Marcus-Matthew a.k.a. Levi, as author of Mark's gospel

Here I will refer to the gospel that appears first in our bibles as The Gospel of Matthew, in italics. The second I will call The Gospel of Mark. I will refer to people using normal font.

It will be argued, for the first time, that Matthew, who was a tax collector and one of the twelve, wrote  The Gospel of Mark. First we will see that The Gospel of Mark refers to Matthew as Levi son of Alphaeus, and that this is consistent with Matthew being the author. We will then explore other internal evidence in The Gospel of Mark that suggests that the author was one of the twelve apostles and Matthew in particular. Then, we will see that the person who compiled The Gospel of Matthew was likely aware that The Gospel of Mark was written by Matthew. We will then see that Papias's information confirms that The Gospel of Mark, not The Gospel of Matthew, was written by Matthew. Then, the attribution of the gospels to Matthew and Mark will be explained.

The identity of Levi

Mark 2:14 tells of the calling of Levi, son of Alphaeus, but Matt 9:9 calls him "Matthew" and restructures Mark 2:14, writing that the man was "called" Matthew. 

Mark 2:14 Matt 9:9 he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth he saw a man  sitting at the tax booth called Matthew εἶδεν Λευὶν τὸν τοῦ Ἁλφαίου καθήμενον ἐπὶ τὸ τελώνιον εἶδεν ἄνθρωπον καθήμενον ἐπὶ τὸ τελώνιον, Μαθθαῖον λεγόμενον Mark 3:18 Matt 10:3 Matthew, and Thomas, and  James son of Alphaeus Thomas  and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus

Whenever The Gospel of Matthew refers to a person using "called" (λεγόμενον) it is introducing a name that is not a mere birth name (Matt 1:16; 4:18; 10:2; 26:3, 14; 27:16, 17, 22). Matt 9:9 is therefore presenting "Matthew" as a new name that was given to Levi son of Alphaeus. This is confirmed by Matt 10:3, which identifies Matthew as the tax collector and reverses the order of Matthew and Thomas so that Matthew is next to his likely brother, James son of Alphaeus. Note that Matt 10:2 similarly moves Andrew so that he is next to his brother, Peter. The compiler of The Gospel of Matthew had a tendency to clarify identities. Matt 4:18 derives from Mark 1:16 but adds "who is called Peter" after Simon's name, for clarity. Also, Matt 27:56 calls Salome (Mark 15:40), "the mother of the sons of Zebedee" to clarify that she is the same person as mentioned in Matt 20:20.

The renaming of Levi should not be surprising. Jesus gave new names to Simon (Cephas/Peter) and to the sons of Zebedee (Boanerges) (Mark 3:17), and probably to Mary (the Magdalene (tower)). The renaming habit continued with the apostles calling Joseph "Barnabas". Among Paul's associates we have Titus being called "Timothy" (honouring God), Crispus, who was named "Sosthenes" (saving strength). Ignatius calls himself "Theophorus" (bearer of God). Renaming in Paul's churches is discussed here. The name "Matthew" means "gift of God" and was an appropriate name for Levites, for the name is over-represented among priests, High Priests, and also among immediate relatives of men called Levi.

	Total        valid	Number            that are             immediate        relatives of     a Levi	High       Priests	Priests	Priests        and            High          Priests	Ratio
Mattathias	68	2	5	2	7	10.3%
All males with biblical names	2038	10	33	45	78	3.8%
Ratio	3.3%	20.0%

But why did The Gospel of Mark not make it clear that Matthew was Levi renamed? This has long puzzled commentators. And why did the author feel the need to give the name of Levi's father? The gospels give the names of fathers only when there was a need to distinguish between multiple people of the same name, as the following list demonstrates. Here the number of occurrences of each name of Jews in Palestine (330 BCE to 200 CE) in Ilan's Lexicons are given in parentheses. The square brackets give the number of others of the same name in the same gospel.

Simon (254) son of Jonah (Matt 16:7 [4]) son of John (John 21:15, 16, 17 [2]); 

Judas (174) son of Simon Iscariot (John 6:71; 13:2, 26 [1]), son of James (Luke 6:16 [1]); 

John (131) son of Zechariah (Luke 3:2 [1])

Jesus (101) son of Mary (Mark 6:3) son of Joseph (John 1:45; 6:42).
James (43) son of Zebedee (Matt 4:21; 10:2 [2]; Mark 1:19; 3:17 [3]), son of Alphaeus (Matt 10:3 [2]; Mark 3:18 [3]; Luke 6:15 [3]); 

Levi (28) son of Alphaeus (Mark 2:14 [0]).

Jesus is called son of Joseph and son of Mary, but only in speech to people who were not Jesus followers. The name of the father of BarTimaeus (Timaeus) (Mark 10:46) was likely given only to show that BarTimaeus was his birth name, rather than a symbolic name (son of honour) (so, correctly, Carlson). 

The text in The Gospel of Mark makes most sense if the author was Levi-Matthew. The author would not have needed to identify Levi as Matthew if the intended audience already knew. The author probably expects them to know Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:13; Rom 16:21), as commentators correctly point out, so he may have expected them to know himself as well. In much the same way, we can assume, for example, that the audience of Galatians knew that Cephas was Peter. The addition of "son of Alphaeus" could have helped with the identification. Not only might it have been unnecessary for Levi-Matthew to explicitly make the identification, it would have been egotistical for him to draw attention to the fact that Jesus had given him the name "Matthew", since new names were given to the most prominent believers.

Ancient historians often avoided use of the first-person and referred to themselves by name, as if the author was writing about someone else. The gospel writers, in particular, show humility by avoiding excessive reference to themselves. Luke avoided first person self-reference except in his preface, and in the "we-passages" of Acts where only the modest plural form of the first-person is used. Elsewhere he avoids first-person self-reference completely, even for events in which he must have participated. The Gospel of John limits self-reference to the third-person, and even manages to avoid naming himself by substituting the phrase "the beloved disciple" and similar. Presumably the gospel writers were influenced by Jesus's teaching on humility, and/or they wanted to model humility and/or they wanted the readers' attention to be on the subject matter, rather than on the person of the author. Their preference to remain in the background seems to have been respected by the early church because there seems to have been little interest in the identities of the authors until well into the second century. We should not be surprised that a gospel writer should mention themselves only by name, while avoiding first-person language.

The author as one of the twelve

On any hypothesis Peter was the leading apostle during the ministry of Jesus and in the early church. With James and John, he had privileged access to Jesus. It is therefore to be expected that his reports would feature in The Gospel of Mark, whoever wrote it. However, The Gospel of Mark names Peter fewer times than any of the other gospels. It is the twelve who are mentioned more often in The Gospel of Mark than in any other.

	Mark	Luke	Matt	John
Words	11304	19482	18345	15635
Namings of Simon/Cephas/Peter	26	31	28	39
Occurrences of Peter per 1000 words	2.30	1.59	1.53	2.49
Mentions of "12" (or "11") apostles	12	9	9	4
Occurrences of the 12 (or 11) per 1000 words	1.06	0.46	0.49	0.26
Mentions of Herod Antipas and Herodians	10	13	4	0
Herod Antipas and Herodians per 1000 words	0.88	0.67	0.22	0

The Gospel of Mark is written from the point of view of a member of the twelve. For example, Mark 10:32 reads:

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him,

The verse is difficult to follow because we are not told who "they" are. Neither The Gospel of Matthew, nor Luke's include this event. If, however, the author of The Gospel of Mark was one of the twelve it becomes clear. Here, as elsewhere, he distinguished between the twelve and the larger body of followers. The author, if he was one of the twelve, would think "we" but decide to put "they" instead to avoid first person self-reference. The text would read more smoothly if we replaced "they" with "we". The author's ambiguous or awkward wording can often be explained by his desire to avoid first-person self-reference. See C.H. Turner "Marcan Usage: Notes Critical and Exegetical, on the Second Gospel V. The Movement of Jesus and His Disciples and the Crowd" JTS (1925). Examples are listed below, along with the parallel passages, which were reworded to avoid the problems, except where shown in brackets.

Mark 1:29;     Matt 8:14;    Luke 4:38

Mark 1:32;     (Matt 8:16); Luke 4:40

Mark 2:3;       Matt 9:2;      Luke 5:18

Mark 2:15;     Matt 9:10;    Luke 5:29

Mark 2:24;     Matt 12:2;    Luke 6:2

Mark 5:1–2;   Matt 8:28;    (Luke 8:26–27)

Mark 8:14;     Matt 16:5;    Luke 12:1

Mark 10:32;   Matt 20:17;  Luke 18:31

Mark 11:27;   Matt 21:12;  Luke 19:45

Mark 14:31;   Matt 26:35;  No parallel

Mark 14:50;   Matt 26:56;  No parallel

Mark 6:6–13 reports instructions given only to the twelve. The twelve are sent out, and return at Mark 6:30. The author reports no information about Jesus during the mission of the twelve, perhaps because he was one of the twelve, so had no first-hand information.

Note that Mark 14:22-24 includes the twelve five times:

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

The equivalent passage in 1 Cor 11:23–25 does not feature the twelve at all. This suggests that The Gospel of Mark was closer to eyewitness testimony even than Paul, who wrote these lines in 54 AD, and knew Peter. The perspective of the twelve in The Gospel of Mark means that the author was one of the twelve and not just a hearer of Peter, for Paul was a hearer of Peter and lacked the perspective of the twelve in 1 Cor 11:23–2.

The author as a Capernaumite

Even though Jesus travelled throughout Galilee (Mark 1:39), Capernaum is the focus in The Gospel of Mark.

Mark 2:1 reads, "When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home". This verse seems to be written from the perspective of someone who was at Capernaum, who was waiting for Jesus to return, and who knew of only one home where Jesus had stayed.

The calling of the twelve (Mark 3:13–20) happens on a mountain and it seems that only Jesus and the twelve are present. The manuscripts are evenly divided about whether we should read, "Then he went home" or "Then they went home". The plural is more likely because Mark 1:29 demonstrates the tendency to change manuscripts from the plural to the singular. In any case, these words seem to come from someone whose home was in Capernaum. 

Mark 1:14–15 records the calling of Simon, Andrew, James, and John, which happens close to Capernaum and/or Levi's tax booth, which was likely at Capernaum's harbour for taxing goods imported by boat from outside of Antipas's territory.

The author as Matthew

While the author likely writes from the point of view of one of the twelve, in most cases it is impossible to determine whether he is writing as Matthew, or reporting Peter's perspective (or both). However, the following texts favour Matthew's authorship.

Mark 1:19 says "he went", even though Peter and Andrew were with him (Mark 1:16–18). The author's tendency to include the disciples by using third person plural verbs has not yet begun, presumably because the author was not a travelling companion of Jesus until after his calling (Mark 2:14).

Mark 1:21–28 takes place in the synagogue in Capernaum and Levi may have been present. Indeed, if we replace "they" with "we" in Mark 1:22, 27 it reads as Levi's explanation of why he was so impressed by Jesus.

Mark 1:29 reads, "As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John." (The ESV changes "they" to "he"). The third person verb here seems unnatural, and the text is explained if the author accompanied Jesus from the synagogue to the house of Simon and Andrew: "As soon as we left the synagogue, we entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John." The author, wanting to avoid first-person verbs, censored himself, and used the third-person plural.

Mark 1:39 says that he [Jesus] went throughout Galilee. After the calling of Levi, The Gospel of Mark usually includes the twelve by using the plural, they. The use of the singular here, and the fact that the tour of Galilee is summarized in just this one verse, suggests that the author did not accompany Jesus here. The only recorded incident during this tour is the story about the leper, which the author tells us became common knowledge (Mark 1:40–45). The passage (Mark 1:36–39) implies that Peter, James, and John, did accompany Jesus. The passage is therefore more likely to be written from the perspective of Levi, who had not yet been called, than that of Peter.

Mark 2:3 reads, "Then they came, bringing to him a paralyzed man". The third-person plural verb has no explicit subject and the NRSV has to supply one, as does Luke 5:18. All is explained if the author was Levi, who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus, with three others. Jesus recognized his audacious faith (Mark 2:5), and this would explain why Jesus called him from his tax booth in the very next pericope (Mark 2:13–14). 

