Elizabeth Schrader Polczer didn’t set out to build a career in academia based on textual anomalies in the Gospel of John. In fact, she didn’t set out to be an academic at all; back in 2011, she was simply a musician interested in learning more about Mary Magdalene for an album project. 

Her research led her to a digital version of Papyrus 66, a second-century manuscript that is the oldest near-complete copy of the Gospel of John — the gospel that features Mary Magdalene most prominently. It was written in Greek, a language that Schrader Polczer couldn’t read, but still, she could see that the copyist had made changes to his own document.

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In the story of Lazarus of Bethany, it appeared that initially he had one sister, Maria, but some instances of her name had been altered to say Martha. One sister, it seemed, had become two, which is the version that was added to the canon of the New Testament. The story of Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, is the version that appears in Bibles today.

Schrader Polczer decided to follow this thread and try to figure out what might have happened, eventually enrolling in a Master of Arts program at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Through her studies there, she........

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