Darrell Post: Which Sister Sent for Jesus in P66?

The following is a note from Darrell Post on the text and correction of P66 at John 11.3. —Ed.

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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.

μαρθα at John 11.3 in P66. Images used by permission of the Martin Bodmer Foundation, Geneva.

Update (9/9) from Darrell: The image shown below includes every phi written in John 1 and John 11, surrounding the one in 11:3 (shown within a red box). This enables one to see how the phi was written in a way to conceal a previously written theta crossbar.

Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel – A Note from the Editor

In a three-part guestpost “Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel,” Elizabeth Schrader has shared her research and in the recent week there has been a lively discussion with more than fifty comments (Peter Head’s magic threshold) added together. As the editor who invited Schrader to post, I want to thank her for sharing and for interacting with those who commented. The debate will likely continue.

Finally, I also promised to offer my own thoughts. I may make some readers disappointed, but I first have to admit that I have neither studied the textual problems in John 11, nor Schrader’s published work, in any great detail, and therefore I can only offer my preliminary thoughts here.

As I said in the introduction of the first blogpost, I think Schrader’s findings – the mere textual data – are significant. Some commenters have suggested that they are all random scribal errors. I actually have the feeling that it is a mix. Some are random errors, others are different types of general tendencies, e.g., to elevate the man Lazarus, or to downplay Martha, or possibly redaction by a scribe like in the case of P66 (I need to look more into that). This is all interesting and worth the research.

On the other hand, I think it is extremely problematic to harvest the textual tradition and try to find one grand thesis that explains all the textual changes, i.e., I disagree with Schrader’s overall explanation of the data – that Martha was interpolated in the story in the second century – and this would be an interpolation of a very different kind than the ending of Mark or the pericope adulterae (which I, along with most scholars, regard as the two major interpolations in the New Testament).

Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel? Part III

We have come to the third and concluding part of Elizabeth Schrader’s guest post concerning the presence or absence of Martha and Mary in John 11:1–12:2. The previous two parts are here and here. I am glad that I did not have to delete any comments to the previous part, and I look forward to following the final round.

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THE ONE-SISTER TEXTFORM IN JOHN 11

Some have suggested that I am collecting many various phenomena and positing one grand theory for basically anything aberrant I have found in John 11. For those who have gotten this impression of my work, I hope they might consider examining the cogent one-sister text form of John 11:1-5, which can be reconstructed using real readings found in just three weighty manuscripts (A*, P66*, and VL 6):

1 There was a certain sick man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary his sister.
2 Now this was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
3 Therefore Mary sent to him, saying, “Lord, behold, the one you love is sick.”
4 But when Jesus heard he said to her, “The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son may be glorified through it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sister.

I posit that this text form (found on page 381 of my Harvard Theological Review article, and justified by the analysis in the article’s preceding pages) may be both a plausible and defensible recovery of five verses of John 11, and is potentially representative of the “initial text.” I believe that all of the phenomena discussed in the previous post can be explained by an interpolation of Martha to the one-sister text form above (and its natural continuation). Although our tendency as a text-critical guild is sometimes to apply more and more complicated methodologies, none of us doubt that all manuscripts of John trace back to the initial circulating text. Thus it is not impossible that different portions of the initial text could have been preserved in different corners of the textual tradition. Since a coherent one-sister text form of considerable length can already be reconstructed (which lessens the likelihood of the variants’ randomness), I believe it is worthwhile to simply begin thinking through the exegetical implications of a “Lazarus and Mary” version of John 11-12, and any potential objections that might have arisen to such a text in antiquity.

Of course this does not mean that we should overlook the information that sophisticated methodologies can provide. The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method will hopefully shed additional light on the problems in John 11. I suggest that those working with the CBGM consider looking not just at relationships between individual variation units, but also at how the five problematic criteria I have isolated (see post #1) show up in related witnesses. As one particularly clear example, 157, 1344, 579, and 2680 are all closely related genealogically overall in John. However, these witnesses might variously display any of the five criteria that suggest Martha’s absence: 157 drops “Martha” in John 11:1 (Criterion 1), 1344 changes “Maria” to “Martha” in John 11:20 (Criterion 2), 579 uses two unexpected singular verbs and one unexpected singular pronoun at 11:3, 12:2, and 11:39 (Criterion 4), while 2680 simultaneously lists Mary first in John 11:5, omits Martha’s name completely from the same verse, and uses a singular pronoun at 11:19 (Criteria 1, 3, 4, and 5). Thus when we use the CBGM to look at this problem in John 11, let us note when several witnesses in the same genealogical group display problematic criteria in different ways. If a high concentration of different Maria/Martha problems occur in related witnesses, this could suggest that the phenomena originate with a one-sister text form, rather than that the phenomena are random scribal errors occurring independently of one another.

