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It’s no surprise that I liked this book. It’s about two amazingly smart, stubborn, persistent, Presbyterian, and Scottish sisters: Agnes and Margaret Smith. These sisters lived in the 19th century and defied just about every convention to pursue their faith. They traveled around the world in search of ancient Biblical texts. They learned languages, leveraged their fortune, and even, from time to time, traveled without a chaperone.
Because they were people of faith, as much as they challenged the norms for women of their day, they did so because of their faith. They wanted to be faithful. They believed in the Bible. They kept the Sabbath. It didn’t matter where they were in the world, desert or mountaintop, they stopped on Sundays and kept Sabbath. They built a home to welcome preachers and Bible studies. They studied. They shared.
On one of their travels, to St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai Egypt, they discovered what was, at that point, the oldest copy of the four gospels that anyone had ever studied. They found it with another text written on top and over three trips they copied and studied the entire text to share with the world.
Why was this one copy of the gospels important? Because it was older than all of the other copies that had been found and studied, to date. Because it was older it could help answer questions about the text as well as raise new ones.
We don’t have just one copy of the texts in the Bible. There are hundreds and hundreds that are studied to come up with the pages we hold in one book. Studied and compared. Sometimes just a few passages, sometimes entire chapters.
And, not surprisingly, not all of the versions are the same. Maybe a scribe heard something different. Someone made a mistake in copying. Or sometimes someone didn’t like the way something sounded or something it implied, and they changed it to, in their minds, better enhance the sharing of the good news.
And all of these things, age, contexts, and variations are weighed to bring us what we have and hold. Sometimes the decisions are obvious. Sometimes they are less clear.
And this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, some might say it is our strength. We don’t hide from this, we keep learning and growing and believing that the Bible isn’t just the words on the page, it’s the way God meets us and speaks to us, and this is just one of the ways we are reminded that the Holy Spirit continues to reveal God’s nature. And, after all, our New Testament begins with four different versions of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
The text Agnes and Margaret found did just that, and not everyone loved the questions that it raised. When asked about whether or not they were bothered that the discoveries they made might shed new light on Jesus and change centuries of belief, Margaret and Agnes were completely unbothered. “For the very variants which frighten the weak-minded among us acts as a stimulant to others, inciting them to search the Scripture more diligently, to eliminate the mistakes of mere copyists, and to ascertain what it was that Evangelists really wrote.”[2]
These deeply faithful women were not intimidated by learning, they knew God would meet them there, that God was still God, still bigger than our minds can comprehend.
They embodied the classic reformed motto, “Once Reformed, Always Reforming,” which reminds us we are always to be re-forming ourselves back to the text, back to the model of the earliest Christians.
Now. Why am I telling you about Margaret and Agnes?
Because of the work of Elizabeth Schrader[3], a graduate of General Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. student at Duke University who will be awarded her degree this spring and will next fall be an assistant professor of New Testament at Villanova University.
Libbie Schrader, in her studies, began to look at the older versions we have of the gospels, and in Papyrus 66, the oldest version of the gospel of John found to date, from around the year 200. And she noticed, as she studied, that there was something odd in the passage that we know as the 11th chapter of John. And that was that in several places Mary was crossed out, and Martha written in. Another place where sisters were added instead of Mary.
This in and of itself wasn’t entirely new. Others had noted it, just nobody had taken it any further. Libbie Schrader began to do just that. She started looking at other copies of John and found that around 1/3, including the oldest versions we have, had anomalies around Mary and Martha, in that either Martha is not in there at all or Mary was eliminated in some places to add Martha. She has studied over 280 copies of John.
She then went to look at art and the records of early pilgrims and found accounts where this event was told or re-told without Martha being a part of the story, only Mary.
Why Martha? Well, the best suggestion seems to be that the team of Mary and Martha is a known duo, sister combination from the gospel of Luke. Luke chapter 10 where Martha is busy taking care of everyone and Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening. A different story. Different women.
So. What if the original text in John 11 had no Martha, only Mary?
Why is that significant?
Well, the text tells us that just a few verses later.
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah.
For a follower of Jesus to proclaim his name, to acknowledge that he would die, is significant.
When said by Martha, a woman who appears nowhere else in this gospel, it is the utterance of one woman.
When said by Mary, and very possibly Mary Magdalene, it is a whole other thing. Mary is throughout the gospels. And if the connection here can be made to Mary Magdalene, her name might well refer not to where she was from but to a name given to her by Jesus. As Peter is the Rock upon which the church is built, Mary’s name can mean Mary the Tower. A partner in evangelism and faith. At the cross. At the tomb. A central role in the life of faith is our faith.