Mark 2:15 refers to Levi's house as "his house", but the NRSV writes "Levi's house" to clarify. The other synoptic gospels avoid the awkwardness. The audience of The Gospel of Mark, knowing that Levi was the author, will realize that he has replaced "my house" with "his house".

The author records insider information only after the calling of Matthew. There is a meal (Mark 2:13–17), and insider teachings with no mention of a crowd (Mark 2:18–22). In Mark 2:23–28 Jesus was with his disciples in the grainfields and again crowds are not mentioned, so the author may have been one of the disciples by that time. 

At Mark 14:31 Peter says that he will not deny Jesus, and we are then told, "And all of them said the same". An audience who knew that the author was Matthew would know to translate, "And all of us said the same", which would be natural. Luke has no parallel, but Matt 26:35 clarifies the subject by writing, "And so said all the disciples". This example suggests that Peter was not the only member of the 12 who was a source for The Gospel of Mark.

The author as a former employee of Herod Antipas.

 Mark 3:6 "The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him". How did the author know about this conspiracy? Levi/Matthew worked for Herod Antipas, so his contacts could have informed him.

As the table shows, The Gospel of Mark mentions Herod Antipas and the Herodians more frequently than any other. The account of the killing of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14–29) could have been learned by Matthew from his Herodian contacts.

The Gospel of Mark is less critical of tax collectors and of Herod Antipas than The Gospel of Matthew. Luke seems to be intermediate.

Richard Bauckham has shown that those associated with the administration of the Herods often had Latin names and connections to Rome. Matthew, the former collaborator, who had worked for Herod, might well have fled to Rome to escape from the sicarii. Herodion (Rom 16:11) might have moved to Rome for a similar reason. The Gospel of Mark seems to have been written from Rome.

As a tax collector and a probable Levite, Matthew was probably literate and therefore better able to write a gospel than Jesus's uneducated companions (Acts 4:13).

In short, the internal evidence in The Gospel of Mark points tentatively to Matthew, the tax collector, as the author.

Who did the compiler of The Gospel of Matthew think wrote The Gospel of Mark?

Here we assume Marcan priority. The compiler of The Gospel of Matthew used most of The Gospel of Mark, generally in sequence. He placed additional material where it seemed to belong chronologically (the birth narrative must come first, for example) or where it fit the theme (the parable of the weeds follows the parable of the sower, for example). However, the compiler does make some changes to the sequence that he inherited from The Gospel of Mark, and it will now be argued that he did so to minimize the extent of Matthew's presence with Jesus, relative to Peter. This is explicable if the compiler was known to have been a hearer of Peter, and if The Gospel of Mark, which he intended to replace, was known to have been written by Matthew.

He placed a lot of miscellaneous teaching (the sermon on the mount: Matt 5:1–7:29) immediately after the calling of Peter, Andrew, James, and John. Whereas The Gospel of Mark puts the calling of Levi/Matthew just 43 verses after the calling of Peter, The Gospel of Matthew puts 161 verses between them. Indeed, the compiler's desire to exclude Matthew from being a witness to the Sermon on the Mount may explain why he reverses the sequence of events to make Jesus leave Capernaum immediately after the calling of the four, rather than after the healing of Simon's mother-in-law. His source for the Sermon on the Mount material is perhaps implied by his mention of the disciples (Matt 5:1). He further delays the calling of Matthew by rearranging his written source to put the calming of the storm and the demoniac narratives before Matthew's calling. We can also note that The Gospel of Matthew eliminates the pronoun at Matt 9:10 (compare Mark 2:14), so that Matthew is no longer obviously Jesus's host. Also, at Matt 10:3 the compiler demoted Matthew by one place.

Having finally called Matthew (Matt 9:9), the compiler soon sends him away, along with the other eleven. He does this by reversing the sequence of The Gospel of Mark so that the sending of the twelve (Matt 10:1–11:1) is before, rather than after, the events of Mark 2:22–6:5. In The Gospel of Mark the twelve are sent at Mark 6:13, and following only the account of the death of John the Baptist, they return to Jesus at Mark 6:30. The compiler of The Gospel of Matthew, however, does not mention the twelve again until Matt 20:17. The twelve are not mentioned at Matt 13:10 or Matt 18:1, even though the Marcan parallel passages mention them. Peter, however, appears at Matt 14:28–32; Matt 15:15; Matt 16:17–19; Matt 17:24–27; Matt 18:15–22. The parallels to these verses, where they exist, in The Gospel of Mark and in Luke, do not mention Peter. The only two mentions of "church" (ἐκκλησία) in the gospels occur in two of these passages (Matt 16:18; 18:17), so they may be anachronistic in wording. Matt 16:17–19 records Jesus as saying that Peter is the rock on which the church is to be built. This would have been particularly interesting to the audience if their congregations had been established by Peter (see below). In summary, the compiler of  The Gospel of Matthew, went out of his way to diminish the duration of Matthew's presence with Jesus, relative to Peter's presence. We can now turn to Papias.

Papias and the attributions of the gospels

Eusebius reports what Papias had written in the early second century:

And the Elder said this also: ‘Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow Him; but afterwards, as I said, (attended) Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs (of his hearers) but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord’s oracles (λογίων). So then Mark made no mistake, while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein.’ Such then is the account given by Papias concerning Mark. But concerning Matthew, the following statement is made (by him): ‘So (οὖν) then Matthew composed the oracles (τὰ λόγια) in the Hebrew language (Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ), and each one interpreted them as he could.’ The same writer used quotations from the first Epistle of John, and likewise also from that of Peter, ...

Which gospel did the Elder's "Mark" write? Peter became an apostle exclusively to the circumcised, after Paul agreed to take responsibility for the uncircumcised (Gal 2:7–8). Peter then went to Antioch (Gal 2:11). As is generally agreed, The Gospel of Matthew was written for churches of Christian Jews in Syria (where Antioch was the largest city). So The Gospel of Matthew  was written for churches that could well have been established by Peter. The Gospel of Matthew therefore was likely the gospel compiled by the interpreter of Peter for Peter's Jewish Greek speaking converts in Syria. It is unlikely that the more gentile audience of The Gospel of Mark would have been the domain of Peter's interpreter, since Peter was the apostle to the circumcised.

The "Mark" referred to by the elder put events in a wrong order. It is unlikely that his gospel was The Gospel of Mark, since its sequence is largely trusted by both the later synoptic gospels. The gospel with the bad order was The Gospel of Matthew, and Luke knew it, as we will see. Luke-Acts was written to churches of the Aegean. Evidence is given here. Also, Luke mentions Philip's daughters (Acts 21:8–9), who later lived in Hierapolis (Eusebius, EH 3.31.9; 5.17.3), which is close to Ephesus.

Luke also mentioned Joseph Justus Barsabbas (Acts 1:23), as did Papias of Hierapolis (Eusebius, EH 3.39.9). The Latin name, Justus, suggests that he left Palestine, because Christians did not use Latin names in Palestine. Luke might have mentioned this Justus and Philip's daughters because they were known to at least some of his intended audience. Note also, that Papias's story of the death of Judas seems to be an embellished version of the account in Acts 1:18, rather than the account in Matt 27:5. Luke's connection with Ephesus is further shown by the fact that he mentions Tyrannus (Acts 19:9) in a way that suggests that Tyrannus was a Christian known to at least some of his audience. Also, Luke's gospel often agrees with the gospel of John, against The Gospel of Mark and The Gospel of Matthew, in episodes that the beloved disciple had witnessed (see Luuk van de Weghe, Living Footnotes). This suggests that Luke preferred eyewitness testimony, and that he had met the beloved disciple, who may well have been John the elder, who lived in Ephesus. The relevance of all this is that Luke respected the order of The Gospel of Mark, but thoroughly disrespected the sequence of The Gospel of Matthew. This is demonstrated by the following charts from Douglas Harder). The chart on the left shows how Luke took material from The Gospel of Mark to make his "orderly account" (Luke 1:3). Most of the erratic lines here represent Lukan pericopes that parallel their Marcan equivalents only weakly. Indeed, it has been said that Luke made only two true transpositions of material in The Gospel of Mark. The chart on the right shows how Luke took pericopes from The Gospel of Matthew that are not found in The Gospel of Mark. 

Therefore, in the region where the elder lived, the order of The Gospel of Mark was trusted while the order of The Gospel of Matthew was rejected. Papias's "Mark" was therefore the compiler of The Gospel of Matthew, not the author of The Gospel of Mark. Luke's distain for the order of Matthew's pericopes is explained if he, like Papias's "Elder", who lived nearby, knew that the compiler of The Gospel of Matthew had not written in order. This explains, for the first time, why the non-Marcan material in Luke and The Gospel of Matthew has such good agreement in wording (it is too good to be Q), but so little agreement in order. Synoptic problem specialists have found it puzzling why Luke does not make good use of the birth narrative found in The Gospel of Matthew. This can now be explained by his preference for eyewitness testimony. Unlike most of The Gospel of Matthew, the birth narrative episodes were not witnessed by Peter.

The additional material about Peter in  The Gospel of Matthew also supports the view that Papias's Mark compiled it. Also, Peter's interpreter would likely write for churches that he had helped Peter to found (churches built on the rock of Peter), and these are more likely to be the Syrian Jewish congregations of The Gospel of Matthew, than the mixed Roman congregations of The Gospel of Mark. I am also tempted to wonder whether the varying views of the role of the Jewish Law in The Gospel of Matthew can be explained by the fact that Peter's  opinion changed with time (see Acts 10), and by his tendency to adapt to his audience (Gal 2:11–14).

The elder's Mark "made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard". This does not fit The Gospel of Mark, which is the shortest gospel. On any hypothesis Papias knew of at least two gospels that were longer than The Gospel of Mark.

So, since Papias's Mark likely compiled The Gospel of Matthew, which gospel did Papias's Matthew write? The Gospel of Mark is now the only sensible candidate. It is not clear whether Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ means Aramaic, or just a semitic style of Greek. Either way, those who "interpreted them" may be the aforementioned Mark, and also Luke. Thus Papias may be observing that both The Gospel of Matthew and Luke improve the Greek of The Gospel of Mark.

If, on the other hand, Papias's Mark was supposed by him to be the author of The Gospel of Mark, the text in red font would be a strange digression that has little to do with Mark. The last sentence confirms that Papias was still talking about Mark, since he brings up 1 Peter where Mark is mentioned as an associated of Peter (1 Peter 5:13) (the reference to 1 John was probably to show that John, unlike Mark was an eyewitness (1 John 1:1–3)).

But do we need to conclude that the church fathers misunderstood Papias and misattributed The Gospel of Mark to Mark and The Gospel of Matthew to Matthew, instead of the other way round? Such misattributions are possible, but unlikely (see an article by Gathercole).

It seems more likely, to me, that the compiler of The Gospel of Matthew, and his patron, attributed his gospel to his major source, Matthew, who had contributed about half of his material. That is to say, Matthew's authorship of The Gospel of Mark explains how The Gospel of Matthew was attributed to Matthew. Some compare the gospel writers to students who copy each other's homework, while taking the credit for it. This analogy, while appealing to professors, needs to be abandoned, as we have no evidence of any such plagiarism. Matthew wrote from his own memory, Mark credited Matthew, and Luke acknowledged that he used sources. Most of the early evangelists had Latin names (presumably Roman citizenship gave them needed legal protection) and it was not uncommon for them to use Latin praenomina (Luke/Lucius, John Mark, Titus Timothy). About 25% of men with a Latin praenomen were called "Mark", and in Palestine the ratio is even higher. It was about twice as common as Lucius.

