DeleteMy point has been that that painting's interpretations and Morton Smith's publications have, as far as I know, no discernable connection.
As to numbers of women portrayed I do have an interest in another early Christian depiction, which I wrote about in ""7 vs. 8: The Battle Over the Holy Day at Dura-Europos" in Bible Review
available here:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Dura-Europos.pdf
That is a great article on the Dura Europos painting, Stephen! I read it some years ago and have a copy in my files. Admirable research.
DeleteStephen, I mention this very Dura Europos painting of eight women processing to a tomb-like structure in my article. It is another example, along with the third-century catacomb paintings I illustrate, of gospel women portrayed standing upright in third-century art.
DeleteThe posture and size of women in third-century Christian art contrasts greatly with the smaller size and submissive posture of the solo sister in fourth-century art and with the smaller size and even more submissive posture of the eventual two sisters in much fifth and sixth-century art of the Raising Of Lazarus. It’s quite an extraordinary trajectory of an increasing representation of sexism in art that appears to mirror a rise in sexism within Christianity.
I suggest that the same trajectory of increasing sexism across the early Christian centuries may be witnessed in the age of some of the manuscripts containing the sexist New Testament variants that Richard has so beautifully identified in other articles.
However, the cluster of variants in the third-century P66 that suggest an early Lazarus narrative without Martha would more likely comport with the relative lack of sexism in the third-century and earlier, not the sexism of later centuries.