A Brigham Young University researcher says he has recovered the name of a woman whose identity vanished from the Bible for nearly two millennia. According to new findings, the woman addressed in 2 John, New Testament , was not an unnamed “elect lady,” as scholars long believed, but a Greek woman named Eclecte.
Her name appears in a new book by Lincoln Blumell, associate dean of research in the BYU Department of Ancient Scripture. Blumell argues that an early copying mistake in Greek manuscripts erased her name and reshaped how readers understood one of the Bible’s shortest letters.
How two missing Greek letters made a woman disappear
Blumell says scribes accidentally dropped two Greek letters at the end of Eclecte’s name. Those letters, τῃ, sat directly beside the identical Greek article τῃ, meaning “the.” In the early manuscripts, everything was written in scriptio continua — continuous lines with no spaces, punctuation, or capitalization.
The original line appeared as one unbroken string: ὁπρεσβύτεροςἐκλέκτῃτῇκυρίᾳ. Blumell reads it as: “The elder to Eclecte the Lady.” A scribe misread the doubled letters and removed one pair. What remained was: ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ, which reads as “The elder to the elect lady.”
That small omission, copied repeatedly for centuries, erased the only name ever addressed directly in a New Testament letter to a woman.
Correcting a long-standing misunderstanding
For more than 150 years, scholars accepted the reading “elect lady” without challenging the manuscripts. That assumption led to generations of commentary suggesting the letter referred to the Church as a metaphor or to an unnamed Christian figure. Blumell says the corrected Greek reading should be: ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἐκλέκτῃ τῇ κυρίᾳ.
A Latter-day Saint scholar has uncovered that the “elect lady” in 2 John was actually a woman named Electa.
Her name was lost for nearly 2,000 years due to a scribal error in ancient manuscripts.
The discovery is praised by experts, including one from Princeton University. pic.twitter.com/tbHxOZqfMR
— Clint Teeples (@TeeplesCY) November 9, 2025
His research shows that restoring the missing letters restores a real person — a woman who had been hiding “in plain sight” in the Greek text.
Evidence from papyri and inscriptions
Blumell’s work draws on papyri recovered from what he calls “the rich sands of Egypt,” as well as inscriptions on graves. Critics once argued that Eclecte was a “ghost name,” but Blumell collected 18 examples of the name from the Roman period. The earliest dates to around 53–62 AD and includes a poetic inscription written by a woman honoring her husband.
He also found Eclecte used as a second name, including Julia Eclecte, Claudia Eclecte, Cuspia Eclecte, Livia Eclecte, and Munatia Eclecte.
Experts confirm the rediscovery
Scholars say the case is decisive. “Blumell shows conclusively that the addressee of 2 John, one of the 27 books of the New Testament, is a woman named Eclecte,” said AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton University. John S. Kloppenborg of the University of Toronto praised the research as a demonstration of how detailed philology and knowledge of papyri can reveal “long-hidden meanings.”
Reconsidering her place in early Christianity
The letter portrays Eclecte as a woman with authority in a household that may have supported traveling Christians. The elder instructs her to care for her children and to turn away visitors who claimed to teach Christian doctrine but spread false teachings.
Blumell hopes Bible translations will one day reprint her Greek name. In his book, Lady Eclecte: The Lost Woman of the New Testament, he writes that the New Testament has always included a named woman as the principal recipient of 2 John — until two duplicated Greek letters vanished and took her identity with them.
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