The attribution of The Gospel of Mark to Mark may simply indicated that Matthew used the name "Mark" when in Rome. Followers of Jesus did not use Roman names in Palestine. Richard Bauckham explains, "Few Palestinian Jews would have wanted a name that proclaimed allegiance to Rome" (Bauckham, "Paul and Other Jews with Latin names in the New Testament"). However, when they left Palestine they generally adopted (or already had) Latin names (the possible exceptions are Andronicus and Peter, which are Greek names; and Barnabas and Manaen, which are Semitic). Consider Saul/Paul, Silas/Silvanus, Joseph/Justus, Jesus/Justus, Luke/Lucius, John/Mark, Simeon/Niger, Timothy/Titus, Simeon/Niger, and perhaps Joanna/Junia. In all these cases, except John/Mark and Simeon/Niger, the Latin and non-Latin names have a phonetic similarity. The name pair Matthew/Mark fits this pattern. The hypothesis that Matthew was Mark the evangelist explains the head-rhyme. Matthew would need a non-semitic name when in Rome at about the time of the war, and Mark, which was a common name, would be a likely name for Matthew to use. Some may object that there is no document that explicitly says that Matthew was Mark, but this is weak. We have no document that explicitly equates Silas with Silvanus or Titus with Timothy. Those who had two names were often split into two people by later tradition. This happened to Cephas/Peter, Silas/Silvanus, Titus/Timothy, and Levi/Matthew himself. Similarly, two people with the same name were often conflated. This happened to Marys, Philips, Johns, Jameses, and Clements, among others.

It is likely, then, that we are looking at two Marks. 

1. One may have been a close associate of Peter (compare 1 Peter 5:13) and may have compiled The Gospel of Matthew. It is possible that he was John/Mark, but John/Mark is perhaps more likely to have been the author of The Gospel of John. See Pierson Parker "John and John Mark" JBL (1960), and Dean Furlong, The Identity of John the Evangelist.

2. The other may have been Matthew, the tax collector.

Conclusions

The Gospel of Mark was written by Matthew, the tax collector, probably for the churches in Rome. He may have been known as "Mark" there.

Peter's interpreter, who was also called "Mark", compiled The Gospel of Matthew for congregations of Jewish Christians in Syria that had been founded by Peter. He used The Gospel of Mark, that had been written by Matthew, and probably credited Matthew (he was not a plagiarist). He also used material that he had learned from Peter, which he arranged thematically.

Luke wrote for the Aegean churches. He, and the elder mentioned by nearby Papias, knew that The Gospel of Matthew was not arranged chronologically, but he trusted the sequence in The Gospel of Mark and compiled his gospel accordingly.

The Farrer theory is thus confirmed.

Posted 2024 08 24. Updated 2024 Sept 9 18,19,20,30, Oct 3,5,8,10,22.

The Interpolation of 1 Cor. 14.34–35 and the Reversal of the Name Order of Prisca and Aquila at 1 Cor. 16.19

 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 reads,

Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

It has long been suspected that these verses are an interpolation that was not written by Paul. This is now confirmed by my JSNT article, which is open access here.

The article argues the following points:

1. These verses appear in a different location in western manuscripts and Gordon Fee was right that this shows that they were likely not original.

2. Prisca was originally named before her husband, Aquila, at 1 Cor 16:19, as elsewhere. The names were reversed, probably by the same hand that added 1 Cor 14:34–35. The original name order is witnessed by 2 Tim 4:19.

3. Romans 16:3–5 sends greetings to Prisca and Aquila and the church in their house, but this church was deleted from two manuscripts. It was then re-inserted in a manuscript, but in the wrong place, where it remains in the western manuscripts.

4. Romans 16:17–20a is very likely an interpolation too.

5. The western manuscripts of 1 Corinthians are likely derived from a copy that Fortunatus (1 Cor 16:17) sent to Rome after he and his household had been deposed from leadership of the church of Corinth. The Church of Rome responded by writing First Clement, which urges the Corinthians to reinstate their leaders, and mentions Fortunatus.

In summary, major corruptions to manuscripts of Paul's letters, while not common, tended to concern the question of who should have authority. In particular, they often reduced the authority of women.

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.

Article on early sexist textual variants

 Catholic Biblical Quarterly has now published my article "Early Sexist Textual Variants, and Claims that Prisca, Junia, and Julia Were Men." It is accessible to CBA members and will also be available at the Project Muse website. A version of the article, with some mistakes, such as typos, is given below. Please refer to the CBQ version, when possible.

............................................................................................................................................................................

Early sexist textual variants, and claims that Prisca, Junia, and Julia were men

 

Abstract:

There are numerous textual variants in early New Testament manuscripts that reverse the order of females and males, with the effect of giving precedence to the males. The expectation that males should be named first, the rarity of the name Prisca in the east, and the grammatical ambiguity of the name in Rom 16:3 likely led interpreters to assume that the person referred to there was male. Several textual variants can be explained as attempts to bolster the claim that Prisca, Junia, and Julia were in fact men.

 

Keywords

Misogyny, textual variants, Prisca, Junia, Julia

 

 

 

It is well known that Priscilla is named ahead of her husband, Aquila, at Acts 18:26 in the best manuscripts, and that codex Bezae (D, 05, 5th century)[1] reverses the order of the names. Was this variant created by a scribal slip?[2] Is it an example of a widespread tendency to corrupt verses that give precedence to women over men? To answer these questions Part 1 of this article explores whether New Testament textual variants demoted women disproportionately compared to men. In Part 2 we examine whether copyists made changes that bolstered the claim that prominent women were actually men.

 

Part 1. Textual variants that reduced the standing of one gender relative to the other

 

There are about 62 occasions in the New Testament when a man (or men) are listed before a woman (or women).[3] For example, John 6:42 has τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὴν μητέρα. There are 34 occasions where a women are listed ahead of men. In no case is there significant doubt about the order in the archetype.[4] In all cases I used the same search procedure to look for texts where the males and females are transposed.[5]

 

Of the 62 cases where males appear first, I was able to find only three cases with textual variants that transpose the males and females. Sinaiticus (א, 01, 4^th century) at Acts 2:18 reads: ΕΠΙ ΤΑΣ ΔΟΥΛΑΣ ΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΕΠΙ ΤΟΥΣ ΔΟΥΛΟΥΣ ΜΟΥ. This could be a corrected leap due to the repetition of the word ΕΠΙ.[6] Brothers and sisters are oddly reversed in Bezae at Mark 10:30. Finally, minuscule 69 (15^th century) reverses father and mother at Matt 19:5.

 

Of the 34 cases where females are listed first, there are 9 where the search procedure revealed manuscripts that transpose the females and males (Matt 14:21; 15:38; Mark 3:31; 10:29; Luke 18:29; John 2:12; Acts 17:12; 18:26; Rom 16:15). Thus, transposition demotes males in 5% of cases, but women in 26% of cases.

 

In 18 of the 34 cases the women are given precedence over their sons (or grandsons) and in only one of those 18 cases does she suffer transposition (Mark 3:31).[7] It would appear, therefore, that the scribes did not resent women being given higher honor than their sons. This is not surprising, for even the author of the Pastoral Epistles honors women for childbirth (1 Tim 2:15). There are 16 occasions where women are mentioned before males who are not their sons or grandsons, and in 8 of these occasions (50%) there is a manuscript, found by our search process, that demotes the women by transposition. This is 10 times higher than the rate at which males are demoted. This huge disparity shows that women were demoted by more than mere scribal mechanical slips in most cases, and that the ancients were sensitive to name order.  Space does not allow a detailed discussion, but we will now look briefly at the 9 cases.

 

1.1.1 Matt 14:21 women and children

At Matt 14:21 we read that those who ate were five thousand men, besides women and children. However, Bezae (along with Θ f¹ it) demotes the women, placing them after the children.

 

1.1.2 Matt 15:38 women and children

Similary women are demoted in the feeding of the four thousand in Sinaiticus and Bezae, along with Θ f¹ 579 lat sy^c sa bo.

 

1.1.3 Mark 3:31 his mother and his brothers

The accepted text has ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ but Alexandrinus (A, 02, 5^th century) and other manuscripts reverse Jesus’s mother and brothers.[8] Mary gets only two mentions in Mark’s gospel and this is the first. This may explain why she is demoted here but not elsewhere.

 

1.1.4 Mark 10:29 or mother or father

NA²⁸ has ἢ μητέρα ἢ πατέρα, but several manuscripts, including Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus promote father ahead of mother.[9] It is possible that this change was made under the influence of the parallel passage in Matt 19:29, which has ἢπατέρα ἢ μητέρα.

 

1.1.5 Luke 18:29 wife or brothers or parents

On the strength of Vaticanus (B, 03, 4^th century) and Sinaiticus, the NA²⁸ text has γυναῖκα ἢ ἀδελφοὺς ἢ γονεῖς, but wife changes places with parents in A D K N P W Γ Δ Θ Ψ f^1.13 565^s. 700. 1424. 2542 𝔐 lat sy (sa^ms). The effect of this change is to prioritize males over females and also to respect the seniority of parents.

 

1.1.6 John 2:12 his mother, his brothers, and his disciples

We read καὶ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ, but Washingtonianus (W, 032, this part of the codex is considered 7th century) promotes the disciples to first place, but still allows Jesus’ mother to precede her sons. Minuscule 1241 (12^th century) promotes the disciples and also eliminates the mother.

 

1.1.7 Acts 17:12 Greek women and men

Bezae mentions men before women at Acts 17:12. Metzger points out that “the readjusted order has the effect of lessening any importance given to women”.[10] Furthermore, this manuscript omits the woman Damaris at Acts 17:34.

 

1.1.8 Acts 18:26 Priscilla and Aquila

Bezae and other “western” manuscripts reverse the names.[11] 

Figure 1. The names Priscilla and Aquila reversed in Bezae at Acts 18:26. Cambridge University Library. Accessed from C.NT.R. https://greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm

Bezae also seems to sideline Priscilla by adding text about Aquila without his wife.[12]

 

1.1.9 Rom 16:15 Julia, Nereus

𝔓46    φιλολογον και βηρεα και αουλιαν και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπαν

B 03    φιλολογον και ιουλιαν νηρεα         και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπαν

ℵ 01     φιλολογον και ιουλιαν νηρεα        και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπαν

C 04*  φιλολογον και ιουνιαν νηρεα         και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπαν

A 02    φιλολογον και ιουλιαν νηρεαν       και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπαν

F 10     φιλολογον και ιουνιαν νηρεαν       και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπειδα

G 12    φιλολογον και ιουνιαν νηρεαν       και την αδελφην αυτου και ολυμπειδα

 

The agreed original text of Rom 16:15 is that of B and ℵ shown above.

“Greet Philologus, and Julia, Nereus and his sister, …”

However, Papyrus 46 (𝔓46, ca. 200) has here accumulated three changes. 

Figure 2. Rom 16:14-15 in 𝔓46. University of Michigan Library Papyrology Collection. Accessed from C.NT.R. https://greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm

 

It has reversed the names Julia and Nereus; it has added an extra καὶ between the two names; and it has corrupted the spelling of the names. The initial letter of Ἰουλίαν has been replaced with an alpha and the initial letter of Νηρέα has been replaced with a beta. The copyist has actually detached this beta from Nereus and attached it to the preceding καὶ, indicating his confusion. This corruption of the spelling of the two names has recently been convincingly explained by Royse. A predecessor of 𝔓46 had reversed the names Nereus and Julia and an attempt was made to switch them back to their original order by marking up the exemplar of 𝔓46. Royse writes, “In the exemplar the names were marked for transposition by the use of the letters A and B, as is known from other manuscripts.”[13] The copyist then mistakenly assumed that these two letters were intended to replace the initial letters of the two names (the Sinaiticus image in section 2.1.7 shows this style of correction). Thus the copyist saw the following in his exemplar:

 

Β                    Α

ΝΗΡΕΑ ΚΑΙ ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ

 

and wrote: ΒΗΡΕΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΟΥΛΙΑΝ. A predecessor of 𝔓46 therefore had the words ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτοῦ (Julia(s) and his sister) and this will be discussed in part 2. The addition of the extra καὶ may have been to (awkwardly) avoid the problem of “Julia and his sister”. With the extra καὶ it might be thought that the sister was sister to Philologus. The attempt to revert Julia to her rightful place before Nereus may also have been motivated by a desire to avoid “Julia and his sister”. In any case, we know that a predecessor of 𝔓46 reversed the names Julia and Nereus and this had the effect of at least demoting Julia relative to Nereus.

