Eldon Jay Epp:
In
Col 4:15 the name Nympha/Nymphas in a Greek accusative form can be feminine or
masculine, depending on the accent. The printed text has “Give my greetings to
Symphia and the church in her house,” but Pauline D-Text witnesses have
“his house.” If the shift was from “her” to “him,” that would deprive a
woman of being the leader of a house church. (Nestle-Aland28 and UBS4
have “her,” while those of Merk, Bover, and Bover-O’Callaghan read “his.”) (Eldon
Jay Epp, “How New Testament Textual Variants Embody and Exhibit Prior Textual
Traditions,” in Biblical Essays in Honor of Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, and
Richard J. Clifford, SJ: Opportunity For No Little Instruction, ed.
Christopher G. Frechette, Christopher R. Matthews, and Thomas D. Stegman [New
York: Paulist Press, 2014], 286)
G. K. Beale:
Many
commentators note the textual uncertainty over whether Νυμφαν (Νymphan)
should be rendered “Nympha” as a female name or “Nymphas” as a male name . . .
However, the most likely reading of the accompanying pronoun is “her” (αυτης), indicating that Νυμφαν is female think that she may have been a
wealthy widow who hosted a small church in her house. Some think that Nympha is
being acknowledged here as a leader of the Church in Laodicea . . . but nothing
more than hosting the church in her house is being expressed. House churches
were typical during the early Christian movement (see Acts 16:15; Rom. 16:5,
23; 1 Cor. 16:19; Philem. 2 . . .) (G. K. Beale, Colossians and Philemon [Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2019], 360-61)
There
is textual uncertainty about whether Νυμφαν (Nymphan) should be rendered “Nympha” as a female
name or “Nymphas” as a male name. If the original is Νύμφαν (as in NA28) with an acute accent
over the upsilon, then it refers to female; if the original is Νυμφᾶν with a circumflex over the alpha, it refers
to a male. The earlier manuscripts did not have accents, so the name could have
been pronounced either as a male or female. Thus the following pronoun is the
only evidence of whether the name referred to a woman or a man . . . But even
this manuscript evidence is mixed. Some scribes understood a woman to be the
reference, which is indicated by the following reference to “her [αυτης, autēs] church (b, 0278, 6, 1739,
1881, syh, sa). Others understand it to be a male, as indicated by
the reading of “his [αὐτοῦ, autou] church” (D, F, G, K. L, Ψ, 365, 630, 1241s, 1505,
Û,
syp.hmg) . Still other MSS have “their [αυτων, autōn] church,” while
likely arose due to a scribe thinking the church of the “brothers” together
with either a name Nymphas or female Nypmha was the reference in the original (א,
A, C, P, 075, 33, 81, 104, 326, 1175, 2464, bo); or “their” was written because
it was unclear how Νυμφαν
should be accented (see the note in the NET). The female name Nympha would be
the harder reading apparently because scribes would have thought that the name
Nympha directly following male “brothers” would most naturally be taken as a
male (i.e., one among the “brothers”). But just as naturally, Nympha as a
female could be singed out from the preceding male brothers. However, many
scholars believe the female name Nympha is preferable as the difficult reading
because of the likelihood that a scribe would have thought a male would be the
head of a church in which a church was meeting and would have been tempted to
change an original female name to the male (this may explain why the reading
not only of “his” but also of “their” arose . . .) Together with this, the
weight of better MSS support the reading of “her” (αυτης), thus meaning a female Nympha
and making it the most original reading . . .(Ibid., 365)
NET (1st ed.):
If the name Nympha is accented with a
circumflex on the ultima (Νυμφᾶν, Numphan), then
it refers to a man; if it receives an acute accent on the penult (Νύμφαν), the reference is to
a woman. Scribes that considered Nympha to be a man's name had the
corresponding masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ here (autou,
"his"; so D [F G] Ψ Û), while those who saw Nympha as a woman
read the feminine αὐτῆς here (autes, "her"; B 0278 6 1739[*]
1881 sa). Several MSS (א A C P 075 33 81 104
326 1175 2464 bo) have αὐτῶν (auton, "their"),
perhaps because of indecisiveness on the gender of Nympha, perhaps because they
included ἀδελφούς (adelphous, here translated
"brothers and sisters") as part of the referent. (Perhaps because
accents were not part of the original text, scribes were particularly confused
here.) The harder reading is certainly αὐτῆς, and thus Nympha
should be considered a woman.
