Early sexist textual variants in the Martha and Mary account in John

 In 2016 Elizabeth Schrader brought some curious textual variants (mainly in Papyrus 66) in John 11:1-5; 12:2 to our attention. She argued that Martha was originally absent from the whole of John's gospel. This theory has been presented numerous times on the internet, but has insurmountable problems.

Others have suggested that the textual variants are just random errors, but the disruption is simply too great and too themed.

A third view is that the variants were caused by a tendency to reduce the status of women relative to men. This view is now presented in a Journal article here: Richard G. Fellows, "Early Textual Variants that Downplay the Roles of Women in the Bethany Account," TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (2023). Thanks to those, including Schrader-Polczer, who engaged in discussion of the data.

There are two important implications of this research. Firstly, it provides further evidence that sexist textual variants predate our earliest manuscripts, and probably occurred in the time period when the (sexist) pseudo-Pauline "letters" were written. Secondly, it shows that NA28 and the NRSV translation have the wrong pronoun in Mark 6:22: it was Herodias's daughter, not Herod's daughter, who danced.

Paul, Phoebe, Timothy and their collections for Judea

 Novum Testamentum has now published my article, "Paul, Phoebe, Timothy, and their Collections for Judea." It is open access here.

Here is the abstract:

Studies of Paul’s collection(s) for Judea have suffered from the largely unexamined assumption that he wanted all regions to donate at the same time. Paul and Phoebe collaborated to organize a collection from Rome, and Paul anticipated a collection from Asia. There was likely a collection from Galatia several years before the collection from Macedonia and Achaia, and there is little reason to doubt the collection from Antioch. The silence of Acts concerning these collections is no argument against them, and it can be explained as a protective measure. We have no evidence that any of the collections were rejected.