The Lost Apostle: Searching for the Truth About Junia - Brossura

Pederson, Rena

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0470184620 ISBN 13: 9780470184622

Casa editrice: Jossey-Bass, 2008

Riassunto

In The Lost Apostle award-winning journalist Rena Pederson investigates a little known subject in early Christian history—the life and times of the female apostle Junia. Junia was an early convert and leading missionary whose story was “lost” when her name was masculinized to Junias in later centuries. The Lost Apostle unfolds like a well-written detective story, presenting Pederson’s lively search for insight and information about a woman some say was the first female apostle.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Rena Pederson's distinguished career in journalism includes serving for sixteen years as editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News. She is a former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was a member of the Pulitzer Prize board for nine years. A winner of multiple writing awards, Pederson is the author of two books—What's Next? Women Redefining Their Dreams in the Prime of Life and What's Missing? Inspiration for Women Seeking Faith and Joy in Their Lives.

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Praise for The Lost Apostle

"Pederson?a former editorial page editor at the Dallas Morning News . . . presents the linguistic, historical, and theological rationales used to justify displacing the biblical reference to a female apostle. What she finds is fascinating! Not only about Junia, but also about two other little-known female leaders of the Jesus movement . . . Ms. Pederson's constant surprise at her discoveries gives the book an authentic appeal."
?Dwight A. Moody, Dallas Morning News

"Engagingly written and intelligently documented, this book is recommended as a worthy contribution."
?Library Journal

"Thanks to Rena Pederson for digging into The Case of the Missing Apostle like a good police reporter. Junia the apostle was one of the first victims of identity theft. Restoring her name is a service to women everywhere."

?Linda Ellerbee, award-winning television producer, journalist, and best-selling author of Take Big Bites, Move On, and And So It Goes

"As a clergywoman, I am strengthened by Rena Pederson's work. She has done what should have been done years ago. Junia is the role model we've been searching for."
?Dr. Sheron Patterson, senior minister, Highland Hills United Methodist Church; newspaper columnist; and author, Sisters: A Mile in Her Shoes, Lessons from the Lives of Old Testament Women

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The Lost Apostle

Searching for the Truth about Junia Paperback ReprintBy Rena Pederson

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2008 Rena Pederson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780470184622

Chapter One

Cherchez la Femme

All stories are true. Some of them actually happened. Ron Wetherington, archaeologist, Southern Methodist University

The questions kept nagging me after I learned her name: Who was Junia? Why did her name disappear from the Bible? Might she really have been one of the apostles? I wanted to find out more about Junia but wasn't sure where to begin. How do you find someone who's been missing for hundreds of years?

There wasn't much to go on. The basic facts are these: The name "Junia" appears in the last chapter of Paul's theological masterpiece-his letter to the young Christian church in Rome. Specifically, in Romans 16:7, Paul sends greetings to Andronicus and Junia. He then provides a sprinkling of clues about them:

He says they are his "kinsmen," or relatives. This has led analysts to believe they were Jews, like Paul.

They became Christians even before Paul did, which means they were among the very earliest of believers.

They were in prison with Paul, which means they were in the forefront of the Jesus movement, and authorities knew about their activism.

They helped start the Christian church in Rome, which means they kept venturing out bravely after their imprisonment to spread the good news.

They were considered outstanding, or "of note," among the apostles.

The clues offer just a brief glimpse, albeit a tantalizing glimpse. I could already see that finding out who Junia was, once and for all, could be important for biblical scholarship. But was it feasible for me to pursue the answers? Would it make a difference to anyone else?

Why is finding Junia important? I decided that the search was worthwhile because "finding" Junia would establish an important precedent for women preaching and teaching. And since Paul often has been viewed as someone who wanted to keep women quiet, his praise for Junia seems to show that he was much more broadminded in practice.

If nothing else, establishing that Junia existed should provide a psychological boost for women of many Christian denominations. After all, women come to faith differently from the way men do. They have to reconcile a religion that says, on the one hand, that we should love everyone equally and generously-and, on the other, that women aren't exactly full members of the church. It seems counterintuitive. How can women be "less than" men in church standing-less worthy, less qualified to spread God's word-when Paul says, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28 NRSV)?

It is to women's credit that they have kept the faith for centuries and have done much of the hard, hands-on work in caring for the sick and needy, in spite of restrictions in many denominations that they cannot be full participants in the front office and in the pulpit. It is not surprising that women today still yearn deeply for indications that their faith counts fully, that they are not secondary in God's eyes and in his house. Reclaiming the stories of early women of faith, such as Junia and the other women in Romans 16, could be a great comfort to today's women. It would be more affirmation that God wants women to do his work in the world, hand-in-hand with men.

