Larry Hurtado lecture on “Destroyer of the Gods”

Published on Oct 14, 2016
Lecture by Larry Hurtado “A New and Mischievous Superstition: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World” given September 10, 2016 at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, TX.

In Ancient Rome, the worship of ‘gods’ morphed into the veneration of ‘saints’

There is a “Catholic-Protestant Debate” group on Facebook. Recently a thread began with this question:

SHOULD BELIEVERS IN GOD BOW DOWN TO STATUES?

Exodus 20: 4: “You shall not make for yourself any carved image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5: YOU SHALL NOT BOW DOWN TO THEM or worship them;

Romans 1: 22: Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23: and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

That's a fair question, but soon the discussion got out of hand. At one point, I said, “In large part, in Ancient Rome, the household gods got swapped out for statues of ‘saints’.”

Someone said, “Can you show proof for that claim?”

Someone else said, “Correlation does not show causation.”

I don’t know if either of those were responses to me, but how about “if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it may be a duck”.

In many of the quotes that follow, I’m referencing “Survivals of Roman Religion”, New York, NY: Coopers Square Publishing, ©1963 by Gordon Laing (from the “Our Debt to Greece and Rome” series).

John Bugay on Catholicism: What was the ancient church in Rome like?

Some time ago, I spent some time summarizing what some of the major commentators have been saying about the people and the network of house churches found in early Rome in the first century. This is the Rome to which Peter supposedly traveled, where it is thought that he may have died (though historically, there is practically no mention of him at all being in Rome; when Irenaeus talks about “…the church that is greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and set up by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul at Rome …” this is the reality to which he was referring, and it is this reality of which we can say he was not an entirely accurate reporter of history).

There is a reason why I’m going into such detail on this. Recently, I’ve been citing from the James Puglisi work How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? In that work, I’ve quoted Herman Pottmeyer saying that “anyone who wishes to come to an understanding of the papal ministry cannot avoid dealing with the history of this ministry. The historical facts are not disputed...” In an earlier article from that same work, John P. Meier, a leading Catholic Biblical scholar, pointed out, “A papacy that cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins can hardly hope to be a catalyst for unity among divided Christians.” So the implication is that, until this point, the papacy has not given a “credible historical account of its own origins.”

The recent book The End of Christianity begins (Chapter 1) with this little but bold proclamation:

The end of Christianity is not some far-off dream, nor is it on the verge of occurring. Instead, it happened two thousand years ago—in fact, Christianity never even began; it was stillborn….there is no such thing as the religion of Christianity; at best it is a multitude of related but distinct and often-enough opposed traditions, shifting and swaying with the windsof local culture and passing history … (Dr. David Eller, “Christianity Evolving: On the Origin of Christian Species”, Chapter 1 in Loftus, ed., ©2011“The End of Christianity”: Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, pg. 23.)

There’s no need to fear Eller. With this statement he immediately shows himself to be a hack, given that the life of Christ and the origins of Christianity are extraordinarily well attested in history.

But on the other hand, it is the Roman Catholic church and its constant protestations of its own authority, which are extraordinarily poorly attested in history, which give individuals like Eller the kind of toe-hold they need to bloviate and sell books. Eller’s statement is true about Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism was stillborn. That’s what Eller and the others can attack freely; it’s the falseness of Roman Catholicism that gives people like Eller the opportunities they have to attack Christ and Christianity.

But again, the historical work that is being done on the earliest church is going to be immensely helpful in sorting out fact from fiction. This historical work is going to be like Trigonometry and Calculus: these things will always be taught, so long as the subject is taught. But the question going forward will be, will anyone care to understand them?


Introduction and Summary
The nonexistent early papacy
House Churches in the New Testament

Households in Ancient Rome
Part 1: Households in Ancient Rome: An Introduction
Part 2: Christians and Jews in First Century Rome
Part 3: Commerce and Household Communities
Part 4: Household Leadership as Church Leadership
Part 5: Patronage and Leadership

The People of Romans 16
Aquila, Priscilla, Acts 18:2 and the Edict of Claudius
“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, διάκονον and προστάτις”
Andronikos and Junia, Part 1
Andronikos and Junia, Part 2

Moving forward, my hope is, Lord willing, to continue to expand on this list and this material, and to make it available in an easy to digest form. In the same way that the printing press aided Martin Luther and helped the Reformation sweep across Europe, the Internet and its ability to make accurate information available immediately around the world, is only going to help to clarify the misunderstandings about Christianity and what it means to have faith in Christ.

[An earlier version of this blog post appeared July 19, 2011]

To Jason Stellman on “the Catholic paradigm”

Jason Stellman wrote about “the Catholic paradigm” having more “explanatory” power than the Reformed paradigm, in terms of study of the earliest church. There are a couple of things to note.

Andronicus, Peter, and “direct evidence” for church leadership in the earliest church in Rome

Garrison (#364):

You [JB] said:
“So ‘direct evidence’ in 100 AD or 150 AD seems a lot less important than what the New Testament can describe for us. Especially given that, during those years, there IS that dearth of direct evidence that you had mentioned. (A mention of Peter in 1 Clement, two mentions in Ignatius, another one about 60 years later – that does not seem all that convincing to me).”

It really doesn’t matter. Produce direct evidence that Peter was not, in fact, in Rome by showing that he was elsewhere. Otherwise, this is an argument from silence. As you yourself note, we have mentions of Peter being in Rome, but none to contradict them. Telling, no?