 

1.2 The other 8 cases where women have precedence over males who are not their sons

 

1.2.1 John 11:5 Martha and her sister and Lazarus

John 11:5 reads ἠγάπα δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν Μάρθαν καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτῆς καὶ τὸν Λάζαρον. We have some, mostly Latin, manuscripts that reverse the order of the names to put Lazarus first (Chrys^s, a, e, aur, c, ff^2*, and ff^2C).[14]

 

1.2.2 Rom 16:15 his sister and Olympas

Augiensis (F, 010) and Boernerianus(G, 012) (both 9th century) have replaced the clearly male ΟΛΥΜΠΑΝ with ΟΛΥΜΠΕΙΔΑ, who has ambiguous gender. Thus they avoid the embarrassment of Paul having greeted a female (the sister of Nereus/Nereas) before a male (Olympas). ΟΛΥΜΠΑΣ is given in the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names(henceforth LGPN) 13 times and only as a male name.[15] It would likely have been recognized as a short form of the very popular male names ΟΛΥΜΠΙΟΔΩΡΟΣ or ΟΛΥΜΠΙΧΟΣ. However, ΟΛΥΜΠΕΙΔΑ is the accusative form of ΟΛΥΜΠΙΣ, which is female five times out of its 46 occurrences in the LGPN, which names about eight times as many men as women. Thus the name ΟΛΥΜΠΕΙΔΑ is statistically almost as likely to be female as male. The unambiguously female ΠΕΡΣΙΔΑ of Rom 16:12 may have given a copyist the idea to write ΟΛΥΜΠΕΙΔΑ in place of ΟΛΥΜΠΑΝ. We should not be surprised to find sexist variants in F and G, since they “are generally suspected of playing down the role of women”.[16]

 

1.2.3 Luke 2:16 Mary and Joseph

While Joseph is not Mary’s son, the verse nevertheless concerns Mary’s role as mother, so we should not expect her to be attacked by scribes here.

 

1.2.4 Philmn 2 to Apphia, our sister, and to Archippus

Scribes did not demote Apphia relative to Archippus, presumably because they could cast Archippus as Apphia’s son.[17]

 

1.2.5 Acts 13:50 But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, and stirred up persecution against Paul…

Here the women are antagonists and this can explain why scribes did not transpose them and the men here.

 

1.2.6 Acts 18:18 

Here Priscilla is named before Aquila, and there are no manuscripts that reverse the names, even though the reversal occurs at 18:26. However, an early sexist copyist who read the words Πρίσκιλλα καὶ Ἀκύλας κειράμενος ἐν Κεγχρεαῖς τὴν κεφαλήν might conclude that Luke had delayed the mention of Aquila to connect Aquila with the following clause, rather than to demote Aquila relative to Priscilla. This interpretation, in which it was Aquila who shaved his head, was adopted by it^h (6th century) and some moderns.[18] Haenchen writes, “Priscilla is named first also in verse 26, in Romans 16.3 and II Tim. 4.19. We need not therefore assume that she is here named first in order that the ‘cutting’ might be attached directly to ‘Aquila’.”[19] Haenchen is right, but the Aquila theory would be particularly attractive for ancients who wanted to explain away the order of the names, as well as those who did not want to believe that Paul could commit such a (Jewish?) act. With Aquila connected to the following clause, it would be unnecessary to reverse the names and it would be cumbersome to do so without greatly changing the meaning.

 

1.2.7 Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 Prisca and Aquila

These texts will be discussed in Part 2.

 

1.3 Rom 16:14 Patroba(s) and Hermas

At Rom 16:14 Paul greets ΑΣΥΓΚΡΙΤΟΝ, ΦΛΕΓΟΝΤΑ, ΕΡΜΗΝ, ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ and ΕΡΜΑΝ, in that order. However, 𝔓46 switches ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ and ΕΡΜΑΝ, placing ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ in last place. Sexism can explain this reversal, for there is no guarantee that the copyist recognized ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ to be a male name.  The names ΑΣΥΓΚΡΙΤΟΝ, ΦΛΕΓΟΝΤΑ, ΕΡΜΗΝ, and ΕΡΜΑΝ were common enough male names, for they are well attested in the LGPN.[20] ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ, on the other hand is unattested in either the female form (ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑ) or the male form (ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΣ) in the database of the LGPN or in the Trismegistos database.[21] Lampe, likewise, searched for occurrences of the name ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΣ in Rome and found none,[22] except the Patrobas in Martial Ep. 2.32, where it alludes to a freedman of Nero called Patrobius.[23] ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΣ could have been a hypocoristic form of ΠΑΤΡΟΒΙΟΣ, but that name is rare.[24] The rarity of the name ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑ(Σ) means that few early copyists would have been confident that it was a male name. It is therefore plausible that the copyist of 𝔓46, or a predecessor, decided to demote ΠΑΤΡΟΒΑΝ to the last position in the verse so that the unambiguous males preceded a possible female.

 

1.4 Did accidental name switching occur often?

In all the New Testament there are about 230 pairs of names in name lists, but rarely are such name pairings reversed. I searched transcriptions of the manuscripts that are possibly dated to before about 400 CE.[25] Other than the reversals noted above, I found just five cases of name reversals. Washingtonianus (W) places Elijah before Moses at Matt 17:4. The original text probably read μίαν καὶ Μωϋσεῖ μίαν καὶ Ἠλίᾳ. It may be a case of parablepsis, in which the copyist, having copied the first μίαν καὶ then looked back at the exemplar and his/her eye skipped to the second μίαν καὶ so he wrote Ἠλίᾳ before discovering his mistake and writing Μωϋσεῖ (Minuscule 1346 omits Moses by that exact eye skip). Then, at Mark 3:18, W promotes Andrew ahead of James and John. This was likely under the influence of Matthew and/or Luke, or to place Andrew next to his brother, Peter. Herod is demoted relative to Pilate at Luke 23:12 in Alexandrinus, and Bezae, as well as in Washingtonianus. There may have been an anti-Jewish or Pro-Roman motive here. John and James are reversed at Luke 8:51 in Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus to harmonize with the usual order of the names. 𝔓45, 𝔓75^vid, and D do the same at Luke 9:28.

 

Name reversals were therefore very rare and, where they do occur they are explicable, but by phenomena that cannot explain the reversal of Julia and Nereus in 𝔓46, Patroba(s) and Hermas in 𝔓46, or the reversal of Priscilla and Aquila at Acts 18:26 in Bezae. Sexism seems to be the only economical explanation in those cases.

 

1.5 Other cases where women are ranked highly relative to men

So far we have looked only at instances where women and men are mentioned consecutively. There are a few other occasions where women are given equal or greater status than men, and we will see that they suffer misogynist in those texts too.

 

1.5.1 John 11:1 Lazarus … Mary and her sister Martha

Martha is defined here as Mary’s sister, rather then as Lazarus’s sister, with the implication that Mary was more important than Lazarus. However, the feminine pronoun αυτης is changed to the masculine αυτου by papyrus 66 (𝔓66*, ca. 200), Alexandrinus, 841, 1009, 1071, L32, and L60, so that Martha is now Lazarus’s sister.[26] These manuscripts belong to various text types, and it is likely that this variant is very early indeed.

 

1.5.2 Phil 4:2-3 Euodia and Syntyche, coworkers of Paul

Phil 4:2-3 strongly implies that the two women leaders, Euodia and Syntyche, were coworkers of Paul. They contended alongside Paul with “the rest of my coworkers”. However, Sinaiticus has ΣΥΝΕΡΓΩΝ ΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΝ ΛΟΙΠΩΝ instead of ΛΟΙΠΩΝ ΣΥΝΕΡΓΩΝ ΜΟΥ. Papyrus 16 (𝔓16^vid, 3^rd/4^th century) probably had the same reading. Thus, the women contended alongside Paul with “my coworkers and the rest”.  Therefore, one or more copyists have avoided the implication that the women were Paul’s coworkers. Metzger put this variant down to “scribal inadvertence” and his judgment would be sound if there were not such a strong pattern of scribal demotion of women.[27] Paul’s use of the word συνεργός also caused offence at 1 Thess 3:2 where copyists objected to Timothy being called συνεργὸν τοῦ θεοῦ.[28]

 

1.5.3 Eph 5:22 and 1 Cor 14:34

Many manuscripts add θποτασσεσθωσαν or υποτασσεσθε to Eph 5:22 so that it explicitly stated that wives should be subordinate to their husbands.[29] Similarly Alexandrinus adds τοις ανδρασιν to 1 Cor 14:34, so that women are instructed to be subordinate to their husbands.[30]

 

1.5.4 Rom 16:7 Andronicus and Junia … were in Christ before I was

At Rom 16:7 Paul greets Andronicus and Junia and implies that they were apostles. It is now almost universally accepted that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ is the accusative of the common (in Rome) female name Junia, because the male equivalent, Junias, is unattested.[31] There is still a little dispute about whether the vocabulary implies that Andronicus and Junia were prominent apostles or were merely well known to the apostles.[32] However, the context and ancient interpretation support the former.[33]

 

At the end of Rom 16:7 𝔓46 reads ὃς καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγονεν, whereas the other manuscripts read οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦγέγοναν. Thus, Paul probably wrote that both Andronicus and Junia were in Christ before he was, but 𝔓46 suggests that only Andronicus (who is mentioned first) was the early convert. Royse writes, “Perhaps we have here a reluctance to include a woman among those who were “in Christ” before Paul.”[34] This therefore appears to be another example of the reluctance of early copyists to give precedence to women relative to men. This variant must have been early since 𝔓46, our earliest copy of Paul’s letters, is dated to about 200 CE. 

𝔓46 also has ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ instead of ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ in this verse. This is a small change to one letter and may have been an innocent mistake that arose because the copyist was familiar with the common name Julia, but not with the name Junia, which was rare in the east.

 

Figure 3. Rom 16:7 in 𝔓46. University of Michigan Library Papyrology Collection. Accessed from C.NT.R. https://greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm

 

It may be no coincidence that the variant at the end of 16:7 occurs in the only early manuscript that has changed Junia into Julia, which was a well known Latin female name. Other copyists, seeing ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ in their exemplars, may not have realized that she was a woman and therefore created no textual variants. In part 2 we present more substantive arguments that the ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ, ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and  ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ of Rom 16:3, 7, 15 were (incorrectly) considered men in the early days of the transmission of our texts.

 

The article is included before συναιχμαλώτους in 𝔓46 and Vaticanus. Bart Ehrman has suggested that this was added to make it possible to understand Andronicus and Junia as being different from the “fellow prisoners who are noteworthy among the apostles”.[35]

 

 

Part 2. Textual variants that made women into men

 

2.1 Prisca

We have seen that, for whatever reason, early interpreters assumed that those named first should be men. Since ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ in Rom 16:3 is named before Aquila (and indeed before all others greeted in this letter), it seems likely that early hearers and readers of this text would take the name to be the accusative of the (hypothetical) male name ΠΡΙΣΚΑΣ, rather than the female name ΠΡΙΣΚΑ.

 

2.1.1 Name frequency

The Trismegistos People database consists of over half a million occurrences of names in Egypt between the eighth century BC and the eighth century CE.[36]  These include 33120 different names, of which only 2062 are Latin names. The Latin female name “Prisca” is attested only eleven times in the database.[37] All eleven are datable and none occur before 168CE. Similarly, the eight volumes of the LGPN contain only 14 instances of the name and none of these are sure to predate the second century. It is therefore doubtful that readers of Rom 16:3 in the east would have recognized ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ as a female name, especially in the early decades of the church, when Latin names were less common there. They would likely assume that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ referred to a ΠΡΙΣΚΑΣ, which they might take to be a Semitic or Latin name unknown to them, or they might take it to be a transliteration of the Latin name Priscus, as discussed in section 2.1.6 below. The Trismegistos database has 228 entries for Priscus, covering the range between the first century BC and the 6^thcentury CE.[38] The name Priscus accounts for 0.066% of entries datable to the second century CE (1 in 1500), so it would likely have been known to interpreters of Rom 16:3 at that time.

