A single-clause greeting that carries more freight than any other line in 1 Peter. Three things are being said, and two of them are disputed.

What is not disputed: the verb is the ordinary Hellenistic letter-closing formula, and Mark is named as the author’s son in the fictive-kinship sense standard in early Christian usage.

What is disputed: (1) the identity of the feminine συνεκλεκτή — a woman (the author’s wife? a named patroness?) or the local assembly, with ἐκκλησία understood; (2) whether Βαβυλών names the Mesopotamian city, an Egyptian garrison town, or — most probably — Rome under an apocalyptic cipher.

The translation policy here is restraint. English can carry a bare feminine substantive (‘the one … who is chosen together with you’) and a bare place-name, so both are carried bare. Supplying ‘church’ or ‘Rome’ in the reading text would resolve in the translation what the Greek leaves open (§4), and both choices bear directly on the letter’s provenance and date.

Ordinary Hellenistic letter-vocabulary, abundant in the documentary papyri, where the closing greeting-exchange is a fixed structural element. The devotional warmth English readers hear in ‘greet’ within a NT context is later Christian accretion, not lexical content.

The corpus policy (fixed at Phil 4:21) is one English root at every occurrence, with ‘send greetings’ permitted for the third-person indicative where English idiom requires it. That is exactly the case here: ἀσπάζεται is third singular, and English ‘she greets you’ reads oddly at the head of a clause, so the reading text places the subject first.

Note the pattern across 1 Pet 5:13-14: third-person indicative (ἀσπάζεται, greetings conveyed) followed by second-person imperative (ἀσπάσασθε, greetings commanded). Paul does the same thing at Rom 16:16 and 1 Cor 16:19-20. The pairing is formulaic, and the same English root must serve both.

Built onbdag

NT hapax; a double compound, σύν + ἐκλεκτός (‘chosen’), substantivized as a feminine singular. Morphology first: the σύν- makes the choosing shared — chosen along with someone, and the natural someone is the addressees, who are called ἐκλεκτοί in the letter’s own opening (1 Pet 1:1, ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις). The word is therefore not a title of dignity but a claim of common standing. The corpus keeps σύν-compounds audible in English at every occurrence (συνεργός, σύμψυχος, συγκοινωνός, συμμιμητής), and the same rule applies here: ‘chosen together with you,’ not ‘elect.’

The hard question is the referent of the feminine.

The rendering keeps the bare feminine substantive with a bracketed noun in the literal tier and no supplied noun in the reading text. Adopting ‘the church in Babylon’ would reproduce the ancient scribal gloss rather than the text.

Built onbdag · metzger-tc · na28

Proposed — pending reviewPaul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996)

The name is a transliteration of Akkadian Bāb-ili via Hebrew בָּבֶל, and in the LXX and Jewish apocalyptic it is never merely geographical: it is the name of the imperial power that destroys the temple and deports the people of God (Ps 136:1 LXX; Isa 13; Jer 50-51; Dan 4). That freight is what makes it usable as a cipher.

The rendering transliterates and leaves it. Substituting ‘Rome’ in the reading text would settle the letter’s provenance — and with it much of the authorship debate — by a translator’s decision rather than by argument (§4, §9). The apparatus carries the identification; the text does not.

Built onbdag · hurtado-ljc

Proposed — pending reviewJohn H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)

υἱός here is fictive kinship, not descent — the standard early-Christian idiom for a junior colleague standing in a relation of discipleship or convert-ship (cf. Paul’s Τιμόθεον, τέκνον μου, 1 Cor 4:17; 1 Tim 1:2). The corpus reserves ‘son’ for υἱός and ‘child’ for τέκνον so that inheritance-theology is not imported where the softer word was used; here the harder word stands, and the note carries the fictive sense rather than the rendering softening it to ‘my dear child.’

Which Mark is unstated. The name was among the commonest Latin praenomina-become-cognomina in the Greek East, so the identification with John Mark of Acts 12:12, 25; 15:37-39 and Col 4:10 rests on the convergence of the Rome tradition, not on the name.

Note the syntax: one verb (ἀσπάζεται, singular) governs two coordinated subjects. Greek permits a singular verb agreeing with the nearer subject; English does not, hence the reading text’s ‘and so does Mark.’ The compression should be recorded, since it is what makes the woman-and-Mark pairing read as one sending party.

Built onbdag · bdf

The clause is verb-initial (ἀσπάζεται ὑμᾶς), which is the unmarked pattern for the Hellenistic greeting formula and carries no emphasis; the fronted verb simply signals the closing.

The subject is built on a single feminine article governing a prepositional phrase in attributive position: ἡ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι συνεκλεκτή — literally ‘the in-Babylon co-chosen [one].’ This is the same construction the corpus fixes at Phil 4:21 (οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ ἀδελφοί) and Gal 4:26 (ἡ ἄνω Ἰερουσαλήμ): the article converts the prepositional phrase into a restrictive modifier. The literal tier keeps the wooden order to display it; smooth English resolves to a relative clause.

One consequence worth marking: because the article is doing double duty — substantivizing the adjective and attaching the locative — no head noun ever appears. That is the whole textual problem of the verse. Greek can leave the noun to the article; English cannot, and every English rendering either brackets a supplement or reorganizes the phrase.

Built onbdf

NA28 prints ἡ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι συνεκλεκτή without variation in the critical text, and the reading is secure in the earliest witnesses.

A number of later witnesses and part of the versional tradition insert ἐκκλησία — ‘the church in Babylon, chosen together with you.’ This is transparently secondary: it is the easier reading, it resolves an ellipsis, and it moves in the direction scribes always move (toward specification). Its evidential value is not textual but historical: it shows that the corporate construal of the feminine was already the working assumption of readers in antiquity.

Some witnesses also add ἀδελφός with Mark or vary the possessive. Neither affects sense.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

Proposed — pending reviewKaren H. Jobes, 1 Peter, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005)

Eusebius, reporting Papias, takes Βαβυλών as Rome and links the verse to Mark’s association with Peter in the capital (Hist. eccl. 2.15.2) — the earliest surviving reading of the line, and it treats the cipher as obvious rather than as something needing defense. That is worth weighing: for a second-century reader in the Greek-speaking church, ‘Babylon’ in a Christian letter apparently did not require explanation.

The Latin tradition renders the feminine as ecclesia (following, or generating, the same construal as the Greek gloss), which shows the corporate reading fixed in the West as well. The versions therefore witness a broad early consensus on the assembly-reading of συνεκλεκτή and the Rome-reading of Βαβυλών — but consensus in reception is reception, not lexical evidence (§11), and the bare Greek remains bare.

Built onhurtado-ljc

Proposed — pending reviewEusebius of Caesarea, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. Kirsopp Lake and J. E. L. Oulton, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926-1932)

Two decisions in this one clause carry the letter’s whole historical frame. If Βαβυλών is Rome and συνεκλεκτή is the Roman assembly, then 1 Peter is a letter from the imperial capital to the dispersed communities of Asia Minor, written by (or in the name of) an apostle whose associate Mark is in the same city — and the exile-theology of 1:1 and 2:11 closes the circle at 5:13. If Βαβυλών is literal and the feminine is a woman, the letter’s provenance and much of its argument look different.

A translator who prints ‘the church in Rome sends greetings’ has decided all of that silently, in words the reader will take for the text. The rendering here declines that: the feminine stays feminine, the place-name stays transliterated, and the identification is argued where it can be checked.

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