The Tower Beside the Rock: Imagining a Female Pillar in Early Christianity

How Dr. Elizabeth Schrader Rewrote the Story of Mary and Martha

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a Bible-era middle eastern woman in a yellow and blue headscarf, head turned from us, standing next to a tower

What if a woman was equal to Peter, the top dog disciple of Jesus?

Often referred to as 'the Rock,' upon which Jesus declared His church would be built, Peter's role is undeniably pivotal. But what if there existed a female equivalent, whose story has been muted or forgotten? 

Peter demonstrates all the great faith and frailties that mark him as a relevant, central figure in the gospels. From walking out on the water to come to Jesus—which no other disciple dared attempt—down to his threefold denial and restoration, Peter's experiences appear to have secured the most central incidents of early Christian discipleship. 

But only in three of the four gospels.

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Apostle Peter is the one who makes the “Christological confession.” This is a fancy way of saying that Peter was the first to recognize and say out loud that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the one foretold to come who would save the world. It’s a pinnacle moment in the gospels; it’s the moment when the final puzzle piece drops and the people surrounding Jesus see him clearly.

But what if there was a womanly version of Peter? What if Peter had a foil?

I want to sit on this idea for a moment. I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question or something to be brushed past. 

How would institutions, societies, and families be different if a woman had been “the Rock”?

The presence of a female leader of such stature could have influenced the interpretations of scriptures and the formulation of church doctrines significantly. 

Imagine the world if the church had been started in an equal, inclusive way; no questions about who could teach what, no relegating one gender to the sidelines, and no one set of humans given a full voice while the other set is told to exist in silence and submission.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Have you ever had a moment where your voice wasn’t wanted? It’s a fairly universal experience, to say something and people don’t respond, or to start telling a story to a group, only to have it brushed past because the group gets interested in something else they give more value to.

It can make even the most secure person think twice about their place in the world.

About five years ago, I was modestly active in a Christian group online. Then, with little ceremony and no prior warning, the owner of the group dropped a diatribe on “Women in the Church”TM about how no woman should teach in front of or educate a man.

Ever optimistic, I responded with history(!!!) and context(!!!), sure we could come to some sort of agreement. I spent way too much time on a reply, as one does. And my response got a lot of positive traction in the forum.

So, he deleted my post. 

Then he muted me.

There is something so absurdly upsetting about being muted. Not blocked, not kicked out, just muted.

They want the bodies, and the attendance, and the attention… but they do not want the voices of those they mute.

I could watch, but I couldn’t participate.

And what a trap for us all: The voice that might dissent was the one he’d already dismissed. With no motivation for the person in power to change, why would it ever change? And where does it leave the muted?

So, if Peter made one of two “Christological Confessions”--essentially naming and claiming Jesus as the Messiah everyone was looking for…who made the other?

If Matthew, Mark and Luke center Peter, who does John center?

You may not have heard, but this is quickly becoming a big deal in the academic world.

Up until very recently, a scholar might answer that Martha made the Christological Confession in John 11: "Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world."

Luke talks about Martha and Mary in his gospel. He tells this sweet little story about two sisters; Martha, the older, who opens her home to the disciples, then runs around hosting and serving. Her sister Mary, on the other hand, sits with the disciples to learn what Jesus has to say. Martha goes to Jesus and complains, telling him to order Mary to come and help her. Jesus rebukes Martha and says that Mary has chosen the better thing to do.

I need to point out two things: One, Martha opens HER house to Jesus. Two, the city Martha and Mary live in is never established; it’s just called a certain village.

John 11 has a story about Lazarus and Mary and Martha from Bethany. Tradition has conflated these two families, but there is growing evidence that this is not as clear cut as always assumed. In this story, the way it is currently told, Mary and Martha send for Jesus because their brother Lazarus is ill. Jesus tarries a little too long, and Lazarus died, which obviously upsets them. When Jesus heard that Lazarus died, he then headed towards their home in Bethany, and is met on the road by Martha:

21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

What’s fascinating here is that if you read the Gospel of John as a whole; the main theme is the question of Jesus’ identity. It’s the question that follows Jesus everywhere.

Who is this guy? Prophet? Messiah? Fraud? Liar?

After every encounter Jesus has, and in every moment that he teaches about himself, it ends with a bunch of people going, “Okay, but who is this guy, really?”

In John, at least, it’s not Peter that calls Jesus the Messiah. Peter misses it.

The culmination of the book of John, the answer to the major question woven throughout, is given here in John 11: by a woman outside of a tomb near Bethany.

In the other gospels, Peter makes this confession, and he gets a cool nickname, and apostolic power and position.