 

It might be objected that copyists would be able to deduce from 1 Cor 16:19, where ΠΡΙΣΚΑ occurs (in the nominative) in B and א, that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ of Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 is female. However, 1 Cor 16:19 reads ΠΡΙΣΚΑΣΥΝ (Prisca with) and hearers of this text might have had difficulty distinguishing it from ΠΡΙΣΚΑΣΣΥΝ (Priscas with) since the two sigmas could run together. Thus, while the written text of 1 Cor 10:19 (in its original form) makes Prisca unambiguously female, hearers of the letter may not always have picked up on this.

 

2.1.2 Why does ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ at Rom 16:3 not suffer from name reversal in the Greek manuscripts?

We saw in Part 1 that when women are listed before men (who are not their sons) they are nearly always demoted in at least one early manuscript. The most surprising exception is Prisca in Rom 16:3, since she and Aquila are so highly honored by Paul there, and because Ambrosiaster, writing in Latin, did reverse the order of the names.[39] Also, we might expect copyists to object to Prisca being described as Paul’s co-worker (see section 1.5.2 above). If the copyists assumed that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ was male, this would explain why they did not demote her relative to Aquila or relative to Paul.

 

2.1.3 Why did the author of 2 Timothy place ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ before Aquila?

The author of the Pastoral Epistles restricts women to a subordinate role (1 Tim 2:11-15; 4:7; 5:11-14; 2 Tim 3:6; Tit 2:3-5) and points out that Adam preceded Eve (1 Tim 2:13). In keeping with this, 2 Tim 4:21 names four greeters and gives the female name (Claudia) last. It therefore comes as a surprise that at 2 Tim 4:19 Prisca is named before her husband, Aquila. Thus Keener writes:

 

It is also noteworthy that 2 Timothy 4:19 preserves this recognition of status; those who think that the Pastoral Epistles were written by a post-Pauline chauvinist may have more trouble demonstrating the author’s chauvinism in texts not specifically related to the situation in Ephesus and Crete (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:15; 4:19, 21).[40]

 

However, the data are in tension only if we suppose that the author of the Pastoral Epistles knew that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ was a woman’s name. He could have taken the phrase “ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ ΚΑΙ ΑΚΥΛΑΝ” from Rom 16:3 without realizing that he was giving pride of place to a woman.[41]

 

2.1.4 Prisca in 𝔓46 at 1 Cor 16:19

𝔓46 probably originated in Egypt, where the name Prisca was very rare. We have seen above that 𝔓46 has textual variants that reduce the standing of women at Rom 16:7; Rom 16:15; 1 Cor 11:9; and Eph 5:24. At 1 Cor 16:19 it has the masculine name ΠΡΕΙΣΚΑΣ.

 

 

Figure 4. ΠΡΕΙΣΚΑΣ in 𝔓46 at 1 Cor 16:19. University of Michigan Library Papyrology Collection. Accessed from C.NT.R. https://greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm

Center for New Testament Restoration https://greekcntr.org/manuscripts.htm

 

By merely adding a sigma to the name, a copyist has affirmed the masculine gender of Priscas not only at 1 Cor 16:19, but also at Rom 16:3-5, and 2 Tim 4:19.[42] This may have been a deliberate, sexist, alteration of the text. More generously, it is possible that a copyist was expecting or hoping to find the name to be masculine at 1 Cor 16:19 and was influenced to do so by the sigma that starts the following word (σὺν). It is, in any case, evidence that there was ignorance of the name Prisca. However the variant came about, it would have contributed to the belief that Aquila had a male companion called Priscas/Priscus.[43]

 

2.1.5 Misidentification of Prisca and Aquila at 2 Tim 4:19

We have other evidence that copyists did not automatically equate ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ with Priscilla. Concerning 2 Tim 4:19, Metzger wrote:

 

After Ἀκύλαν two minuscules (181 and 460, of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries respectively) insert Λέκτραν τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ Σιμαίαν (Σημαίαν 460) καὶ Ζήνωνα τοῦ υἱοὺς αὐτοῦ. Since, according to the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (§  2), these are the names of the wife and the children of Onesiphorus, the gloss was evidently written first in the margin and later introduced into the text at the wrong place (giving Aquila two wives!).[44]

 

Unless the copyist was unusually comfortable with polygamy, it would seem that he/she did not view ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ as Paul’s wife. He may have considered ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ to be a man.[45]

 

2.1.6 Latin male names in –us and -ius transliterated as Greek first declension

ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ in Rom 16:3 (and in 2 Tim 4:19), and ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ could be first declension masculine or first declension feminine.[46] It is well known that they could, in theory, represent the male names ΠΡΙΣΚΑΣ, ΙΟΥΝΙΑΣ, and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΣ, if such names existed (which they did not, as far as we know). However, it has been overlooked that the names could have been interpreted as Latin names in –us and –ius (Priscus, Junius, and Julius). Tal Ilan, known for her expertise in Ancient Jewish names, points out that Latin names in –us (or –ius) were sometimes transliterated into Greek as first declension masculine names in –ας (or –ιας). Her lexicon of Jewish names in the western Diaspora gives 509 cases where a Latin name in –us or –ius is transliterated into Greek script (with the ending sufficiently intact).[47] Eleven of these 509 men (2%) are recorded in the Greek masculine first declension.[48] The phenomenon seems to have been most common in the east. All the cases are in Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Asia, even though these regions account for only about a quarter of the Latin male names in Ilan’s volume.

                       

Table 1. Male Latin names in Greek first declension

 

However, there are no cases in Palestine, where Paul was raised and where Junia probably resided.[49] Intriguingly, two of the cases are very close to Tarsus, where Paul was born, though these cases are probably much later than Paul.[50] It is unlikely that Paul or his scribes had the habit of converting Latin names in –us and -ius into Greek first declension, since we know that they did not do so in the cases of Mark, Gaius, Lucius, Titus, Paul, Ampliatus, Rufus, Silvanus, Fortunatus, Quartus, Urbanus, and Tertius. Nor is the phenomenon known in any of the other New Testament writings. However, we need not suppose that these facts deterred ancient interpreters if they showed the same persistence as many scholars of the twentieth century who made Junia into a man. Determined ancient interpreters could therefore have supposed that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ and ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ were Paul’s way of referring to a Priscus, Junius, and Julius.

 

2.1.7 Priscus in Sinaiticus (א) and Expositio Capitum Actuum Apostolorum

Sinaiticus was likely written in Egypt or Caesarea. It has an interesting variant at 1 Cor 1:14, that reads ΠΡΙΣΚΟΝ (Priscus), where all other manuscripts have ΚΡΙΣΠΟΝ (Crispus). This variant was not corrected in the original scriptorium, so was likely in the Vorlage. The corrector, known as Ca, working about two centuries after the manuscript was produced, marked it up for correction back to ΚΡΙΣΠΟΝ.[51]

Figure 5. ΠΡΙΣΚΟΝ in Sinaiticus 1 Cor 1:14, from http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

 

Figure 5, above, shows the text. The abbreviated suffix ΟΝ at the end of the line in the image below is faint but undeniable.[52]

 

Importantly, Sinaiticus is not the only witness to the replacement of Crispus by Priscus. An early summary of the Acts of the Apostles, known as “εκθεσις κεφαλαιων των πραξεων” confirms the phenomenon. This text, known also as “Expositio Capitum Actuum Apostolorum” and “An Exposition of the Chapters of the Acts of the Apostles” is attributed to Pamphilius, who lived in Beirut, Alexandria, and Caesarea, and died in 309. The passage of interest is shown in the image below

 

Figure 6 Coislin 25. Biblitheque National de France. Online from Gallica:

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b11000126s/f6.item.zoom

 

ἐν ᾦ περὶ πρίσκου ἀρχισυναγωγου πιστεύσαντος σὺν ἑτέροις τισὶν καὶ βαπτισθέντος

Also of Priscus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, who believed with certain others and was baptized.

 

This passage clearly refers to the Crispus of Acts 18:8, since it occurs between summaries of Acts 18:2 and Acts 18:12-17. It is interesting that this text tells us that the synagogue ruler was baptized, but Acts does not say so. Only 1 Cor 1:14 tells us that Crispus was baptized. This may be an indication that the author has imported information from 1 Corinthians and that Crispus had been replaced by Priscus in the author’s text of 1 Cor 1:14, as well as Acts 18:8. In any case, we have evidence here of Crispus being replaced by Priscus in Acts, and this is the same alteration that we see in Sinaiticus at 1 Cor 1:14.

 

It is very unlikely that these variants occurred by accident. The metathesis (switching of Κ and Π) is unusually long-range, since there are three intervening letters (ΡΙΣ). I have yet to find any case of metathesis that is as long-range. Also, it is unimaginable that the same rare mistake should happen twice. Unless a better explanation can be found, we should conclude that we are looking at a sexist lie. Someone who wanted to claim that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ of Rom 16:3 was a man was troubled to find that 1 Corinthians and Acts 18 contain only female versions of the name, so he manufactured a male version of the name in both texts by changing Crispus to Priscus. Having done so, he could claim that the person greeted by Paul before all others in Romans was not Aquila’s wife, Priscilla, but the male synagogue ruler whom Paul had baptized. It has been shown above that interpreters in the east could have considered ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ to be Tertius’s way of rendering the Latin name Priscus into Greek.

 

2.1.8 Why is ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ not changed to Priscilla in the early manuscripts?

Kurek-Chomycz points out that many manuscripts, including Ephraemi Rescriptus (C, 04, 5^th century), have Priscilla instead of Prisca at 1 Cor 16:19.[53] She judges that this variant must have been “a very early one”. It demands an explanation since Priscilla in Acts is never changed to Prisca, and Prisca is never changed to Priscilla at 2 Tim 4:19 untill the ninth century. At Rom 16:3 Prisca is not changed to Priscilla until the tenth century as far as we know.

 

Kurek-Chomycz suggests, plausibly, that the use of the diminutive, Priscilla, by copyists at 1 Cor 16:19, may have been a put-down.[54] However, she struggles to explain why early copyists did not make the same change to Prisca at Rom 16:3 or 2 Tim 4:19. A reasonable explanation is that they took ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ at Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 to be a man and therefore did not equate her with Priscilla or feel the need to put her down. It may be no coincidence that the name Prisca created early textual variants only in the text where it is explicitly female (1 Cor 16:19). Names in –ΙΛΛΑ(Σ) were numerous in the east and were almost always female,[55] so if copyists had replaced ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ in Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 with “ΠΡΙΣΚΙΛΛΑΝ” they would have implied to all hearers of these letters that Paul named a woman ahead of a man. In the early manuscripts the female Priscilla replaces Prisca only where Prisca is already unambiguously female.

 

Not only is the “Priscilla” variant at 1 Cor 16:19 a potential put-down, it will also have had the effect of weakening the case for ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ in Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 being female. With Priscilla in 1 Cor 16:19 an early interpreter could propose that “Priscilla, Aquila’s wife known also from Acts, was not the same person as the ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ of Rom 16:3, for Paul uses different names for the two people, and he names ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ before Aquila, but Priscilla after him. The similarity between the two names is explicable if the two people were relatives.”

 

The ΠΡΙΣΚΙΛΛΑΝ variant at Rom 16:3 and 2 Tim 4:19 appears in various Greek manuscripts from the tenth century,[56]

 

2.1.9 The omission of Prisca and Persis by Alexandrinus

Omissions in Alexandrinus are not uncommon in 1 Corinthians and Romans,[57]  but it is worth noting that they eliminate women disproportionately. Alexandrinus omits Prisca and Aquila 1 Cor 16:19. Alexandrinus, along with F, G and 796 omit Persis at Rom 16:12b.[58] Both omissions could have originated by parablepsis, but we may wonder whether the omission of men would have been corrected sooner. No omissions of males in Rom 16 occur in Greek manuscripts prior to the tenth century.[59] The effect of the omission of 1 Cor 16:19 would be to weaken the case for a female ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ at Rom 16:3.

