
Second John occupies a rather peripheral place in the New Testament canon. Consisting of a mere thirteen verses and often viewed as a kind of abstract of 1 John, the letter has traditionally not garnered much individual attention. While scholars have long noted that the opening address of the letter is ambiguous, in some cases even problematic, the received reading that is printed in all Greek editions of the New Testament for the last 150 years is ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ and is typically translated as “to an elect lady.” The nearly universal view in modern scholarship is to take “elect lady” as a metonym for a church that is metaphorically personified as a woman.