In John, Martha says the same thing and then is never heard from again.

Why?

To answer that question: we have to talk about a modern-day woman.

There is a woman, a current scholar, named Elizabeth Schrader. She had a successful music career, and then one time, while praying in a garden, she was struck with this intense curiosity or a sense of being called to learn more about Mary Magdalene. 

Photo by Darrien Staton on Unsplash

Elizabeth sort of continues on, and she goes on to write a music album about Mary Magdalene, and then decides that it’s not enough; she wants to learn more. So she applies for her master’s degree in the New Testament, so she can follow this growing need to understand this mysterious woman who lived two millennia ago.

And Schrader finds something.

(A quick reminder) We talked last week about how the Bible is a portable library, which is made up of a collection of books, and those books are made from a collection of manuscripts, compiled and corrected by scribes. 

Well, Elizabeth had an advantage that many scholars before her did not have. Papyrus 66, which is our oldest, in existence, copy of John 11 containing this story, had recently been digitized. She had access. 

Isn’t access crucial?

Dr. Diana Butler Bass, a Christian Historian at Duke University, gave an amazing talk on this subject, so I’m going to let her explain Dr. Schrader’s work here:

 “The oldest Greek text in the world says, "Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary." There are two Marys in this verse [….] Libbie noticed something that no New Testament scholar had ever noticed.

And that is, in the text where it had those two Marys [...] the text had actually been changed [...] the Iota [in Maria] had been changed to the letter TH in Greek, Theta. That somebody at some point in time had gone in over the original handwriting and actually changed the second Mary to Martha.[...] Someone had also changed that “his” to "her"; that "her" was originally a "his", but they had changed it to a "her".

Admittedly, the original text is a confused and not very good sentence. "Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary," it's almost like they're heightening the fact that Lazarus has this sister, Mary. [...] someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha. [...] lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, "Mary." The editor changed it all.[…] Somebody in the fourth century decided that John was confusing and this John fellow had bad Greek. And so the editor went in there to fix it. And he fixed it. He fixed it so good that we have been telling this story wrong ever since.

Every pronoun is changed. Every singular "sister” is changed to the plural "sisters". And Libbie has conclusively proven that in Papyrus 66 this fiddling around with the text did indeed occur.”

Someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character of Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha.

Reading the actual paper that Elizabeth Schrader published, in the Harvard Theological Review, by the way, which turned her Master’s Thesis into an article, her work grows ever more compelling.

She argues that there is textual instability around the presence of Martha in the text in several of our papyri from P66 onward, in almost all of the main manuscript families that make up the modern Bible. 

She encountered the following:

A. the leaving out of Martha’s name, where it should have been

B. A place where “Mary/Maria” was altered to “Martha”

C. the name “Mary” appearing instead of an expected “Martha” 

D. an unexpected singular noun, pronoun or verb, like "sister,” where we might expect "sisters.”

E. a different person named as the first of those Jesus loved in John 11:5.

And she found these instabilities in many of the manuscripts studied. What’s more than that, she began looking through the writings of early Christian bishops and pilgrims, noting when they mentioned John 11 and this Mary and Martha story. Only she found that, quite often, our earliest writings mention only one sister, Mary.   “In fact, the consensus of the manuscripts of Tertullian […] states that the woman who uttered the christological confession in 11:27 was Mary.”

Other writings do the same, “Cyril of Jerusalem and Chrysostom both appear to have had texts where Mary was the woman speaking at the tomb with Jesus.” Our earliest Christian diary of Egeria, a fourth century pilgrim, mentions that her group went to the tomb of Lazarus, where Mary spoke with Jesus. Again, no mention of Martha.

So what it sounds like to me, and certainly what it sounds like to Dr. Schrader, is that there is an earlier copy of John that has only two people; Lazarus and Mary.

Because remember, in the Lukan story of “serving” Martha and “listening” Mary, the Bible states that it is Martha’s home in a certain village. It doesn’t say that these sisters are from Bethany. And if there were any male relatives; a husband, a father, a brother, then the home wouldn’t be Martha’s legally. In Luke, we have no Lazarus.

In John, we have no Martha.

These are two separate families. Martha and a Mary in an unnamed village.

And Lazarus and a Mary in Bethany.

Mary is a common name; the Bible lists several, Jesus’ mother Mary being notable among them.

But which Mary is this?

And why would someone split one character into two?

And just to be clear, this isn’t willy-nilly conjecture by one lady. Her work has been presented and taken into account by the Nestle-Aland Translation Committee of the Greek New Testament, the very guardians of the New Testament and its translation. And they’re Germanly precise about everything.