 

2.1.10 Priscus in Jerome’s name list

Jerome compiled his Liber Interpretationis Hebraicorum Nominum in 388 CE, immediately after spending three years in Egypt. It gives Prisca’s name in masculine form (Priscus) in the sections on Romans and 2 Timothy, but not in the section on 1 Corinthians. This may be an indication that there was indeed a determination to see the name as masculine in these two texts where its gender is grammatically ambiguous.

 

Figure 7 Images showing Priscus in our earliest copy (9^th century).

Liber interpretationis hebraicorum nominum -BSB Clm 6228 Pages 80, 85.

https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00064012?page=80,81

 

2.2 Junias, Priscas, and Euodios in lists of the seventy apostles

 

A list of apostles, attributed to Epiphanius famously makes both Junia and Prisca male.[60] It also includes the masculine name Euodus/Euodius.

 

Εὔοδος, [οὗ καὶ αὐτοῦ ὁ Παῦλος μέμνηται], πρῶτος ἐπίσκοπος Ἀντιοχείας μετὰ Πέτρον τὸν κορυφαῖον ἐγένετο.[61]

 

The list of apostles attributed to Dorotheus has a very similar statement,[62] and one of its witnesses is shown below.

 

Figure 8 Coislin 224 (11^th century), from Bibliotheque National de France https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10723418r/f252.item.zoom

 

These texts refer to the tradition, which we find in Eusebius, that Euodius was the bishop of Antioch.[63] The originator(s) of the texts believed that this Euodius was mentioned by Paul. We know this, not only because he/they said so, but also because all the other names in the lists are from the New Testament. We therefore have evidence that the author equated the Euodia of Phil 4:2 with the (male) bishop of Antioch. Thus Euodia, a woman, was recast as a man. Euodus/Euodius also appears in two other lists of the apostles, and one other has Junias.[64]

 

The dates of composition of these lists are uncertain.[65] However, they illustrate the sporadic tendency to make Paul’s female coworkers into men. We can also conclude that the author(s) was not deterred by the fact that Εὔοδος is second declension, whereas ΕΥΟΔΙΑΝ, as the name appears in the accusative in Phil 4:3, is first declension. We should therefore not suppose that those who changed the gender of Paul’s female companions were grammatical purists.

 

2.3 Attempts to make ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ into men

 

2.3.1  “ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and his sister” in 𝔓46

Section 1.1.9 showed that the words ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΑΔΕΛΦΗΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ stood in a predessesor of 𝔓46 at Rom 16:15. This appears to claim that ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ was male. The name ΙΟΥΛΙΑΣ seems to be unattested. However, interpreters could have considered ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ to be Paul’s rendering of the very common name Julius (see section 2.1.6 above), or of Julianus. In any case, the apparently male ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ at Rom 16:15 in the predecessor of 𝔓46 would likely have cast doubt on the gender of the ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ at Rom 16:7 in the same manuscript. Thus, by switching Julia and Nereus at 16:15 a copyist not only demoted Julia; he also potentially turned the female apostle at 16:7 into a man by implying that ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ was masculine in Paul’s usage. 

 

2.3.2 Julius of Acts 27:1, 3

Julius, the male version of the name Julia, appears twice in the New Testament, at Acts 27:1, 3. It is the name of the centurion who saved Paul (Acts 27:43). Textual variants involving names are not common, so it is significant that Julius has been amended in both verses where he appears.

 

At Acts 27:3 Alexandrinus (A) reads ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝΟΣ instead of ΙΟΥΛΙΟΣ. This variant could have been an attempt to equate the ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ of Rom 16:15 with the (male) Julius of Acts, on the theory that ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ represented Paul’s short form of the name Julianus.

 

At Acts 27:1 Sinaiticus reads ΙΟΥΛΙΩ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙ ΙΟΥΛΙΩ instead of just ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙ ΙΟΥΛΙΩ. As it stands the text in Sinaiticus makes no sense, but it is possible that it is an echo of an earlier variant that may have read ΙΟΥΛΙΩ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙ ΙΟΥΛΙΑ. Such a variant would have been making the claim that the male name Julius could be rendered into Greek as ΙΟΥΛΙΑΣ (which would be ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ in the accusative and ΙΟΥΛΙΑ in the dative). It might easily have been corrected to ΙΟΥΛΙΩ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙ ΙΟΥΛΙΩ by a later unconvinced copyist.

 

2.3.3 Rom 16:15 in Ephraemi Rescriptus

Ephraemi Rescriptus (C*) has ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ instead of ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ. This change requires explanation since Junia was a much rarer name than Julia. While common in Rome, the female name Junia was very rare in the east.[66] It is attested only once in Egypt (in 150 CE).[67] Therefore early interpreters in the east would probably have taken ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ to be a man, and this could explain why C*, along with F and G, substitutes ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ for ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ in Rom 16:15. The embarrassment of having a woman (Julia) named before a man (Nereus) was removed by replacing her name with one considered male (ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ). Furthermore, the repetition of the name ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ serves to persuade the audience that it does not represent a rare (in the east) female name. A rational audience might well conclude that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ was Paul’s way of writing the name Junius, which was much more common, being attested 37 times in Egypt, starting in the first century. Thus by changing a Λ to a Ν, a copyist makes both Julia and Junia into probable males.  Junius was a Latin nomen, and Νηρευς was often used as a cognomen, so those hearing the reading of C*, F or G “Ιουνιαν Νηρεα(ν)” could interpret them as belonging to the same man, Junius Nereus, with the cognomen being added to distinguish him from the Junius mentioned at Rom 16:7.

 

2.3.4 Julius at Rom 16:7 

There is one Vulgate manuscript, codex Reginensis, that has Iulium (Julius) at Rom 16:7

                    

Figure 9 Reginensis, from Vatican Library DigiVatLib https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.9

 

2.4 Variants that claimed that Paul’s style was to use the –ΑΝ ending for accusative male names.

 

To promote the view that Πρισκαν, Ιουνιαν, or Ιουλιαν were Paul’s way of rendering the names Priscus, Junius or Julius, an early interpreter would want to show an example where Paul (or Tertius) shows an odd preference for using the –αν ending for a clearly masculine name.

 

2.4.1 ΝΗΡΕΑΝ in Alexandrinus

Alexandrinus (A), with F and G, has ΝΗΡΕΑΝ instead of ΝΗΡΕΑ. The name Νηρευς is a common enough male name, being attested 37 times in the LGPN, with about half of these attestations occurring in the second century. In Pompei it is given in Latin script as Nereus.[68] The accusative is Νηρεα.[69] The accusative form Νηρεαν is indeed odd, since there is no nominative form Νηρεας or Νηρεα (as far as I know). The addition of the Ν to ΝΗΡΕΑ could have promoted the thought, “since Paul rendered Nereus as ΝΗΡΕΑΝ, he could have rendered Julius as ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ, Junius as ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ, and Priscus as ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ.

 

2.4.2 Amplias at Rom 16:8

Many twentieth century commentators suggested that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ was a diminutive form of the Latin name Junianus. Diminutive names abound in the New Testament among the Greek names (Antipas, Apollos, Artemas, Demas, Epaphras, Hermas, Sopater, Olympas, Patrobas, Zenas) and among the female Latin names (Priscilla and Drusilla). Males with Latin names are often referred to in the New Testament by their praenomina when an informal name was appropriate (Gaius, Lucius, Marcus, Publius, Titus), and this may explain why none of the 35 male Latin nomina and cognomina are given in a diminutive or shortened form. It is therefore unlikely that Paul would use a diminutive form of Junianus instead of using his praenomen. Furthermore, an abbreviated form of Junianus would more likely be ΙΟΥΝΑΣ than ΙΟΥΝΙΑΣ, as Thorley explains:

 

In forming hypocoristics the ending –ᾶς is added to a consonant, and when there is a final -ι  … this is omitted … . From a form such as Junianus (the supposed origin of Ἰουνιᾶς) one would therefore expect Ἰουνᾶς not Ἰουνιᾶς. This assumption is much strengthened by the fact that the very similar name Ἰουλᾶς does actually occur in the papyri, and this is presumably a hypocoristic for Julianus: there is certainly no Latin name Julanus[70]

 

Having searched  Palmer, Chantraine, and Petersen, Thorley finds only two exceptions.[71] It is surely no coincidence that one of these two exceptions was created by a copyist of Romans immediately after he wrote Junia’s name. The earliest manuscripts read the name ΑΜΠΛΙΑΤΟΝ at Rom 16:8, but many others, starting in the sixth century, read ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ.[72] These include Claromontanus (D), as well as Alexandrian witnesses, so the ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ variant was probably very early. The name Ampliatus is a common Latin name. It is attested about 80 times in CIL 6:7.[73] However, the same source has not a single Amplias, and I have been unable to find one elsewhere. Thorley remarks that the evidence for Amplias being a hypocoristic form of Ampliatus “looks very slender”. Why, then, did an early copyist replace ΑΜΠΛΙΑΤΟΝ with ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ? He did it, I suggest, to make it plausible that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ and perhaps ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ were male names in Paul’s usage. Hearers of Rom 16:7 in the early centuries of the church might feel that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ was not a short form of a male name, because Paul (and others) did not tend to abbreviate Latin male names and because of its –ΙΑΝ ending, but their concern would be relieved when they heard ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ ΤΟΝ ΑΓΑΠΗΤΟΝ in the next verse, because ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ is clearly masculine because of the definite article that follows. This variant would allow interpreters to argue, “since Paul abbreviated the Latin name Ampliatus to Amplias, he might also have abbreviated Junianus to Junias, and Julianus to Julias.” The ΑΜΠΛΙΑΝ variant seems engineered to cast doubt on the gender of Junia and Julia. Amplias in Rom 16:8 provides the hearer with an example of how Paul abbreviated male Latin names, and thereby persuades the hearer that Junia (16:7) and Julia (16:15) could have been men.

 

2.5 Other sex changes

 

We have the following examples of gender reassignment, in addition to the cases of Euodia, Prisca, Junia, and Julia discussed above.

 

2.5.1 Nympha

In the text of Vaticanus, among others, Col 4:15 sends greetings to “Nympha and the church in her house” (Νύμφαν καὶτὴμ κατ᾽ οἶκον αὐτῆς ἐκκλησίαν). Most other manuscripts, however, have αυτων (his) or αυτου (their) instead of αυτης (her). It is not certain which text is original. It is a strong possiblity that transmitters of the text were uncomfortable with the idea that a woman led a house church, so they took ΝΥΜΦΑΝ to be the accusative of the male name Νυμφᾶς.

 

2.5.2 Syntyche

Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350-428) wrote that some people said that Syntyche was Euodia’s husband.[74]

 

3 Statistics and Conclusions

 

3.1 Textual variants concerning Latin names in the New Testament

 

There are 45 Latin names in the New Testament, and five of these belong to women (Prisca/Priscilla, Junia, Julia, Drusilla, and Claudia).  Of these, only the first three may have been unsettling for early copyists who believed that women should not have positions of leadership in the church. Drusilla (Acts 24:24) was not a believer and is named after her husband. Claudia appears only in 2 Tim 4:21, where she is one of four greeters, and is given the least prominent position, behind three men. Prisca, Junia, and Julia, however, may have posed problems for misogynists, and for those who wanted to reconcile Paul’s words with passages such as 1 Tim 2:11-15.

 

The names Prisca/Priscilla, Junia, or Julia/Julius occur 11 times in the New Testament and the names themselves are involved in 10 textual variants in our earliest manuscipts.[75] The other 42 Latin names occur 345 times but yield only a further 7 textual variants in these manuscripts.[76] There is only a little subjectivity in decisions about what to classify as a relevant variant, so the conclusion is clear and astonishing: the number of textual variants involving the names Prisca/Priscilla, Junia, and Julia, is comparable to the number involving the other 42 Latin names combined! This demands an explanation. Clearly there was a tendency at play. Even if each variant, taken in isolation, could have been a mere scribal slip, the statistics prove that the vast majority of them were not.[77]

 

3.2 Textual variants concerning all names in Rom 16

 

A search of the earliest manuscripts and of NA²⁸ reveals eight scribal alterations to the names. Remarkably, six of these serve the misogynist cause and have been discussed above. The two exceptions are explicable and are the substitution of ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ by ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ at 16:7 and the usual ΜΑΡΙΑΝ/ΜΑΡΙΑΜ uncertainty at 16:6. It cannot be said that accidental scribal slips affecting the names in Romans 16 are numerous.