My hope is that the increased interest in this topic will lead to additional research on all of the abovementioned topics, so we can better understand the various textual phenomena appearing in the Lazarus story. I look forward to engaging with the responses of my colleagues.

Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel? Part II

Here we continue with Elizabeth Schrader's guest post in three parts concerning the textual transmission of John 11:1–12:2, specifically the presence (or absence) of the two sisters, Martha and Mary in the story. The first part was posted here and provoked a lot of reactions. I will personally try to stay out of the debate and instead add a few thoughts in a separate post when all parts have been published. In the meantime let's continue the discussion with focus on arguments (I had to delete some comments that did not).

THE MANY DIFFERENT TEXTUAL PHENOMENA IN JOHN 11

Some have already objected to my suggestion that Martha is an interpolation into John’s Gospel. Thus far there have been both public supporters and detractors of the theory, though the case has yet to be settled. I remain open to changing my position if others can present theories that persuasively account for all of the textual phenomena I have isolated in John 11. For example, dissenting responders must explain:

• Why Martha’s name drops out from so many verses in the manuscripts of John, while her name is stable in the manuscript transmission of Luke;
• Why there are five continuous verses of textual instability around Martha in our oldest surviving copy of John 11, Papyrus 66, where in 11:3 the scribe clearly splits one named woman into two unnamed women (a choice that cannot be explained by P66’s scribal habits);
• Why there is such extreme textual instability in both the order of names and who is named in John 11:5, especially in the Vetus Latina (we find an extremely rare phenomenon of the first person in the list being completely unpredictable, and neither sister is named in several important witnesses, including one Greek lemma of a Chrysostom homily);
• Why many ancient patristic quotations attribute actions to Mary that our Bibles now attribute to Martha (e.g. Tertullian giving Mary the Christological confession at John 11:27, or Chrysostom stating that Mary said the tomb stank at John 11:39);
• Why two of our most important manuscripts of John 11:1, P66 and Codex Alexandrinus, make the very similar change of “Maria” to “Martha,” and also use the masculine pronoun to say “his sister”;
• Why the name “Maria” is altered to “Martha” in several witnesses, whereas not a single surveyed manuscript of John ever alters the name “Martha” to “Maria”;
• Why the clearly accented dative feminine singular pronoun frequently pops up throughout the text transmission in John 11:4 (ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῆ), a reading that is also seems to be reflected in P66*;
• Why Martha is placed beside Mary Magdalene in second- and third-century documents like the Epistula Apostolorum and Hippolytus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs in ways that seem to diminish Mary’s authority (at the very same time period where documents like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip reveal that there were debates around Mary’s authority).

I agree that theories of the marginalization of Martha or scribal incompetence could explain (b), (d), (e), and (g). However I do not believe they adequately explain (a), (c), (f), and (h). Perhaps some scribes did drop Martha’s name at John 11:1 due to inattention; perhaps Tertullian’s (or Chrysostom’s, or Cyril of Jerusalem’s) memories of scripture were faulty when they said that Mary did things that Martha “should” do; perhaps Lazarus was occasionally moved to the top of the list in John 11:5 due to a desire to emphasize the male in the family; perhaps some scribes anticipating the anointing accidentally wrote that Mary served the supper at John 12:2, etc. etc. I realize that there is nearly always an alternate explanation for each of these problems individually; but the trouble is with the weight of these problems collectively.

This theory does not exclude the possibility that multiple phenomena may be occurring in the variations in John 11. For example, we see a bit of instability around Mary’s presence in John 11 (although this happens about five times less frequently than instability around Martha, and may simply be further evidence of a desire to emphasize Martha). Moreover, as Tommy Wasserman and Mary Rose D’Angelo have pointed out, the occasional dropping of the ἣ at Luke 10:39 can be seen as de-emphasizing Martha’s discipleship;[1] it is thus not impossible that there was a kind of “diminishment” of Martha happening at the same time as the early controversies around Mary Magdalene. Since multiple phenomena may indeed be at play in this pericope, we should do comprehensive studies of the various possibilities in each case. It may also be worthwhile to do studies of the individual scribal habits of the manuscripts displaying multiple instances of instability around Martha (beyond P66, these include Codex Alexandrinus, 357, 423, 579, 841, 884, 994, 2680, L17, VL 2, VL 6, VL 8, VL 15, and sa 5). It might be worthwhile to investigate the textual character of Chrysostom’s lemmas in Gr. Ms. 320 in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai, the only extant Greek witness to name Lazarus first in John 11:5. However, since so many manuscripts display problems around Martha, we cannot chalk it all up to individual scribal habits. At a certain point we must ask whether the collective weight of all of the evidence might be related to the woman getting split in two in Papyrus 66 at John 11:3.