So right now, there is debate on whether the next copy of the NRSV (the gold standard translation in use by academics across the board) will either:

1.) have a very long footnote explaining all of this place in the book of John, or 

2.) whether they will go ahead and take Martha out of John 11 and 12 in light of Dr. Schrader’s evidence.

It will be one or the other.

Can you even imagine? In our lifetimes, the Bible could be amended. (I did just find a note from Dr. Schrader that it will mostly likely be option 1, no real surprise.)

So what does it mean? 

Multiple scholars think that this means that Peter had a foil. There was a woman, Mary of Bethany, whose presence was diluted by the addition of Martha, conflated from the story in Luke. Mary’s most important dialogue was given away to a sister that likely didn’t exist.

In John’s gospel, the major thematic question is “Who is Jesus?” Everything centers around this one hinge point.

And the only person who gets it right is the woman outside of Lazarus’ tomb. The woman who says, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

And according to many of our earliest sources: that’s Mary.

It’s Mary who breaks the perfume over the feet of Jesus, anointing him before his trial and death.

Mary, who discovers the empty tomb. Mary, who runs to tell the other disciples. Mary, who stays, alone, when they leave.

Mary is the first to see Jesus risen, an echo of Lazarus rising from another empty tomb. 

And it’s Mary who is called the Disciple to the Disciples, carrying the news of the resurrection as the first and foremost to receive it.

Elizabeth Schrader, and now many others, believe that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are the same person. Magdalene is often said to mean “of Magdala,” a fishing village.  A fishing village called Magdala certainly existed later, but there is no historical record of it existing at the time of Christ.

Elizabeth Schrader, and now many others, believe that Magdalene is a title or a nickname. Luke states it in a way that suggests this may be so when he says that she is “Mary, called the Magdalene.” Migdal in Hebrew means Tower and has often been traditionally associated with the return of the Messiah based on this verse from Micah 4:8, “And you, O tower of the flock [Migdal Eder], hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.”

So Mary could both be from Bethany, and be called Magdalene.

Just as Peter is called “the Rock”, we see evidence that Mary may have been called “The Tower.”

If Mary of Bethany is Mary Magdalene, then we may be seeing just why she was muted and diluted. In John’s gospel, Mary is a central figure, crucial as witness to Jesus’ largest miracles, the one to see and understand before anyone else. 

If you were a person in a position of power, would you lift up a voice you felt was threatening? Or would you mute it?

A friend of mine, Tania Runyan, has a beautiful poem called the Empty Tomb in her collection called A Thousand Vessels.

  John 20

That woman was the first word spoken
must have taken even the angels by surprise,

who were used to bringing their fiery glory
down to the clanging swords of battlefields,

to priests tugging at their beards
in lamentation, to voices thundering in temples

and muscles hefting stones from mountaintops,
not to a trembling woman whose hair clung

to her neck with tears, who for a moment
held the souls of the nations like a basket of figs.

For just a moment, Mary called Magdalene was the only person in the story who knew.

We may be looking here at one of the oldest and most profoundly stubborn arguments of the church. Who do we follow? Peter the Rock or Mary the Tower?

And if John’s gospel originally had only one Mary, then she has all the important parts. In fact, many scholars believe that the original book of John may have ended in chapter 20, chopping off  Peter’s restoration story in John 21, and leaving him as the disciple who denied Jesus three times. There is a summary chapter in John 20 that feels like the ending of the book, then an additional chapter that lets Peter reverse his denial and receive his new mission. This may have been in acquiescence to people who believed in Peter’s primacy.

So, what if the history books got it a bit twisted? What if 'The Rock' had a partner in 'The Tower'—not just in spirit, but in the very fabric of early Christian leadership? The thought isn't just fascinating; it's revolutionary.

Imagine re-painting the frescoes of faith history with Mary standing tall next to Peter. This isn't about rewriting the past; it's about recognizing the possibility of a richer, more inclusive story that might have been muted long ago. By exploring these "what ifs," we're not just digging through old texts—we're uncovering potential blueprints for a modern faith community where everyone's voice is valued equally.

Let's lean into this conversation with open minds and perhaps a bit of daring. After all, rediscovering 'The Tower' alongside 'The Rock' might just offer us a glimpse into a future where the foundations of faith are as diverse as its followers. Perhaps its time to climb that tower and change the view to see where it leads us—forward, upward, together.

Think someone needs to read this post? I’d love it if you would share.

Looking for more?:

A Collection of Dr. Schrader-Polczer’s Papers, including “Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century," quoted in this article.

Her Presentation on Mary Magdalene

The Substack of Diana Butler Bass with the transcript and original audio of her presentation on this work, as sampled in the podcast version of this article.

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