Everyone is Wrong About 2 John!

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Lincoln Harris Blumell (1:02)

Stumbling across a passage on 2 John 1, I thought, wow, no one's really taking this seriously. I actually didn't take it seriously at the start, where he said that, among other things, that 2 John was written to him by name Eclecte. I thought it was just him, just some wild musings, you know, turned to my scriptures and Bible, thought, what's he seeing here? And the more I began looking at it, then working with Greek papyri, I'm like, no, he's actually, there's a name here.

Dan McClellan (1:35)

Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:36)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:37)

This is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:49)

Things are peachy, things are peachy. Today, we are going, you know, I have talked before on this show about going with you to the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and hearing talks that, like, are these long papers that these people are giving that hinge on one letter being not quite the thing, or one, or two, this minor thing that could... We're going to dive into one of those things. And I'm actually genuinely excited about it because it's one of the more interesting ones that I've been made aware of. Do you want to introduce our guest?

Dan McClellan (2:28)

Absolutely. Today, we are honored to have here with us Lincoln Blumell, who is a professor in religious education at Brigham Young University and an old friend of mine. And we are here to talk about a book that Lincoln recently published called Lady Eclecte, The Lost Woman of the New Testament. Thank you so much for being here, Lincoln. I know it took us a bit to get all of our ducks in a row, but we appreciate your patience with us.

Lincoln Harris Blumell (2:54)

It's great to be on here and I'm excited to talk about the book.

Dan McClellan (2:58)

Yeah, me too. I remember you took you, I think it was like two years ago at SBL. You were like, hey, I'm working on this book. And I think at the time, I can't remember if you had found a publisher or if you were still if you were still working on getting a publisher. But you mentioned, yeah, I think that we might have identified someone in Second John, that the letter was written to an actual person who's named in the text and it has been misunderstood for so long. And I was like, wow, that that would be a really cool story. And now the book is out. It's been out for a little bit. But I wanted to start because you start off in the book talking about Clement of Alexandria, who, you know, we've all we've all talked enough about Clement of Alexandria.

Dan Beecher (3:47)

Oh, yeah, I talk about him constantly. I'm always on Clement of Alexandria. You can't shut me up about him.

Dan McClellan (3:54)

Would you mind just explaining who Clement of Alexandria is and what that has to do with what we're going to be looking at at the beginning of Second John today?

Lincoln Harris Blumell (4:04)

Yeah, you bet. So Clement is a church figure, you know, writing in the late second, early third century, writes various works.

Some of them have survived, you know, of course, some haven't. And I got interested in his work when I was working in Egypt. I was editing some papyri and inscriptions. And when you're working on these things, you kind of go into Greek databases and you start finding parallels and stuff. And that kind of led me to reading some of his works that I wasn't as familiar with. And stumbling across a passage on 2 John 1, I thought, wow, no one's really taking this seriously. And I actually didn't take it seriously at the start, where he said that, among other things, that 2 John was written to a woman by name Eclecte. And I thought this was just him, just some wild musings, turned to my scriptures and Bible and thought, what's he seeing here? And the more I began looking at it, then working with Greek papyri, I'm like, no, he's actually, there's a name here.