But how do we find out more about Junia? I didn't feel qualified to conduct the search myself because I'm not a religious scholar. I'm just an ordinary believer-a moderate Methodist with Presbyterian roots. But I was always the kind of kid who would peek behind doors or pick up something in the road to look at it more closely and wonder, How did it get there? What did it mean to someone else?

Perhaps it would be helpful to have someone look with fresh eyes. Having been a journalist for three decades, I knew how to poke around and take notes. In newsroom circles, the adage is, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." In theological circles, this is called the "hermeneutics of suspicion. "You challenge information. The asking of pesky questions helps you get to the core of the matter.

To find traces of Junia, an obvious first step was to check what information was available about her on the Internet. Surprise! There were dozens of articles about Junia. There apparently has been a lively dispute going on about her in theological circles for some time. Yet that debate has gone on largely outside the notice of the general public. Most churchwomen still have not heard of Junia. It seemed time they did.

My next stop was to check out more Bible translations to see if they identified Junia as a woman. I gathered the motley assortment of Bibles in my house to check their rendition of Romans and then went browsing at the closest religious bookstore, taking notes Bible-by-Bible, smiling gamely when a clerk walked by to see what I was doing. It turned out that some Bibles had the female name and some didn't.

Those that used "Junias" to refer to a male apostle in Romans included:

Revised Standard Version (1946)

Amplified Bible (1958)

New English Bible (1961)

New American Standard Bible (1963)

Living Bible (1971)

New International Version (1973)

Harper Study Bible (RSV with notes, 1976)

New Jerusalem Bible (1985)

Those that referred to "Junia" as a woman apostle included:

King James Version (1611)

Good News Bible (1966)

New King James Version (1979)

New Century Version (1987)

New Revised Standard Version (1989)

HarperCollins Study Bible (NRSV with notes, 1993)

Oxford Study Bible (NRSV with notes, 1994)

New Living Translation (1996)

New Interpreter's Study Bible (2002)

Holman Christian Bible (2004)

Today's New International Version (2004)

It was almost evenly split, with newer translations tilting toward "Junia." The Catholic Study Bible acknowledged, "The name Junia is a woman's name. One ancient Greek manuscript and a number of versions read the name Julia." But the study Bible added, "Most editors have interpreted it as a man's name, Junias." In other words, "The name is a woman's name, but most editors have said it's a man anyway." It was as if those editors were saying it was a man with a woman's name, like a boy named Sue. But that was a stretch. To its credit, the Catholic Study Bible, unlike the editors it cited, resisted the boy-named-Sue contortion and used the feminine name Junia in its text.

To get a feel for other scholarly views, I went back to the bookstore and brought home an armload of commentaries on the book of Romans. All were written by men. Three out of the four said it is probable that Paul was referring to a woman, although it's difficult to be certain. Whether she was really a bona fide Apostle, they said, was another matter. Still, this was encouraging. Three of the authors agreed that Junia, most likely, was a "she." Theirs was not a warm embrace of Junia, mind you, more like having to kiss your sister on the cheek on her birthday, but it was recognition, nevertheless.

The next step was to see what female theologians were saying in The Women's Bible Commentary, Women in Scripture, and Women in Bible Lands. They all said Junia was a female apostle. No wavering or quibbling.

My book bills were piling up, but a pattern was emerging. Both male and female theologians increasingly were agreeing that Paul had praised a woman as an apostle.

I was beginning to realize that making sense of what Paul's praise meant would require more knowledge of the time and place than I had gotten in church over the years. How could I understand what I was finding without knowing the context? To put it into perspective, I would have to find out why Paul was writing the believers in Rome and why he singled out people like Junia. This search of mine was driving me back for more Bible study.

Enough detail can be found here and there to piece together a background sketch. Paul sent the letter to the new church in Rome about 57 C.E., probably while he was preaching in Corinth. It was a time of great ferment. The Mediterranean became even more of a bustling bazaar of competing religious views after Christianity had elbowed its way in. "The Way" offered by Jesus of Nazareth was the newcomer in a very superstitious world. People there already worshiped a variety of Roman and Greek gods, as well as Egyptian deities like Isis, Persian heroes like Mithras, and the "one God" of Abraham.

In the two decades after Jesus' resurrection, Paul had made many arduous missionary journeys into this fractious environment, establishing churches and collecting relief funds to shore up the needy Jerusalem church. His intention was to take the funds to Jerusalem and then fulfill a longtime dream to visit Spain, stopping by the church community in Rome on the way. His letter to the Romans was a self-introduction of sorts, an overview of his thoughts as a seasoned Christian. Paul could not have known that it would be three long years before he would make it to Rome. He was arrested when he returned to Jerusalem and imprisoned in Caesarea on trumped-up charges. When he finally arrived in Rome, it was as a prisoner, exercising his right as a Roman citizen to appeal his charges in person to the emperor. As Luke fatalistically put it in Acts 28, "and so we came to Rome."