 

3.3 Conclusions

 

It should not be doubted that most copyists reproduced their exemplars faithfully most of the time, and we have found no evidence that they resented females having major roles as such. However, they often corrected texts that gave women precedence over men who were not their sons. The relative lack of assaults on Junia and the Prisca of Rom 16:3 suggest that they may have been considered male in the early decades when the misogynist textual variants arose. This is supported by the presence of masculine versions of the name Prisca at 1 Cor 16:19 in 𝔓46, at 1 Cor 1:14 in Sinaiticus, and in Expositio Capitum Actuum Apostolorum. The list of disciples attributed to Epiphanius confirms that Prisca(s) and Junia(s) were thought by some to be male. The replacement of Julia with Junia(s) by C is explicable if a scribe considered Junia to be male. The reversal of the names Julia and Nereus in a predecessor of 𝔓46 at Rom 16:15 created a text that seemed to claim that Julia(s) was male, and textual variants in Sinaiticus (Acts 27:1) and Alexandrinus (Acts 27:3) could well have arisen from this same theory. The changes to the names Nereus and Ampliatus seem designed to show that Paul had the habit of ending male accusative names with –ΑΝ. The variants affecting our three names in our five oldest manuscripts of Paul’s letters are summarized below. There are two likely misogynist variants in each of these manuscripts, except Vaticanus, which was largely innocent also in Part 1.

 

Table 2. Masculinizing variants

 

Finally, it has been shown using three statistical analyses that the variants did not arise by scribal slips. Firstly, we have seen that our three women account for more than half of the variants affecting the 45 Latin names in the New Testament. Secondly, we saw that transpositions tend to demote women, not men, and that purely accidental name reversals are very rare. Thirdly, we saw that misogyny can explain nearly all the variants affecting names in Romans 16.

 

It may have been simple lack of familiarity with Latin names that first led interpreters in the east to assume that ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ were men. Once their maleness becomes established in someone’s mind, the idea is not easily overturned by new evidence. This kind of inertia is illustrated by the history of Junia’s maleness in the scholarship of recent decades. Many persisted in the view that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ was a man, even after it was pointed out that there was no such male name. They ignored the statistics and resorted to unlikely onomastic theories such as the idea that the name was a short form of Junianus.[78] The cherished belief in a male ΠΡΙΣΚΑΝ and ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝ would have been challenged by a careful reading of 1 Cor 16:19, and by Acts, and by increasing contact with Latin communities. We have seen how copyists made determined, but ultimately unsuccessful, defenses of the male theories. Reason seems to have largely prevailed by the third century, at least among most of the educated, for most commentators from Origen onwards, accepted that Prisca and Junia were women.[79] We have seen that our earliest copy of Rom 16, 𝔓46, dated to about 200 CE, had at least one misogynist variant already in its exemplar. Some of the variants could, I suppose, have arisen when a (biased) copyist assumed his exemplar was in error. Many, however, seem too contrived and we have to conclude that there was intent to deceive, at least in those cases. 

 

The widespread sexism of early copyists raises important issues. Firstly it increases the probability that there were other early misogynist corruptions of Paul’s letters that have left little text critical evidence. We can think of the forging of whole letters such as 1 Timothy, and the likely interpolation of 1 Cor 14:34-35. Perhaps someone forged a note in the margin of the autograph of 1 Corinthians, imitating the handwriting of the existing text. This would better explain why we have no manuscripts that lack these two verses.[80]

 

Secondly, it seems reasonable to suppose that this same sexism influenced which texts were selected to be read in the churches and to be copied. When assessing the role of women in the early church, we cannot assume that the texts that have survived the second century are representative of what was written before.

 

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[1] All dates of New Testament manuscripts in this article are those given by NA²⁸ and the NT.V.M.R. website of the Institute Für Neutestamentliche Textforschung. <http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/manuscript-workspace> accessed March, 2020.

[2] Jeffry W. Childers and L. Curt Niccum suggest an accidental transposition (““Anti-Feminist” Tendency in the “Western” Text of Acts?” in Essays on Women in Earliest Christianity, Vol. 1, Ed. Carroll D. Osburn (Eugene: College Press, 1993) 469-92, esp. 486).

[3] Matt 2:13, 14, 20, 21; 10:37; 12:50; 15:4, 4, 5; 18:25; 19:4, 5, 10, 19, 29, 29; Mark 3:35; 5:40; 7:10, 10, 11, 12; 10:6, 7, 19, 29, 30; Luke 2:33, 48; 8:51; 14:26, 26; 18:20; John 6:42; Acts 1:14; 2:17, 18; 5:14; 8:3, 12; 9:2; 17:4, 34; 18:2; 21:5; 22:4; 24:24, 25:13, 23; 26:30; Rom 16:7, 13, 15; 1 Cor 7:15; 16:19; Gal 3:28; Eph 5:31; 6:2; 2 Tim 4:21; Phlmn 1:2; James 2:15; Rev 18:23.

[4] Throughout I follow NA28, which favors the majority of the best and earliest manuscripts.

[5] I searched NA²⁸, and the C.NT.R website, and the collation function of the NT.V.M.R. website. My purpose here was not to search as many manuscripts as possible, but to follow a defined search procedure, without selection bias, to be impartial towards each gender. The eleventh century minuscule 945, reads Πρίσκιλλα καὶ Ἀκύλας at 1 Cor 16:19, should not be included in the statistics, though it is given in Reuben Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines Against Codex Vaticanus: 1 Corinthians (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003) 285, 456.

[6] Corrected leaps are suspected in Sinaiticus. See Gregory Scott Paulson, “Scribal habits in Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, Bezae, and Washingtonianus in the Gospel of Matthew” (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013) 125.

[7] Matt 12:46, 47, 48, 49; 13:55; 18:25; 19:29 Mark 3:33, 34; 10:30; Luke 8:19, 20, 21; 14:26; Acts 1:14; 21:5.

[8] NA²⁸ cites A K sy^s Γ f¹³ 28 700 𝔐 sy^h.

[9] The NT.V.M.R. website also cites 1, 3, 18, 35, 44, 69, 124, 209, 1770, 2886.

[10] Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994) 403. See also Ben Witherington III, “Anti-Feminist Tendencies of the ‘Western’ Text in Acts,” JBL 103 (1984), 82-84. Ann Graham Brock, “Appeasement, Authority, and the Role of Women in the D-Text of Acts” in The Book of Acts as Church History, eds Tobias Nicklas, Michael Tilly (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003) 205-224. Also useful is Ebojo, “Sex, Scribes, and Scriptures,” Journal of Biblical Text Research 36 (2015) 367-94 esp. 375. He also finds sexist variants in passages not discussed in this article (Mark 15:41 C Δ 579 n; Acts 17:4 D; 1 Cor 11:9 𝔓46; Gal 3:28 𝔓46 אA; Eph 5:24 𝔓46).

[11] NA²⁸ lists D L Ψ 323. 614. 945. 1175. 1241. 1505. 1739 𝔐 gig sy sa^mss. Witherington III, “Anti-Feminist Tendencies,” (1984) 82-84. Edgar Battad Ebojo, “Sex, Scribes, and Scriptures,” (2015) 377-8.

[12] For an overly cautious assessment see Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, “Is There an “Anti-Priscan” Tendency in the Manuscripts? Some textual Problems with Prisca and Aquila,” JBL 125 (2006) 107-128.

[13] Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (New Testament Tools Studies and Documents 36; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 333-4.

[14] This collection of manuscripts is cited by Elizabeth Schrader, “Was Martha of Bethany added to the fourth gospel in the second century,” HTR 110 (2017) 360-92.

[15] Peter M. Fraser, Elaine Matthews, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names Vols I, IIA, IIIA, IIIB, IV, VA, VB, VC (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987-). All except Vol. VC are online at <http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk> accessed March, 2020. This database contains over 388,162 people in the Aegean regions and also in central Asia Minor, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Sicily, and Magna Graecia.

[16] Kurek-Chomycz, “Prisca and Aquila,” 113.

[17] Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote that Paul “observes the social hierarchy in the order of address, Archippus being the son of Philemon and Apphia”. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IX: Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Ed Peter Gorday (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2000) 310.

[18] F. Overbeck, Kurze Erklärung der Apostelgeschichte (Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Neuen Testament; Leipzig: W.M.L. de Wette, 1870) 297. E. Preuschen, Apostelgeschichte (HNT IV/1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1912) 113. Ehrhardt, The Acts of the Apostles (Manchester: MUP, 1969) 100.

[19] Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, Tr. Bernard Noble and Gerald Shinn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971) 542 n2.

[20]  The number of attestations of the names in LGPN is as follows. ΑΣΥΓΚΡΙΤΟΣ 11, ΦΛΕΓΩΝ 11,  ΕΡΜΗΣ 621, ΕΡΜΑΣ 160. They are given exclusively as male.

[21] Trismegistos People has 505,142 attestations of names, from Egypt and the Nile valley from about 800 BC to about 800 CE. Online at <https://www.trismegistos.org/ref/index.php> accessed March, 2020.

[22] But he found Asyncritus (2), Phlegon (9), Hermas (6), Hermes (841) in his sources, which were H. Solin, Die griechishe Personennamen in Rom (Berlin, W. de Gruyter, 1982) and CIL 6:7. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the first two centuries, Trans. M. Steinhauser (London: T&T Clarke, 2003) 169.

[23] R.M. Soldevila, A.M. Castillo, J.F. Valverde, A Prosopography to Martial’s Epigrams (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019) 454.

[24] There are just 6 cases in LGPN.

[25] These are conveniently collated by the Center for New Testament Restoration <https://greekcntr.org/manuscripts.htm> accessed Jan-March 2020.

[26] Elizabeth Schrader thinks that αυτου was original!  “Was Martha of Bethany added to the fourth gospel in the second century?” Harvard Theological Review 110 (2017) 360-392.

[27] Metzger, A Textual Commentary (1994) 549.

[28] Metzger, A Textual Commentary (1994) 563.

[29] NA²⁸ gives θποτασσεσθωσαν ℵ A I P (Ψ) 0278. 6. 33. 81. 104. 365. 1175. 1241^s. 1505. 21739. 1881. 2464 lat sy^hmg co ¦  υποτασσεσθε (Δ Φ Γ) Κ Λ 630 𝔐 sy ¦ txt 𝔓46 B; Cl Hier^mss. Clement of Alexandria lacks the verb at Strom. 4.64.1. At Paed. 94.5 Clement quoted Eph 5:22 without 5:21, so was forced to add a verb. He added the third person imperative, υποτασσεσθωσαν, presumably because he imagined Paul instructing women via a male audience, rather than addressing the women directly. These points seem to have been missed by Gurry, who believes that υποτασσεσθωσαν would be an unlikely verb for scribes to add and that it was therefore original. Peter J. Gurry, “The Text of Eph 5:22 and the Start of the Ephesian Household Code” NTS 67 (2021) 560-581.

 

[30] See discussion in Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford: OUP, 2012), and Edgar Battad Ebojo, “Should Women be Silent in the Churches? Women’s Audible Voices in the Textual Variants of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35,” Trinity Theological Journal 14 (2006) 1-33, here 22.

[31] Following the influential work of Brooten, Lampe, Cervin, Plisch, Thorley, Epp, and Stephenson, among others. Bernadette J. Brooten, “‘Junia … Outstanding among the Apostles’ (Romans 16:7)” In Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. L.S. and A. Swidler (New York: Paulist, 1977) 148-51. Peter Lampe, “Iunia/Iunias: Sklavenherkunft im Kreise der vorpaulinischen apostel (Röm 16 7),” ZNW 76 (1985) 132-34. Richard S. Cervin, “A note regarding the name ‘Junia(s)’ in Romans 16.7,” NTS 40 (1994) 464-70. U.-K. Plisch, “Die Apostelin Junia: Das exegetische Problem in Röm 16.7 im Licht von Nestle-Aland²⁷ und der sahidischen Überlieferung,” NTS 42 (1996) 477-8. John Thorley, “Junia, a woman apostle,” Nov Test 38 (1996) 18-29. Eldon J. Epp, Junia: The first woman apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005). Hope Stephenson, “Junia, Woman and Apostle” in Women in the Biblical World: A Survey of Old and New Testament Perspectives, Ed. Elizabeth A. McCabe (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2009) 119-133.

[32] Michael H. Burer and Daniel B. Wallace (“Was Junia Really an Apostle? A Re-examination of Rom 16.7” NTS 47 (2001) 76-91) argued that ancient uses of the phrase ἐπίσημοι ἐν suggest that it means “well known to”, but they have been rebutted by Eldon Jay Epp (“Text-Critical, Exegetical, and Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting the Junia/Junias Variation in Romans 16,7,” in NT Textual Criticism and Exegesis: Festschrift J. Delobel (ed. A. Denaux; BETL 161; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 2002) 227-91), Richard Bauckham (Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 172-9), and Linda Belleville, “Ἰουνιαν … ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις: A Re-examination of Romans 16.7 in Light of Primary Source Materials,” NTS 51 (2005) 231-49. Michael Burer has reaffirmed his position (“ἘΠΙΣΗΜΟΙ ἘΝ ΤΟΙΣ ἈΠΟΣΤΟΛΟΙΣ in Rom 16:7 as “well known to the apostles”: Further defense and new evidence,” JETS 58 (2015) 731-55). Yii-Jan Lin (“Junia: An Apostle before Paul,” JBL 139 (2020) 191-209) shows that the context demands that it means that Junia was an apostle. 

[33] Paul is emphasizing his own connections with members of the church of Rome, so it would be odd for him to mention that Andronicus and Junia were endorsed by others, rather than by himself. Keener writes, “It is also unnatural to read the text as merely claiming that they had a high reputation with “the apostles.” Since they were imprisoned with him, Paul knows them well enough to recommend them without appealing to the other apostles, whose judgment he never cites on such matters, and the Greek is most naturally read as claiming that they were apostles.” Craig S. Keener, Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1992) 242.

[34] Royse, Scribal Habits (2008) 322 n690.

[35] Bart D. Ehrman, Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2006) 265.

[36] https://www.trismegistos.org/ref/index.php

[37] https://www.trismegistos.org/nam/detail.php?record=17497

[38] https://www.trismegistos.org/nam/detail.php?record=5273

[39] See note 56 below.

[40] Keener, Paul, Women & Wives (1992) 241.

[41] The author of the PE seems to have taken names of Paul’s associates from Paul’s letters and we have little reason to believe that he had independent knowledge of them. See Richard G. Fellows, “Paul, Timothy, Jerusalem and the Confusion in Galatia,” Biblica 99 (2018) 544-566, esp. 557.

[42] Royse rightly suggests that “the scribe took this person to be a man”. Royse, Scribal Habits (2008) 332.

[43] See also Ebojo, “Sex, Scribes, and Scriptures,” (2015) 379.

[44] Metzger, A Textual Commentary (1994) 581.

[45] As suggested by Ebojo, “Sex, Scribes, and Scriptures,” (2015) 378-9.

[46] Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, “Is There an “Anti-Priscan” Tendency in the Manuscripts? Some textual Problems with Prisca and Aquila,” JBL 125 (2006) 107-128.

[47] Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part III The Western Diaspora 330 BCE-650 CE (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 126; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).

[48] These ten, with their names, provenance, and dates are as follows. Caecilius, Egypt, 75-80 CE. Decius, Egypt, 106 CE. Deipius, Egypt, 106 CE. Magius, Egypt, 4^th C CE. Aemilius, Cyrenaica, 24/5 CE. Annius, Cyrenaica, 175-81 CE. Billienus, Cyrenaica, Pre-117 CE. Copius, Asia, Post-320 CE. Lucidus, Asia, 2^nd-3^rd C CE. Mannius, Asia, Late antique date presumed. Mapius, Asia, 4^th C CE. We also have Barrus (Rome 387 CE), who is recorded in Latin script. 

[49] Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part 1 Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002).

[50] These are Copius, who is dated to the “Byzantine period”, and Mannius, who cannot be dated.

[51] The corrector is identified by the “Sinaiticus Project”. <http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=38&chapter=1&lid=en&side=r&verse=14&zoomSlider=0> accessed April 4, 2020.

For a recent discussion of correctors of Sinaiticus see Peter Malik, “The Earliest Corrections in Codex Sinaiticus: A Test Case from the Gospel of Mark,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 50 (2013) 207-254.

[52] See, for example, D.C.Parker, “Variants and Variance” in Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of J. Keith Elliott, Peter Doble and Jeffrey Kloha (Eds) (Leiden: Brill, 2014) 32.

 

[53] Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, “Is There an “Anti-Priscan” Tendency in the Manuscripts? Some Textual Problems with Prisca and Aquila,” 125 (2006) 107-127.

[54] She is incorrect, however, in supposing that the put-down goes back to the author of Acts himself. Familiar name forms, such as diminutives and praenomina, were indeed sometimes used to denigrate, but not by Luke. He uses the praenomen of the leading man of Malta, not to put him down, but to emphasize that Publius had welcomed his guests as intimate friends (Acts 28:7). Luke will have known Prisca and Aquila and may have stayed with them in Corinth, Ephesus, or Rome, so it is not surprising that he calls Prisca by her informal name, just as he did with Publius, his host in Malta.

[55] As shown by searching for *ιλλα and *ιλλασ in the advanced search option on the LGPN website. http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/lgpn_search.cgi

[56] NA²⁸ lists 81. 365. 614. 629. 630. 945. 1505. 1881^c ar m vg^mss sy (bo^pt); Ambst. Ambrosiaster, writing between 366 and 384 is an early Latin witness to this variant. Being an educated Latin-speaking Christian, he is fully aware that the Prisca of Rom 16:3 was a woman, and he reduces her status by using the diminutive, Priscilla, and also by placing her name after that of her husband in his text of Rom 16:3 and in his commentary on it. Indeed, in his commentary on Romans he places Aquila first in all four mentions of the couple. He calls her Priscilla at 1 Cor 16:19 also. (https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/romans/ambrosiaster-on-romans--latin). His text of 2 Tim 4:19 has Priscilla before Aquila, but in discussing this text he names Aquila first. https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/ambrosiaster-on-paul-s-letters--latin

 Chrysostom calls her Priscilla at 2 Tim 4:19, but names her before Aquila there.

[57] Rom 5:10b-lla (22 words); 7:23 (6 words); 9:4b (18 words); 13:10 (7 words); 16:12b (9 words); 1 Cor 1:27 (10 words); 6:3-6 (49 words); 7:27b-28 (30 words); 8:8b (4 words); 9:2 (19 words); 16:19 (20 words).

[58] Reuben Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines Against Codex Vaticanus: Romans (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001) 260.

[59] Swanson, Romans (2001) 251-268.

[60] Theodorus Schermann, Prophetarum Vitae Fabulosae Indices Apostolorum Discipulorumque Domini, Dorotheo, Epiphanio, Hippolyto Aliisque Vindicata (Leipzig, Teubner, 1907) 125.

[61] Schermann, Prophetarum Vitae Fabulosae 125.

[62] Schermann, Prophetarum Vitae Fabulosae 142.

[63] Eusebius Eccl. Hist. 3.22.

[64] For Euodos, see Index Apostolorum Discipulorumque Domini, Pseudo-Dorothei; Index Apostolorum Discipulorumque Domini Pseudo-Hyppolyti; Index Apostolorum Discipulorumque Domini in Pseudo-Symeonis Logothetae Chronico Asservatus, and for Junias see Index Anonymus Graeco-Syrus. For these four souces see Schermann, Prophetarum Vitae Fabulosae 142, 170, 183, 174 respectively. Euodos is also in the list of names attached to minuscule 177, and perhaps others that I have not been able to check.

[65] Bauckham (Gospel Women 166-7 n242) dates the list attributed to Epiphanius to before 900 CE, but doubts Epiphanius’s authorship.

[66] Thus Piper and Grudem were able to find only one occurrence of the name in Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, (other than those in Christian literature related to Rom 16:7).  John Piper and Wayne Grudem, “An Overview of Central Concerns” in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. J. Piper and W. Grudem (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1991) 79-80.

[67] Trismegistos People. <https://www.trismegistos.org/nam/detail.php?record=9665> accessed April 4, 2020.

[68] CIL IV 4514, 14.

[69] IHadrian 173, 1.

[70] Thorley, “Junia, a woman apostle,” Nov Test (1996) 25.

[71] L.R. Palmer, A Grammar of the Post-Ptolemaic Papyri, vol. 1 (Oxford 1945), pp. 49-50. P. Chantraine, La formation des noms en grec ancien (Paris 1933), 31-32. W. Peterson, “The Greek masculines in circumflexed -ᾶς”, Classical Philology (1937) 121-3. 

[72] NA²⁸ gives the following. Αμπλιαν B² D L P Ψ 33. 81. 104. 630. 1175. 1241. 1881. (Απλιαν 365. 1505, Αμπλια 1739^c) 𝔐 vg^ms sy sa ¦ txt 𝔓46 ℵ A B* C F G 6. 1739* lat bo.

[73] See Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the first two centuries (Minneapolis: Augsberg Fortress, 1999) 169.

[74] Theodoreti, Cyrensis Episcopi, Commentarius in omnes sancti Pauli Epistolas in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus (Paris: Garner, 1864) 82.585.

[75] By “early manuscripts” I mean those normally ascribed a date range beginning 400 AD or earlier. I searched for variants using the Center for New Testament Restoration website (<https://greekcntr.org/manuscripts.htm> accessed 2019), and I checked the readings using the Institute Für Neutestamentliche Textforschung website (<http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/manuscript-workspace> accessed 2019), as well as NA²⁸.

[76] 1) The name Claudius is missing from A in Acts 18:2. 2) The name Paul is missing from ℵ in Acts 17:16. 3) The reversal of the names Herod and Pilate at Luke 23:12 in A, D, and 32. 4) ℵ omits John 19:20-21a through parablepsis, thus omitting Pilate’s name. 5) The name Pilate, along with the last few words of John 19:38, is omitted by A. 6) Titius in Acts 18:7 is replaced by Titus in ℵ. 7) Titius is omitted by both A and D. I have not included the omissions of names brought about by the rewriting of Acts in D.

[77] Against the method employed by Holmes, who underestimates the misogyny of the Western text of Acts, largely because he insists that each proposed case of sexist bias be proved before it is taken into consideration. Michael W. Holmes, “Women and the ‘Western’ Text of Acts” in The Book of Acts as Church History, eds Tobias Nicklas, Michael Tilly (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003).

[78] Metzger reports of the UBS committee that “some members, considering it unlikely that a woman would be among those styled “apostles,” understood the name to be masculine Ἰουνιᾶν (“Junias”), thought to be a shortened form of Junianus”. Metzger, A Textual Commentary, 2nd ed. (1994) 475. Al Wolters (“ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ (Romans 16:7) and the Hebrew Name Yehunni,” JBL 127 (2008): 397-408), while still thinking that ΙΟΥΝΙΑΝ was probably a woman, proposes that it may be a male Semitic name in Greek script.  The Semitic name that Wolters proposes was held by two known individuals, which is only 0.08% of men recorded in Tal Ilan’s Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part 1 Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). By contrast, Bauckham proposes that a Joanna took the name Junia (Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies in the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 172-80). The name Joanna was held by 3% of recoded women in Palestine. Bauckham’s 3% is 37 times higher than Wolters’ 0.08%, so is to be greatly preferred.

[79] CER 5:244, 246, 258.

[80] A parallel might be Rom 16:22. It is likely that Tertius added his greeting to the margin of the autograph of Romans and that it was copied into the text in all subsequent manuscripts of Rom 16. See Alan H. Cadwallader, “Tertius in the margins: a critical appraisal of the secretary hypothesis,” NTS 64 (2018) 378-396.