At the 2022 Wild Goose Festival, historian and author Diana Butler Bass said in a sermon titled “All the Marys”: “When the women of the world take on words for themselves, when we seize our sacred texts and search them for truth, for wisdom, for strength. To interpret our traditions for ourselves. Not to submit, but to claim authority and look it up for ourselves, to do that which we know to be beautiful and joyful and just. Women with the power of words can change the world.”
Julia Goldie Day
Bass shared these words because she knew the research she revealed from emerging singer-songwriter turned scholar Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer would be a key turning point for women. This exciting sermon shared Schrader-Polzer’s discovery of the likelihood of Martha being added to the Gospel of John, chapter 11 in Papyrus 66 — the story we know as Mary and Martha summoning Jesus to raise Lazurus from the dead, which contains key Christian theology.
The name “Mary” in many instances had been changed by the scribe to “Martha,” only one letter different in the Greek language, creating two sisters. These changes in Papyrus 66 ultimately made Schrader-Polzer question whether Martha’s name was added to diminish the role of a woman in the Gospel of John, one who made the Christological confession.
This sermon went on to be shared more than a million times on social media as women especially caught on to the significance of a different woman uttering the Christological confession in John’s Gospel, a much more significant woman, Mary of Bethany, who can be overlapped with Mary the Magdalene. Many church fathers conflate the two as Shrader-Polzer has shown in her research.
It is perhaps Mary proclaiming in John 11:27 “I believe you are the Christ, the son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Schrader-Polzer says we know this is the “thesis statement of John” because it reappears at the end of John chapter 20 when Mary meets the resurrected Jesus in the garden. The Magdalene is then sent to go and tell, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
“The Three Marys,” by Kelly Latimore.
It seems like the early Christians were debating the women in gospel preaching ministry question just like we still seem to be. It was Peter versus Mary. Perhaps Peter won out and we can backward fact check this contest with some certainty through documents, archeology, art history with the help of some very curious female researchers.
Schrader-Polzer says: “Who would change God’s word to serve their end and then call it gospel? So this opens up the possibility at the very highest levels that at the beginning in the second century, a woman’s central role in John’s Gospel was mutilated, changed, suppressed to serve the interests of those who needed Peter to have the main spotlight.
“And if Mary were to have a similar role, that would be unacceptable. So it’s saying, it’s taking it back to the very, very beginning of Christian origins and how things, the way that we assume the Bible is clear or, do the Southern Baptists care about what John wrote?”
It may be that the Magdalene has been fragmented into three women to “take away the potency of her being the apostle to the apostles.” This has yet to be proved but the “single sister theory” as Butler Bass puts it on The Cottage with Schrader-Polzer as they discuss these updates to her research — there is quite a bit of evidence indicating the Martha’s presence is unstable in the Lazarus story and the Christological confession in John 11. Therefore, the Nestle-Aland committee has approved footnotes in its most recent edition to clarify Martha is often absent in many papyri and even ancient artwork. Future editions will guide translation committees for the versions of the Bibles we read. Stay tuned in your footnotes.
Julia Goldie Day is an ordained minister within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and lives in Memphis, Tenn. She is a painter and proud mother to Jasper, Barak and Jillian. Learn more at her website or follow her on socials @JuliaGoldieDay.
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