Women in Scripture #5

Pauls seems to be the most quoted when it comes to fighting against the idea that women can have a place in ministry other than teaching other women and children. Yet it seems that Paul worked with quite a few women who served in a variety of different roles.

In Romans 16:7, Paul greets Andronicus and Junia as being "prominent among the apostles." Junia (a woman) fulfilled the Pauline criteria for apostleship. Therefore she obviously had seen the risen Christ and engaged in missionary work.

Her leadership role as an apostle are very similar to female leadership roles in ancient Judaism--such as head of synagogue or elder. She was one of several female church leaders that associated with Paul. Others include Prisca (Rom. 16:3-4), whom Acts describes as a teacher (18:26), then there is Phoebe (Rom. 16:1-2), and Euodia and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2-3). Yes the last two were involved in a conflict with each other that Paul had to address. However, can that really disqualify all of women from being in leadership roles? If we went by that criteria for men, we would no longer have any pastors at all! We fight about everything!

Back to Junia though. There has been much debate about Junia and her role among the apostles. For a long time it was read as she was one of the prominent apostles. Then somewhere along the line, a translator with this ridiculous mentality about women came along, and tried to prove that Junia was mistranslated and should have been "Junias" making it a male name. When that didn't work, some were left trying to prove that Junia was an abbreviation for a longer male name. This didn't make any sense because it didn't follow any pattern of abbreviation that we have from Greek documents (biblical or otherwise). When all these attempts failed, there was a movement to read "prominent among the apostles" to mean that she was well known by the apostles, but just because someone knows them doesn't mean they are part of the group. While it is true, a person simply being known by someone in another doesn't make that person part of a group (I have friends who are in gangs, doesn't make me a gang member), this reading is ridiculous since it was widely accepted for centuries as meaning that Junia was an apostle, and prominent among them.

We cannot allow revisionist history to do away with the fact that there were women apostles. There were women teachers. And that God is in the habit of using everyone regardless of gender to accomplish his purpose. In the Kingdom of God there is supposed to be no more distinction between Jew and Gentile, Greek or Scythe, slave or free, male or female. We have done a good job with the first three, I am just dumbfounded as to why we are struggling with the fourth.