In Romans 16:7, is the correct translation ‘Junia’ (female) or ‘Junias’ (male), and in what way is he or she ‘of note among the apostles’?
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1998.
Regarding Romans 16:7, a few early manuscripts give the name as 'Ioulian', instead of 'Iounian'. The original reading should doubtless be 'Iounian'. On that most people agree. But this is a very small point compared with the next question of how this word should be accented in Greek.
Should it be Ἰουνιᾶν (Iounian), which is the accusative of Ἰουνιᾶς (Iounias, English = Junias), which, being masculine, is a man's name; or Ἰουνίαν (Iounian), which is the accusative of the feminine Ἰουνία (Iounia), the Greek equivalent of the common Roman female name 'Junia'.
As you will know, accents are not normally used in the Greek manuscripts, and therefore it is open to editors and translators to say which they think it should be. Certainly, more modern expositors choose that accentuation which would yield the female name 'Junia'.
The next question is: How should the phrase 'of note among the apostles' be understood? There are two possible interpretations:
'Outstanding in the eyes of the apostles', i.e. according to the judgment of the apostles. A similar use of ἐν (en, English = in, with dative 'by', 'from') plus the dative case is found at the end of 1 Corinthians 14:11: 'He who speaks will be in my judgment a barbarian'.
The phrase could be taken to mean 'outstanding among the apostles', that is 'outstanding in the group who may be designated apostles'. Professor Cranfield, in his International Critical Commentary on Romans, comments:
on this interpretation 'the apostles' must be given a wider sense, as denoting those itinerant missionaries who are recognised by the churches as constituting a distinct group among the participants in the work of spreading the gospel.
In Acts 14:4, for instance, the term 'the apostles' is used of Paul and Barnabas, even though Barnabas was not an apostle in the same sense as Paul was an apostle (see also Acts 14:14). In other words, the term 'apostle' is here being used in the same sense as we nowadays use its Latin equivalent 'missionary'; etymologically, apostolos in Greek simply means 'one who is sent'. The status of the one who is sent, whether he is one of the twelve apostles, or an apostle in some lesser sense, must be determined by the context.
When you further write in your letter that you suspect that the church hierarchy may have deliberately taken a hard line on the role of competent, dedicated female disciples of our Lord Jesus, and cite Romans 16:7 as a possible example of this, I am at a little loss to understand your meaning. According to Cranfield,
the second interpretation given above, namely that Junia was outstanding among the missionaries, is the way in which it was understood by the patristic commentators (it would seem, without exception).
And have there not been, in the course of the last one hundred and fifty years, many very noble women missionaries in many different countries? We all regard them with the highest respect and admiration, but it seems to me that it is only in recent decades that many of these women missionaries have clamoured to be given position as elders in the churches, or as leaders of worship in the public meetings of the church.
I personally know of outstanding female missionaries who almost single-handedly have built up mission stations, and yet who would decry the modern pressure for women to take on the roles of leadership and public preaching in the church.
Each one of us has his or her own personal belief, and doubtless sometimes we allow our beliefs to determine our exegesis rather than allowing the true exegesis to determine our beliefs; but in all the discussion we must try not to wring deductions out of the Greek that the Greek will hardly bear, in order to support our own particular views.
Yours very sincerely in Christ,
