Were Andronicus and Junia Apostles?

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.
Romans 16:7 ESV

Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.
Romans 16:7 KJV

This verse is the center of a surprising amount of controversy. Note that the English Standard Version says that Andronicus and Junia were well known to the apostles, while the King James Version says they were well known among the apostles. That one little preposition changes the meaning considerably.

Where Andronicus and Junia well-known apostles? Or were they well-known to the apostles? If they were apostles, “well-known” implies that they were on a par with the Twelve Disciples and possibly as notable as James and John. This would be especially sensational, since Junia was almost certainly a woman.

Andronicus and Junia appear to have been a married couple and were probably of the tribe of Benjamin, the same as Paul (See Romans 11:1.), or even more closely related to him. Several Jews are mentioned in this chapter already, but these are the only ones Paul calls his “kinsmen”, so I think this must refer to something more than being fellow Jews.

Paul also calls them his “fellow prisoners”. He implies in 2 Corinthians 11:23, written several years before this letter, that he had been imprisoned on multiple occasions. The only confinement prior to writing Romans that we have certain knowledge of is at Philippi in Acts 16:24, but there is no mention of Andronicus and Junia nor any other believer in prison with him apart from Silas. It’s likely that many significant events of his missionary journeys were not recorded so that they were imprisoned with him somewhere else, or he meant that they shared the experience of being imprisoned but not necessarily at the same time and location. Since Paul says that they were “in Christ” before him, it’s even possible that they were victims of Paul himself during his persecutions of the Christians in Judea and nearby provinces.

The term apostle (apostolos, αποστολοις) doesn’t necessarily imply a position of general or supreme authority. It literally means “messenger” or “deputy” and can refer to anyone who is sent on any kind of mission as a representative of another. Missionaries, messengers, errand boys, and diplomatic envoys can all be called apostles.

There are two questions to answer in this instance. First, were Andronicus and Junia apostles themselves or merely well known to the apostles. Second, did Paul use “apostle” in the more generic sense or did he use it as a title of office for those disciples of Yeshua who had been given special authority over his Kingdom. These questions are linked because the answer to either one likely dictates the answer to the other. As I will explain, either this couple were known to the apostles and Paul used the word in the sense of an ecclesiastical office or else they were well known apostles and Paul used the word in the more general sense of anyone sent on a mission for another. I lean very strongly to the former.

If they were notable among the Apostles, this would imply that they were at least on a par with the lesser known of the original Twelve Disciples, yet neither Andronicus nor Junia are mentioned anywhere else in Scripture. They left no writings, not even any hints that they had ever written anything. They are not mentioned by any of the first century or second century Christian writers and rate only two mentions in the first four centuries of Christian literature:

1. In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (c. 246 AD), Origen of Alexandria speculates that they might have been among the 72 disciples sent out by Yeshua in Luke 10. Most of the original Greek has been lost, and this survives only in a Latin translation. Since Origen had only his own personal speculation and no personal knowledge or documentary evidence, this is essentially meaningless.
2. John Chrysostom wrote in his Homily 31 on Romans, “How great the devotion of this woman [Junia], that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle”. However this was written 350 years after Paul died, and Chrysostom also asserts in the same writing that Paul had never been imprisoned before, which is clearly contradicted by Acts 16. Considering Chrysostom’s temporal separation from the facts, his factual errors, and his extreme antisemitism, I don’t consider Chrysostom to be a reliable witness.

If they were so notable, why did no one leave any notes about them?

If this were the only evidence available, I would be inclined to conclude that Andronicus and Junia were notable to the Apostles rather than among them, but there is at least one other significant factor.

Michael Burer published two papers on the use of episemos (notable, επισημος) in ancient and medieval Greek literature. The first paper, with Dan Wallace, titled “Was Junia Really an Apostle?” analyzed “a few dozen passages” that seemed most relevant to the circumstance described in Romans 16.[1] The authors concluded that, “The collocation of επισημος with its adjuncts shows that, as a rule, επισημος with a genitive personal adjunct indicates an inclusive comparison (‘out-standing among’), while επισημος with (εν plus) the personal dative indicates an elative notion without the implication of inclusion (‘well known to’).” In other words, when episemos is in the dative case and includes en (επισημοι εν), as in Romans 16:7, it always means “notable to” and not “notable among”.

The second paper, titled “ἘΠΙΣΗΜΟΙ ἘΝ ΤΟΙΣ ἈΠΟΣΤΟΛΟΙΣ In Rom 16:7 As ‘Well Known To The Apostles’: Further Defense And New Evidence”, examined more than 100 additional passages when it became clear that the primary objection to the first study was the limited number of source texts.[2] This second article concluded that “Seventy-one new texts demonstrate that Paul could have readily used επισημος plus the genitive to show that Andronicus and Junia were “notable among the apostles.” Thirty-six new texts, all but one of which parallel Rom 16:7 exactly in grammatical structure, provide further evidence that Paul intended επισημοι εν τοις αποστολοις to mean that Andronicus and Junia were ‘well known to the apostles.’”

Although I am not a Greek scholar by any conceivable metric and many actual Greek scholars disagree with me, it seems to me that Paul was almost certainly not calling Andronicus and Junia apostles. Rather, they were both well known to the Apostles, probably because of their maturity in the faith and willingness to endure persecution for the name of Yeshua.

This also leads me to conclude that Paul was using the term “apostle” to refer to those men in the most respected and authoritative positions in the first century community of believers: those who had known Yeshua personally and possibly their closest disciples. This would include the Twelve Disciples, Paul, and possibly those who remained of the Seventy-Two Disciples along with well-known men like Timothy and Barnabas.

I don’t believe that Paul always used the term in this sense. The word apostle can refer to any person who is specially commissioned by another to carry out a mission or relay a message. In this broader sense, every prophet and missionary is an apostle of Yeshua, and I would not object to calling Andronicus, Junia, Phoebe, Prisca, and Aquila “apostles”. As when he uses law (nomos), we have to use contextual clues and common sense to tell us when he means it narrowly (the Law and the Apostles) or broadly (law and apostles). If Paul considered this couple to be among the Apostles, in the narrower sense, then this verse could have a major impact on the debate concerning the role of women in positions of ecclesiastic authority, but that interpretation doesn’t appear to be supported by the text.

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[1] Michael H. Burer and Daniel B. Wallace, “Was Junia Really an Apostle? A Re-examination of Rom 16.7,” New Testament Studies 47 (2001): 76-91.

[2] Michael H. Burer, “ἘΠΙΣΗΜΟΙ ἘΝ ΤΟΙΣ ἈΠΟΣΤΟΛΟΙΣ In Rom 16:7 As ‘Well Known To The Apostles’: Further Defense And New Evidence,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 58, no. 4 (2015): 731-55.