Suzanne McCarthy has put us in her debt with her series on Junia, the female apostle. Reading through Romans 9-16 by Jimmy Dunn, I was struck by the intense discussion about the now famous Junia(s). Was she a woman or a man? What's the difference? Was she an apostle? Married? Sister? WHAT? The assumption that it must be male is a striking indictment of male presumption regarding the character and structure of earliest Christianity... The straightforward description "the apostles" and the following clause, together strongly suggest that Andronicus and Junia belonged to the large group of those appointed apostles by the risen Christ in 1 Cor 15:7. That is, they belonged most probably to the closed group of apostles appointed directly by the risen Christ in a limited period following the resurrection. This would give Andronicus and Junia a higher status in the eyes of Paul and of others... We may firmly conclude that one of the foundation apostles of Christianity was a woman and wife... That they had been converted before Paul puts them among the earliest Palestinian Christians, probably the Hellenists in Jerusalem (Acts 6-8)... These were Jewish Christians, but also apostles, and indeed apostles "prominent" among the earliest leadership of the first church(es)... [Dunn, Romans 9-16, pg. 895] Scholarship has made this discussion very fascinating, and the comments of Suzanne McCarthy aid some of the interesting technical bits that all play a major part in this complex discussion of women in the leadership of earliest Christianity... Enjoy...
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