NYMPH (PERSON) . Nympha and “the church in his house” are received by Paul at the end of Colossians (4:15). It can be inferred from the text that he lived in Laodicea, although there is an ambiguity in the reference that leads some commentators to think that his house was in Colossae or Hierapolis. One theory is that, by analogy with sending greetings to the Laodiceans just before at 4:15, Nympha must be the church at Hierapolis since that group is not otherwise greeted in the letter (Gielen 1986:123-24). . By extension of this analogy, it has also been reasoned that just as Paul evidently refers to the church at Laodicea as the local church, thus not partial, the church at Nympha’s house must be the complete church at Hierapolis (Gielen 1986: 123-24). Supposedly Nympha was not only a hostess but also a leader of that local church.
As head of the family, Nympha was probably widowed or unmarried, but it cannot be excluded that she was a married woman who acted quite independently. It is unclear how she came to know Paul. Since she is not known to have visited Colossae, Laodicea, or Hierapolis, she may have met him in Ephesus.
The house of Nymphas in the NT as a female Christian has been preserved only at the cost of debate. While the RSV assumes her gender to be feminine, since her name in Greek is cited only in the accusative case, Nymphan, which could refer to a woman named Nympha or a man named Nymphas, other translations have interpreted this person in various ways. ways. The issue has been complicated by manuscript variations for the possessive pronoun modifying “house” in Col 4:15. Some texts say autēs, “she”, others autou, “his”, and still others, autōn, “his hers.” Since the female reading is the most difficult to explain, it is most likely the original. The masculine form was probably a correction of the feminine by copyists who could not imagine a woman in such a leadership role. The “his hers” reading of her could have been substituted when the scribes included the earlier mention of “brothers” in Col 4:15 in the pronoun.
Bibliography
Gielen, M. 1986. Zur Interpretation der paulinischen Formel hē kat ‘oikon ekklēsia. ZNW 77: 109-25.
Gillman, FM 1989. Women Who Knew Paul. Wilmington.
FLORENCE MORGAN GILLMAN