It’s not just the text that hints at this.
And there are other commentators from the early centuries who say that it is Mary who utters this phrase, who proclaims Jesus to be the Christ. Who retell the story of Lazarus without Martha?
And the artwork, where only one woman is present.
Why would the early scribes change it?
It’s possible that early believers were not fans of how Jesus treated, included, and respected women. And they wanted to minimize their role in the new church.
There might well have been malicious intent.
But not necessarily. Was it the work of a scribe who dearly loved Jesus and wanted there to be incremental change rather than massive change that would threaten the spread of the gospel? Or changed to allow the Gospel of John to be included in the canon?
Maybe, those early scribes who added Martha and minimized Mary were trying to be faithful, and we can give them the benefit of the doubt.
What does this mean for the text?
At the very least, it raises a question. It causes us, people of the Word, to look and dig and explore – to follow in the footsteps of our mothers in the faith, Agnes and Margaret Smith. Who reminds us that this realization of a new understanding of scripture isn’t even new, it’s just new to us.
What does it mean for us?
It is a beautiful reminder that the Word of God is a living word. A place where we don’t just encounter letters on a page, it is a place where we encounter God. Where God encounters us. And God is not done with us. We are not done learning. Throughout the centuries the Bible has continued to instruct us, and we have changed as God has met us there. How the world understood. We understand creation or slavery or women or sexuality or whatever is next. God keeps showing up to remind us that we need not fear, for God is with us.
And at the very least, Agnes and Margaret might have enjoyed this revelation, two women who were not allowed to attend university, become teachers, or pastors, because women were not allowed, in part because people believed the Bible forbade it.
It also asks a question of us – how do we respond to something new? To new information? To change? To recognize that something we once hold dear might need to be held onto more loosely or let go of entirely?
To be like Mary and hear the new path Jesus is describing, or to be like the other disciples who refused to accept that Jesus was dead, because it wasn’t, in their minds, what the Messiah was supposed to do.
Yes. Change is hard. And I can think of countless times in my life when I was presented with something new and fought it.
Thought that if I just didn’t acknowledge it, it wouldn’t happen, like when I was six and walked down the stairs at my grandparent’s house with my hands over my eyes, certain nobody could see me.
Or have you ever thought there was no way forward, or that the walls were unmovable, only to have God move them in ways we did not imagine?
How often do we see the Bible, or faith, or church as an anchor that holds us fast instead of the keep that keeps us upright, with the Holy Spirit providing wind for the sails?
And Jesus said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
What if it is not only Lazarus to whom Jesus is referring, but John also referring to the text, corrupted and now, through the Holy Spirit, brought back to life? To be a time of healing?
I think that this exploration of the 11th chapter of John is the biggest revelation in the study of the Bible I have experienced in my lifetime.
But even Biblical Revelations don’t butter your bread, pecan your pie, I believe it offers us a larger metaphor for life. For faith. For change.
What else might be healed and used for the glory of God?
This a reminder that wherever you are, you don’t have the full picture. There is more.
We see now only in part, and God can make a way where we do not see it.
The good news is that we need not be afraid of admitting we see only in part, for God is still God, and God is still speaking. Mary and Martha and Lazarus or only Mary and Lazarus.
God is still revealing Godself to us.
And what Good News this is. Amen.
Here’s Libbie’s reconstruction of the text based on her work with the textual changes discovered in ancient manuscripts:
Note from Elizabeth: “This reconstruction comes from readings in Codex Alexandrinus before correction (John 11:1-2), Papyrus 66 before correction (John 11:3-4), and Codex Colbertinus (John 11:5), which is uncorrected.”
1 There was a certain sick man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary his sister.
2 Now this was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
3 Therefore Mary sent to him, saying, “Lord, behold, the one you love is sick.”
4 But when Jesus heard he said to her, “The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son may be glorified through it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sister.
[1] Janice Soskice, Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. New York: Knopf, 2009.
https://knopfdoubleday.com/2009/08/18/the-sisters-of-sinai-by-janet-soskice/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/170430/the-sisters-of-sinai-by-janet-soskice
[2] Soskice, page 198.
[3] I found Elizabeth’s work through a sermon by Diana Butler Bass. Her work is more extensive than I can include in a sermon, but here are some good links. The first link, in particular, contains suggestions for preaching that I have utilized in this sermon.
https://www.elizabethschrader.com/
https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/libbie-schrader-preaching-john-11?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/all-the-marys#details
https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/mary-the-tower
https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/18592/Schrader%2018.May.2016.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
https://religionnews.com/2022/01/07/was-mary-magdalene-really-from-magdala-two-scholars-reassess-the-evidence/
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