Moreover, the early interpolation of Martha can answer several questions that biblical scholars have been asking for generations, such as:

• why do Martha and Mary seem to live in Galilee or Samaria in Luke’s Gospel? (because they did not live in Bethany!)
• why don’t Martha and Mary have a brother in Luke 10? (Because Lazarus isn’t their brother!)
• why do Martha and Mary say the very same thing, first at John 11:21 and then again at 11:32? (because one woman was doubled!)
• why did so many early Christians, going all the way back to the third century, identify Mary of Bethany as Mary Magdalene? (because circulating texts of the Fourth Gospel encouraged them to do so in light of obvious parallels between John 11 and John 20!)

Therefore, due to both external and internal evidence, as of now I believe that the interpolation of Martha remains the simplest thesis for explaining the combined weight of these phenomena.

Notes
[1] See Tommy Wasserman, “Bringing Sisters Back Together: Another Look at Luke 10:41–42,” JBL 137:2 (2018): 439-61, at 457; Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Women Partners in the New Testament,” JFSR 6 (1990): 65-86, at 78-79.

Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel?

One of the readers of our blog, and a very promising PhD student at Duke University, Elizabeth Schrader, is currently working on examining the textual transmission of John 11:1–12:2, specifically the presence (or absence) of the two sisters, Martha and Mary in the story. I have invited Elisabeth to share her research in three consecutive posts. Based on her observations in the manuscripts, she proposes the bold thesis that Martha was interpolated into the Fourth Gospel in the second century. I know she looks forward to response and debate. Personally, I think her findings are very significant, although I disagree with her overall explanation of the data.

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A Problem around Martha: Introduction

In a 2017 article published in the Harvard Theological Review (Open Access version here), I argued that the character Martha is likely to be a second-century interpolation into John’s Gospel. In recent weeks, this research has received increased attention and discussion (Duke Today, Religion News Service, Religion for Breakfast). Tommy Wasserman has kindly invited me to introduce my work to this blog, and I was very happy to discuss it in more detail here.

In my research, I have demonstrated that Martha’s presence is consistently unstable throughout the textual transmission of John. Such instability is found in nearly every verse where Martha appears in John 11:1–12:2, in witnesses as early as Papyrus 66 and as late as the 1611 King James Bible. My conclusion is that approximately one in five Greek manuscripts and one in three Old Latin manuscripts has some problem around Martha. I define a “problem around Martha” according to the following five criteria:

1. the unexpected omission of Martha’s name
2. the initially transcribed name “Mary” altered to “Martha”
3. the name “Mary” appearing instead of an expected “Martha”
4. an unexpected singular noun, verb, or pronoun to describe the Bethany sisters
5. a different person named as the first of those Jesus loved in John 11:5

My most recent compilation of the relevant manuscript and patristic data is available here for those who are interested; I will happily approve a read-only view of the spreadsheet for anyone that asks.

Of course we must now ask, why is there such a remarkable textual problem around Martha in John’s Gospel? My position is that Martha was added to John’s Gospel in order to discourage readers from identifying Lazarus’ sister Mary as Mary Magdalene, an identification that was happening in patristic and extracanonical literature as early as the third century. Martha’s presence in the Lazarus story is important: she is now the woman who speaks the central Christological confession “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” [John 11:27, NRSV]. This confession is often compared to Peter’s similar Christological confession in Matthew (“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” [Matt 16:16, NRSV]) to which Jesus replies that Peter is the rock upon which the church will be built [Matthew 16:18]. Since according to Matthew, the Christological confessor is designated as the foundation of the church, the identity of the Christological confessor in John’s Gospel is of paramount importance. It should give us pause to learn that Tertullian, writing in 206 AD, believed that Mary gave this confession – and that this Mary was understood by many early readers to also be Mary Magdalene, the first person to see the risen Jesus and to receive an apostolic commission in John’s Gospel. Indeed, if it was the Evangelist’s intent for Mary (Magdalene) to give the Christological confession in John 11:27, this would suggest that her leadership role in John was akin to Peter’s in the Gospel of Matthew.

One need not give authority to the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, or the Pistis Sophia today to notice that they offer evidence of early objections to Mary’s stature as “apostle to the apostles” (her status among Orthodox Christians even now). Composed by diverse Christian writers over the course of more than a century, these four documents each portray Jesus’ disciples—particularly Peter—objecting to Mary or to special status given to her by Jesus. Perhaps the changes we see from “Mary” to “Martha” are not so different from whatever process led to a textual variant at Luke 2:33, where Ἰωσὴφ is often copied instead of ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ. We know that there were early debates about the doctrine of Jesus’ virgin birth. So, when we see textual instability around the suggestion that Joseph was Jesus’ “father,” it is reasonable for textual critics to infer that this textual problem could be connected with the virgin birth debate. Similarly, we know that there was early controversy about Mary Magdalene’s authority, especially vis-à-vis Peter. So when we see that the presence of Martha, the Christological confessor, is unstable throughout John 11–12—and since we know that many early readers identified Lazarus’ sister Mary as Mary Magdalene—our scholarly antennae should go up.