Re: Junia endgueltig!

From: Larry Swain (lswain@wln.com)
Date: Tue Dec 05 1995 - 21:41:11 EST


On Tue, 5 Dec 1995 BibAnsMan@aol.com wrote:

> I may have missed it if you talked about it previously. But another
> significant issue regarding Romans 16:7 is the phrase hOITINES EISIN EPISHMOI
> EN TOIS APOSTOLOIS. What does this mean? Does it mean "outstanding _among_
> the apostles" ? Does it necessarily imply that IOUNIA / IOUNIAN _is_ an
> apostle or popular in the midst of the apostles in a different sense? This
> needs to be discussed.

It is my understanding, although I am willing to be corrected by those
worthies on this list who know more than I, that the ambiguity is as real
in Greek as in English. Although it should be pointed out historically
speaking that since Clement and Origen among others understand this as
referring to these two people as holders of the office of apostle, not as
merely well known by the 12. This leads us to: 1) Being native Greek
speakers and thus closer to the text than we, perhaps the ambiguity
present to us was not as present to them and 2) they may have also been
drawing on tradition In any case, I know of no patristic evidence for
the first 400 years to contradict the interpretation that Andronicus and
Junia are apostles and that the latter was a woman.

Larry Swain
Parmly Billings Library
lswain@wln.com



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