Publication success for Wycliffe BTh student, Marieke Sybrandi

October 2024

Congratulations to Marieke Sybrandi, whose BTh undergraduate work entitled Women leaders lost in translation?: A Study in Romans 16:1-16 has been published in the peer-reviewed journal The Expository Times.

Marieke Sybrandi says:

"My paper is a study of Romans 16:1-16 where Paul praises female leaders in the early church. It shows that the key phrases Paul uses to describe these women have often been obscured in translations and interpretations of the text."

"Based on a careful reading of the Greek text, my paper argues that terms and phrases relating to these women have not always been given their wider sense, thereby diminishing or denying the (ministry and leadership) roles of women in the early church."

Marieke is an ordinand on the Bachelor of Theology (BTh) course, now in her final year, but she wrote the paper in her second year.

She says: "I'm really grateful for all the encouragement and support I received from the Wycliffe tutors throughout the process of researching and writing. They are truly awesome!"

Dr Peter Head, Tutorial Fellow in New Testament, says:

When Marieke was assigned the passage for a text class, she got quite angry with some of the interpretation; wrestled with it more fully using her New Testament Greek; and wrote a great essay that I suggested she might rework into a paper for potential publication.

In getting this published she has shown she has confidence in herself, her academic training, and her own walk with the Lord and vocation to ministry. She has stepped boldly and bravely into a complex problem, and into a field where different views have been taken, and offered solutions that are now being taken seriously by scholars and theologians around the world. 

Revd Dr Justyn Terry, Academic Dean, says: "I am delighted to see Marieke get this paper published in the Expository Times. At the top end of the essay marking scale, grade descriptors sometimes mention ‘being of a publishable standard’, but it is very rare indeed to see undergraduate essays reach that level. Marieke has achieved that very distinction, and it is wonderful to see. Well done Marieke!"

The Expository Times is a well-regarded academic journal of biblical studies, theology, and ministry founded in 1889 by Scottish theologian James Hastings. It describes its distinctive positioning as "successfully combining an interest in all pastoral matters, practical and theoretical, with the latest international biblical and theological scholarship".