Customer Reviews

Junia: The First Woman Apostle

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Eldon Jay Epp has written an interesting, scholarly text exploring the identity of one of the persons mentioned by the apostle Paul in Romans 16.7, Junia. Some translations have rendered the name Junias, a masculine name, but the King James Version of the bible actual has the word Junia included (together with Andronicus in the same verse). Why is there confusion, and why is this important?

Perhaps the most significant reason for figuring out the gender of this person is not just because of the list of names, but because of the title the apostle Paul gives to the persons mentioned in Romans 16.7 - he calls them apostles. Again the KJV has Paul referring to them as 'my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles'; the NIV translates this as, 'They are outstanding among the apostles', but translates the name 'Junia' as 'Junias'. Why the change?

Epp traces both exegetical ideas as well as the history of exegetical and translation practice with regard to this name to discover that, with rather few exceptions, the critical editions of Greek texts and translations prior to the twentieth century carried the name Junia as a female name, but that in the early twentieth century, a change was made to change the name to a masculine form, in part because of the view that Paul would never refer to a female with the appellation of 'apostle'.

Epp crafts his argumentation well, showing side examples of textual criticism exegetical technique with other difficult passages, with particular emphasis on different kinds of readings possible in verses and pericopes dealing with gender issues.

Perhaps one of the more telling issues apart from the translation of the Bible itself is that of the names Junia and Junias themselves. Whereas Junia is a common name in antiquity, attested to in many documents beyond the biblical texts for women throughout the Roman world, there are no examples of the masculine form of the name, Junias, anywhere. Early biblical commentators such as Origen, John Chyrsostom, Jerome and Abelard make reference to Junia, Chyrsostom making the remark that it was a significant thing that Paul recognised her as an apostle.

Epp has provided an incredibly well-documented text, with extensive notes, charts and tabular information, and no fewer than five different indexes. The bibliographic information goes on for thirteen pages (which is a significant amount, considering the base text itself barely tops eighty pages). This grew out of an article Epp was writing, but became a more significant project, worthy of being a stand-alone text.

This is not a book for general or light reading - it is a scholarly, academic text, and not a narrative account or fictionalised biography of the person Junia, about whom we can really only guess at any such details as might comprise a worthwhile biography.

Those who are interested in biblical exegetical scholarship (and some of the motivations that lie behind how and why certain translations are as they are), and for students in seminary, upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, as well as biblical scholars themselves, this can prove to be a fascinating and worthwhile text.

Eldon Jay Epp is a professor at Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland (a school I like very much) and president of the Society of Biblical Literature (whose joint conferences with AAR I've attended often in the past). As a teacher and scholar, I suspect he would be pleased to know I learned many new things reading this book, as most any reader will.

After this work, there really aren't any arguments left for giving Junia a sex change, or acting as if she wasn't in full apostolic authority. Epp goes through source by source, text by text, and looks at every scholarly Biblical reference to Junia/Junias over the last two thousand years. It is an astounding litany of sexism and mysogyny. Surprisingly, she is fully woman, even through the extreme anti-feminism of later Church Fathers like Chryostome. It is only in the late Middle Ages that she starts to be masculinized; it is only in the 1920s that we really start to see her made such in the Greek texts.

What a different world it would be if we grew up reading in English about a female apostle! Kudos to recent translations like the NRSV and New American Bible, who are using good scholarship in referring to Junia. Shame on those like The Message (alone with only the CEV), bucking the more recent scholarly trend and insisting on Junias. Epp shows how much our own culture influences our translation, even to the point of diacritical marks.

A word of warning- this is a highly scholarly work. If you don't know Greek, you probably won't enjoy it. I have only a smattering of Greek, and had to wade through a good deal of grammar and manuscript analysis terms that I had no understanding of. I still enjoyed the book because of my commitment to women's empowerment and recognition of Junia, but for most without a textual analysis background, this book will seem too heavy. This is the kind of work that scholars typically share with only each other.

I wish people would read a book before posting a comment. This book is a textual criticism into the study of Romans 16:7. It is completely void of any Feminist theology or writing.

Look at the following Bible translations.

English standard Version

Rom 16:7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

American Standard Version

Rom 16:7 Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also have been in Christ before me.

New American Standard Bible

Rom 16:7 Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, who are outstanding among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

King James Bible

Rom 16:7 Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

Both Junia and Junias carry the Strong's number 2458.

You can see from the Bible versions above. The KJV, ESV, both use the Female name while ASV and NASB use the Male name. It is interesting the the male is shown to be an Apostle in the NASB.

The book is about 80 pages with about 55 pages of notes, bibliography and index's. It is well documented and reads with a textual criticism style of writing. A nice book for your library, especially if you like a little controversy.

Epp has produced a model essay for both the scholar (who needs precise proof for every assertion) and the seriously interested lay person (who wants clarity in the argument plus clear signals as to where he may skim over the scholarly details). It is a book I wish I had written; it is a book I wish I COULD have written!

The book is so important for the question of women's ministry in the church that I have purchased and given away several copies.

It is true, however, that it is not for the casual reader.

Did Paul greet a woman apostle named Junia in Romans 16:7? This book conclusively demonstrates that he did. Thus, there was at least one woman among the original apostles. What that means for the question of ordination of women in the modern church, you might as well guess.

"Junia" by Eldon Jay Epp is not an easy read. It looks like an extensive article of the kind usually published in scholarly journals with a very restricted circulation. Even I found it difficult to read, and I have studied church history on university level! Apparently, more popularized works on Junia also exist. Still, Epp's book may be worth a try if you are really interested in the subject.

