Philippians 4:2

Εὐοδίαν. So certainly, not Εὐωδίαν, which appears in a very few MSS. not of high authority.

2. Εὐοδίαν … Συντυχὴν. Both are feminine names (the bearers are referred to as women just below, Philippians 4:3), and both are known in the inscriptions. Lightfoot quotes (from the collections of Gruter and Muratori) e.g. Euhodia, Euodia, Syntyche, Suntyche, Syntiche. In Tindale and ‘Cranmer’ the second name appears as “Sintiches,” intended (like Euodias, shortened from Euodianus) to be masculine. But the inscriptions give neither Euodias nor Syntyches; this last would be at best a very doubtful variant for (the regular) Syntychus.

We know nothing of Euodia and Syntyche outside this passage. They may have been διάκονοι τῆς ἐκκλησίας (Romans 16:1); they had certainly given St Paul active help. Perhaps their high reputation had ensnared them in self-esteem and so led to mutual jealousy.—Lightfoot (Phil., pp. 55–57) points out that “the active zeal of the women [in the Macedonian missions] is a remarkable fact, without a parallel in the Apostle’s history elsewhere, and only to be compared with their prominence at an earlier date in the personal ministry of our Lord”; and that “the extant Macedonian inscriptions seem to assign to the sex a higher social influence than is common among the civilized nations of antiquity.” See above, Introduction, ch. i.

As a curiosity of interpretation Ellicott (see also Lightfoot, p. 170) mentions the conjectures of Schwegler (developed by Volkmar) that the two names are really designations of Church-parties, and were devised with a meaning: “Euodia,” “right-path,” is orthodoxy, i.e. Petrinism; Syntyche, “partner,” symbolizes the incorporation of the Gentiles, Paulinism. Of course this theory views the Epistle as a fabricated eirenicon, belonging to an after-generation.