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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Junia/s
  • Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 09:45:21 -0400

Licia Kuenning asks:

>>Has anyone any insight on Romans 16:7, where Paul greets Andronicus and
Junia(s), as to whether the last named was male or female? And if female,
was she Andronicus' wife? Chrysostom assumes this person was a woman; I am
not aware of any earlier commentary on the question. I have seen it argued
that Chrysostom's view should be accepted as the earliest testimony on the
subject; I've also seen it argued that a woman would not have been called an
apostle.<<

It may depend on what you think the title "apostle" was supposed to signify.
Christians almost universally treat it as a special title for the highest
rank of traveling religious missionaries. Historically, Christian exegetes
liked to restrict apostleship to persons of the male gender. Technically,
Junias can be a male name even though the word itself takes the feminine
form, so commentators have had the ability to get around the possibility of
a female apostle if it bothered them.

APOSTOLOS can also refer to other types of emissaries. After the war of
66-70, the term was used of those appointed by the chief Jewish authority in
Jamnia to gather free-will offerings for the poor of Judea from the Jews of
the Diaspora, and bring them back safely. They also acted as emissaries
between communities. It is also known that before the war that cash
offerings were also flowing into Jerusalem, but we do not have direct
evidence for the organizational structure or the official titles.
Personally, I feel that it is unlikely that the later Jewish use of the term
was derived from Christian use, but more likely the term was independently
picked up from common Hellenistic usage or was one of the more-or-less
traditional terms for Jewish offering-collection emissaries before the war
as well.

The point of this is that a 5th century CE epitaph to a 14 year old girl
from Venosa in Southern Italy has survived that refers to two apostles and
two teachers. As a result, "apostles" in this time were at least at times
working in pairs, possibly husband & wife, but the inscription is hard to
understand so my interpretation is just a guess. The phrase is "quei
dixerunt t(h)r<e>nus (= QRHNOUS) duo apostuli et duo rebbites." [Schurer,
_History of the Jewish People_, revised ed., vol III.i, 1986, pg 125] With
the help of The Perseus Project on the web, I get: "(who? which? what? what
kind of a? - masc.nom.sg or dative.sg all genders) (to say, speak, utter,
tell, mention, relate, affirm, declare, state, assert - perf.ind.act.3p.pl)
(a funeral-song, dirge, lament - masc.acc.pl) (two) (apostles) (also, too,
besides, moreover, likewise, as well, even) (two) (teachers)."

I sometimes have to wonder whether Paul and the other "apostles" to which he
refers were not these kind of authorized offering-collectors, fighting over
territory and in the case of Paul fighting over the significance of the
offerings he obtained from his Gentile associates. I see Paul as seeking to
validate his view that his followers should be considered a part of greater
Israel, by lobbying to get their offerings accepted by temple authorities in
Jerusalem as valid religious dues.

This way of looking at the term "apostle" can have serious implications for
the way we interpret the historical clues found in the Pauline letters and
the book of Acts.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA






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