The book is first and foremost a work of text criticism. Epp wants to prove that the person greeted by Paul in Romans really was named Junia (a female name) and really was an apostle. He mentions the broader issues of women in the early church, or gender bias among modern Bible translators, more in passing. Still, he is clearly sympathetic to those who feel that the role of women in the church should be expanded. Only scholarly decorum stops him from saying what he *really* thinks of those Bible translators that have turned Junia into a male! In my opinion, Epp succeeds in his (seemingly) limited task, and the case of Junia can now be considered closed. What remains is drawing the conclusions...

In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul writes the following: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me". In the original Greek, the name Junia is rendered "Iunian". Depending on how the name is accented, it could be either a male or a female name. However, the oldest extant manuscripts lack accents altogether, so no help there. Somewhat later manuscripts, with a few exceptions, accent the name as female. Sometimes, they give the variant reading "Julia", obviously a female name. Also, virtually all Christian writers until the 13th century explicitly regarded Junia as a woman. This is true even of Church fathers who opposed women ordination above the level of deaconess! Thus, John Chrysostom writes concerning Andronicus and Junia: "To be an apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the apostles - just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were outstanding on the basis of their works and virtuous actions. Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was even deemed worthy of the title of apostle". Other ancient commentators who regarded Junia as a woman include Origen, Ambrose, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, John Damascene, Oeconomius, Abelard and Peter Lombard. How's that for Church tradition? The only real exception seems to be Epiphanius, but he also regards Prisca as a man, despite the fact that the New Testament clearly indicates that she was, of course, a woman. (Paul greets Prisca in Romans 16:3. She is also mentioned in Acts.)

Despite all this, many modern translators of the Bible have turned Junia into a man, claiming that the name really should be "Junias". During most of the 20th century, this male version of the name was included in critical text editions of the New Testament, in other words the Greek text most translators use when rendering the NT into modern English. One such "critical" edition even claimed that all ancient manuscripts attest the male name, despite the fact that the name is unaccented in these manuscripts and clearly seen as female by the Church fathers! Since Epp is too kind-hearted to cry hoax and fraud, I will do it for him. We are dealing with an ideologically motivated cover up here, of truly major proportions. Epp also points out that the name "Junias" doesn't really exist in *any* ancient documents or inscriptions whatsoever. It only exists in very late, masculinized versions of the letter of Paul to the Romans!

The last line of defence of the androcentrists is to admit that Junia was indeed a woman, but that the rest of Paul's greeting doesn't mean that she was an apostle, but only well-known to the apostles. (The poor male Andronicus is automatically demoted, too. Collateral damage?) Epp therefore devotes a chapter to rejecting this possibility as well. Apart from various esoteric grammatical considerations, the main argument is once again ancient Church tradition. Chrysostom, who obviously understood Greek, assumed that Junia was titled apostle.

Will the patriarchalists accept the results of this research? My guess is that they will eventually split into two camps. One camp will argue that Junia, although a woman, wasn't an apostle. The other camp will adopt the position of Chrysostom, which is also that of Eastern Orthodoxy: Junia was greeted by Paul as an apostle, but the title was honorific, and therefore women can't be ordained priests and bishops anyway. Of course, there is no indication in Romans that Paul was using the term apostle as a honorific title. Epp discusses this too.

Conclusion: Junia was indeed the first woman apostle. QED.

Junia, The First Woman Apostle by Harkness Professor of Biblical Literature emeritus at Case Western Reserve University and President of the Society of Biblical Literature is NOT so much a text on Junia, mentioned in Chapter 16:7 of Paul's letter to the Romans as it is a case study on the necessity, techniques, and results of Biblical text criticism.

The story of the book has been well told by other reviewers, and the single reviewer who gave it a single star was not being snarky by doing so (but he should have disqualified himself from reviewing the book.) I will repeat his point and mine, above, that this is not a book like you will typically find written about Ruth or Deborah or Sarah or even Jezebel, some of the more famous females in the Bible, because all we have about this person, 'porminant among the apostles', is that single verse. So what's all the fuss.

The fuss is whether or not this 'prominant apostle' was a man or a woman. Greek has male and female versions of the same name. English has a very few like this, like Frances and Francis.In our earliest Greek sources, the name appears to be female, up to and including Erasmus' authoritative Greek text of 1516. For some reason, Luther translated the name into a male word in his German translation, and many revisions of Greek texts up to the 20th century make the name male.

Almost in embarrasment over the mistake, the current authoritative Greek New Testament, the Nestle- Alland text, quietly, and with no notice made of the fact, recently changed the name from male to female, returning to us the person of 'The First Woman Apostle'. As it should be, the best place for this book is in a college classroom, or in the hands of someone who really wants to know how detailed textual detective work is done, and why whole articles, let alone whole books, can be written on a single word in the Bible.

This is definitely not a 'light weight' book. I have a PhD and had difficulty wading through it. If you are not totally familiar with exegesis, hermeneutics, and scholarly publications, you may want to pass this one by. If that is your forte then you will thrill at the scholarly undertaking here.

This book makes "a brief history of time" look like a children's storybook. It's basically a learned journal article republished as a book. If you're not into researching the use of the ablative in Greek sentence structures this is not for you.

The current Junia fad means that any book on the subject will be bought. I picked it up, read the first and last couple of paragraphs and am about to consign it untouched to my local feminist theology library. Junia is an important find for modern Christianity and a great gift to women struggling to assert their rightful their place in the last great male-dominated western institutions. This book only helps with a technical proof of Junia's existence. It gives no sense of who she might have been, why she is important or what she means today. It also ignores that Junia has been recognised as a saint in the Orthodox Church since the time of her death.

Perhaps it is of importance to "sola scriptura" Christians since it provides the technical tools to argue the correct gender for Junia and her appellation of Apostle.

PS Buy "The Lost Apostle"; it is a much easier and more motivational read.