Rome at the time was the center of the known world-a sprawling city of around one million, according to historian Edward Gibbon. The Roman Empire stretched from Britain to Africa, Arabia, and Asia Minor-where Turkey is today. Thanks to the enforcement of Pax Romana, travel was relatively safe. All roads really did lead to Rome. The city was a cosmopolitan crossroads of peoples.

At the time Paul wrote his letter to them, the Christian community in Rome is believed to have been small but growing (perhaps 1,000 to 1,400 members) and gaining converts all the time. The new Christians were an assortment of Jews and Gentiles (all those who were not Jewish by origin). There were freed slaves, as well as slave owners-men and women. They generally met in house churches; significantly, some of those houses were owned by women.

Women, according to scholars like Rodney Stark, Peter Lampe, and Gillian Clark, formed a very crucial part of the early church in Rome. Although Roman society was highly patriarchal, like most of the world, and men ruled the scene, it is significant that Roman women could inherit and own property. Women were expected to stay within the private parameters of the home, as opposed to the wider world of politics and public debate, but that confinement played to their advantage in the new Christian sect, because the first services were held in homes where women ruled the domain. Women helped spread the word to neighbors and local trades-people, sometimes bringing their children with them as they visited other houses, telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

* * *

What's in a name? Initially, I formed an image of Junia as a perpetually youthful, energetic person because some dictionaries list "youthful" as the translation for the Latin name "Junia." It was natural to see her as an ancient Roman version of the perky girl next door.

But most scholars say the name Junia actually indicates that she would have been a freed person or child of freed slaves of the prominent Junian family, which also included Brutus. British scholar John Thorley says in Novum Testamentum that the bearer of the name most probably acquired it through manumission from slavery in the household of the Junian family resident in the Roman province, of which Tarsus was part at that time. So Junia could have had connections to a worldly Roman family and to the same town where Paul was from.

* * *

To see how Junia fits into the picture in Rome, we must start at the source-the last chapter in Paul's letter, Romans 16. Once you break it apart, you can connect real people to the names. The chapter is, essentially, a list of personal greetings to people Paul knew in Rome. In effect, Paul is schmoozing. He is trying to establish a positive connection with the believers who will help pay for his upcoming trip to Rome and support his teaching. He begins with a glowing recommendation for Phoebe.

Paul's high praise for Phoebe immediately raises interesting questions. It's not the kind of thing we expect from Paul. Why would he do that, and how might this woman be important to Junia's story?

Who is Phoebe? Apparently, she is carrying Paul's letter to the new church in Rome. Since there were fraudulent preachers traveling about, Paul emphasizes Phoebe's qualifications. He apparently wants the Romans to know she is trustworthy.

Paul goes on to say that Phoebe is a deacon of the church in Cenchreae, a seaport nine miles from Corinth. The Greek diakonos can mean "minister," or it can mean "servant" or "helper." Since the letter was written before church hierarchies such as bishop or deacon were officially established, the term is not a formal rank, but it is recognition of significant leadership, nevertheless. As centuries went by, patriarchal church leaders began referring to Phoebe with the least generous interpretation of diakonos. They identified her as merely a "servant," while maintaining the most flattering interpretation of diakonos as "deacon" or "minister" when men were described. Unlike Junia, Phoebe's name was not changed in later translations. But her role was subtly diminished, over time, in many translations.

So Paul is asking that Phoebe be given whatever assistance she needs. She appears to have traveled to Rome independently, rather than with a husband or brother, as was the custom of the time. She probably had servants or attendants of some sort to accompany her and must have been a woman of some means, because Paul also describes her as a "benefactor" (prostates) to him and others. As Leon Morris, the highly respected Romans scholar, observes, "There were not many wealthy people in the church of the day, but it seems that Phoebe was one of them." We might presume that she was a patron who provided financial support for the new Jesus movement, but her role probably was even larger than that. The literal meaning of the Greek word prostates is "one who presides" or "a woman who is set over others."

Paul shows then, by his words of acceptance and admiration, that Phoebe is somebody special. He does not identify her by her husband, as was the custom, or by her occupation, which also was customary, but by her own history of leadership. This description of Phoebe is a crucial prelude to the praise for Junia a few verses later, because it establishes that women were serving as leaders in the early church. And it shows that Paul approved. Although other writings attributed to Paul were later used to diminish the role of women in specific church situations, he makes it clear with his praise for Phoebe at the outset of Romans 16 that he respects the efforts of women who were helping spread the gospel. Clearly, Paul embraces women as active participants in the Jesus movement.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Lost Apostleby Rena Pederson Copyright © 2008 by Rena Pederson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Jossey-Bass
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0470184620
• ISBN 13: 9780470184622
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 290
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile