From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 05 1995 - 21:52:07 EST
At 9:46 AM 12/5/95, 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.
I agree this needs to be discussed, although it appears there wasn't as
much interest in the question before the possibility that one of the
persons thus described is a woman came to be considered a bit more
seriously.
It would seem to me that the APOSTOLOI here are not likely to be equated
either with "the Twelve" nor with simple "messengers" or "envoys" entrusted
with a dispatch to deliver, such as, for instance, those sent with the
decree of the Apostolic Council described in Acts 15. Isn't it most likely
that the word means "missionaries?" Who are the "missionaries?"
There are numerous partial questions here, all of them, I think, previously
discussed many times in many a forum. I raise them only because they bear
on the question how we are to understand the term here, (And I will state
my OPINION on these questions and hope I will not find myself accused of
making some sort of dogmatic assertion of an objective fact. I have never
tried to disguise my opinion as something other than an opinion nor have I
argued that I or anyone else can express a judgment on a question in the
Greek text of the NT without having theological presuppositions. What I
HAVE argued is that directly posing questions or stating positions that are
theological and are not intimately linked to a question regarding the Greek
text is more likely to start flame-wars on the list, which is precisely
what seems to have happened when I did just that in my post on 1 Timothy
2).
(1) What happened to "the Twelve" and how much do we really know about
them? It has always struck me as curious that the lists presented in the
different gospels do not quite coincide; I know that there are
extra-canonical traditions regarding specific members of group of "twelve,"
but my impression is that the number itself is more solidly attested in the
gospel tradition than the names of persons constituting it. There are, of
course, the principals: the Marcan "group of four" comprising the sons of
Zebedee and and Peter and Andrew. It seems to me that there are 3 pretty
solid traditions about the 12: (a) they were from the outset
APOSTOLOI--evangelists (Mk 3:14 par; Mk also says they were to "be with
him"); (b) the "so-called" Q tradition that the twelve are to eat and drink
with Jesus and sit on thrones at the parousia of Jesus and judge the 12
tribes (Lk 22:30; Mt 19:28); (c) they were, as a group, a second tier of
witnesses to the resurrection, after Peter (1 Cor 15:5). I would assume
that the traditions of appearances on Easter evening are linked to this
last tradition.
What is much less clear to me is the relationship between the Twelve and
the Seven named in Acts 6. Although Luke's account indicates that the Seven
were chosen to look after distribution of supplies to widows and orphans in
the Jerusalem community, the activity in which he shows them, beginning
with Stephen, as actively engaged is evangelism, and specifically to
Greek-speaking Jews, apparently at the same time that the Twelve are
evangelizing Aramaic-speaking Jews. Then in Acts 8 it is said that there
was a great persecution following the stoning of Stephen, and that
consequently PANTES DIESPARHSAN KATA TAS XWRAS THS IOUDAIAS KAI SAMAREIAS
PLHN TWN APOSTOLWN. Presumably the APOSTOLOI of 8:1 refers to the Twelve.
But why were they allowed to stay in Jerusalem? Perhaps because the gospel
they were preaching was not so radical as the gospel that the
"Hellenists"--the Seven minus Stephen--were preaching, not so radical as to
suggest the supplanting of Israel by a new people of God. Well, all this is
speculation, of course; I'm just trying to paint the reasonable likelihood
that the Seven were perhaps categorized as APOSTOLOI.
(2) Who are the Seventy (or Seventy-two) of Luke's missionary expedition
(Lk 10)? Jesus APESTEILEN AUTOUS (10:1): were they called APOSTOLOI? And
what's the significance of the number 70 or 72? 6 elders from each of the
12 tribes of Israel, like the elders accompanying Moses up Sinai/Horeb?
(3) Is Apollos an APOSTOLOS? I would think so. What of those to whom Paul
refers in the later chapters of 2 Cor as "super-apostles" (hUPERLIAN
APOSTOLOI, 11:5, 12:11)? What of those to whom Paul refers in 2 Cor 8:23
APOSTOLOI EKKLHSIWN?
I'm sure all this must have been the subject of numerous monographs and
dissertations sitting around somewhere. I'm not suggesting, I think,
anything new: that the term APOSTOLOS in the earliest years of the church
had a much wider application than to the Twelve. It may well be that it
doesn't necessarily imply any kind of institutional ordination--or again,
it may. It looks to me like the evidence is lacking to say anything very
definitive about what sort of authority one of whom the term APOSTOLOS is
used may have actually held. Paul states his own claim to authority very
clearly in Galatians as based upon the direct revelation of Christ to
himself. Do we hear anything about institutional authority conferred upon
others holding the "title" of APOSTOLOS?
All of that comes to bear, for what it's worth, upon the question: what
does hOITINES EISIN EPISHMOI EN TOIS APOSTOLOIS mean? I think it most
likely means that Andronicus and Junia (Junias, if one still thinks this to
be masculine) are outstanding "apostles"--that there are several
"apostles," but these are extraordinary. Junia? Why not? As I say, we have
no evidence whatsoever for a mechanism by which these two, whether they are
a man and a woman or two men, derived their title and function. They were
missionaries, and outstanding ones, in Paul's estimation. And if it IS
Junia? a woman apostle? What then? Does this mean that a woman might ever
have been one of the Twelve? The question itself is just too speculative.
But there surely seems to be a STRONG LIKELIHOOD that a woman named Junia
was deemed by Paul to be an outstanding missionary.
And I am going to have to come back to Galatians 3:28. I still find that to
be in considerable tension with 1 Timothy 2, and I really don't understand
how the breaking down of distinctions of worth between slave and free man,
Jew and Greek, male and female is somehow altogether irrelevant to the
question of who is worthy to be appointed to an office in the church. Maybe
Junia never had any official institutional authorization; still, Paul
deemed her EPISHMOS EN TOIS APOSTOLOIS.
That, at any rate, is what I think the phrase in question means.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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