Of course not. I’ve noticed a pattern in your response. I don’t reproduce hundreds of pages of Protestant arguments here, and so when I come here and report their conclusions, you dismiss them as “an argument from silence”.

I’ve already noted, I wasn’t arguing that Peter wasn’t in Rome. I’m arguing that in Andronicus, we already have an apostolic presence in Rome [“outstanding among the apostles”], who was “in Christ before” Paul, who was the leader of a house church. That is real history. We are talking a period from, say, 30 to 49 AD, and perhaps beyond, someone “founding and establishing” a church at Rome.

To the contrary, Bryan said “During [Paul’s] time in Rome (four to five years) he undoubtedly taught those who were or would become the bishops/elders of the Church at Rome. And all of that is fully compatible with what St. Irenaeus says.”

Now, what Bryan says is speculative on two counts. It’s speculative as to what, precisely Paul was teaching them during that time. Bryan wants to assume it was Roman Catholic concepts (or such things in seed form) of episcopacy, hierarchy and priesthood. But that’s a mere assumption. “Not inconsistent” to be sure, but speculative.

It was also a matter of speculation that he was teaching them at that time. Robert Jewett’s commentary on Romans, for example, argues at length that Paul, upon being freed (at the end of Acts), then traveled further to Spain, before returning to Rome. And we also have Clement’s testimony that Paul traveled to Spain. It seems he was more interested in spreading the Gospel where it had not been heard before, than staying in Rome and “building on someone else’s foundation”. Look at what Paul says:

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is written:

“Those who were not told about him will see,
and those who have not heard will understand.”

It seems far more likely, based on Paul’s own words, that (a) he doesn’t stay in Rome, and (b) in Romans 16 he is listing the actual “foundation” upon which he doesn’t want to build, in the form of 23 other individuals in Romans 16, none of whom is Peter, and among them, Andronicus, “outstanding among the apostles”. Isn’t it “speculative” to suggest that that’s Peter’s “foundation”, when Paul’s own words paint a different picture?

More about the ancient church at Rome

Sean – (317), you said:

What you are saying is that church fathers are 'muddy' or 'wrong' where they disagree with your theology and 'better' or 'close' or 'good' when they agree with your theology. Its that simple.

No it's not. The studies I've followed and reported on are done by leading, respected theologians. They are very clear about what they say. T.F. Torrance did a significant study on the use of the word “grace” in the Apostolic Fathers, for example. He was not a schlock. And his study was a thorough one. He compared the various uses of the word charis, used (a) in Greek culture, (b) as a translation of the Old Testament concept of hesed (God’s “lovingkindness”, and (c) in the New Testament. Here is Torrance’s assessment of Clement:

Clement definitely thinks of charis as referring to a gift of God without which the Christian would not be able to attain to love or salvation. But there is little doubt that this is held along with the idea of merit before God; for grace is given to those who perform the commandments of God, and who are worthy. He may use the language of election and justification, but the essentially Greek idea of the unqualified freedom of choice is a natural axiom in his thoughts, and entails a doctrine of "works" as Paul would have said. In all His dealings with men, God is regarded as merciful; but the ground for the Salvation He gives is double: faith and ... [ellipses in original].

Clement "thinks of God's mercy as directed only toward the pious" (55)

That concept of being rewarded for being worthy before God is not a concept Paul used; later writers would call that “Pelagian”. But here is “Pope” Clement, a Pelagian before Pelagius. But it wasn’t just Clement whom Torrance analyzed. He analyzed all the writers who wrote during this period, and there was widespread evidence of this phenomenon.

Cullmann agreed with this assessment, and expanded upon it.

Both of these men, especially, are widely regarded by both Protestants and Catholics (Barth had joked that Cullmann, who was one of the few Protestant theologians selected to be an observer at Vatican II, was “an advisor to three popes”), and it is far, far more likely that they “tell it like it is” than that they were writing to support my supposed prejudices. It is unfortunate that their work didn’t get a wider hearing, but the events of Vatican II overshadowed the writings of theologians.

* * *

You said:

It’s worth repeating that for all the bluster of the scholarship you present you are still unable to answer the challenge:

Can you name one piece of historical evidence that meets these two conditions:

(1) it shows that there was no monarchical bishop in Rome until the second half of the second century, and;

(2) it is stronger evidence than is the list of St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.3.3)

(Please show why it is stronger evidence than is St. Irenaeus’ list.)

Your challenge, too, is a silly one. Consider the process by which history is written. It's not about a piece of evidence or two that meets some arbitrary conditions, and therefore it overshadows a whole body of research. It's about the weight of research supporting and building a broad understanding of what was happening in that day. And the account that is being written not by one man, but by a whole body of thought, which is now the prevailing understanding. It’s simply not the case that one piece of evidence gets to trump a whole body of work.


Just as an example of all of this, you must have read Eusebius. Eusebius writes at some length about a pair of letters -- one from Abgar (a historical Syriac ruler of the kingdom of Osroene, located at Edessa) to Jesus, the other from Jesus to Abgar.

Two things are evident:

1. Eusebius is so completely convinced of the reliable historicity of these letters that he cites them verbatim as history.

2. The letters are so obviously not authentic that Schaff calls them “a worthless fabrication” and even the 1912 Catholic encyclopedia dismisses them as having no historical value and the "authenticity" "disproved"; these are "legends" with dates established centuries after Christ.

Now, wasn't Eusebius, one of the earliest historians of Christianity, a confidante of that emperor-convert Constantine, worthy of being believed in this case? In many cases, he is our best source, And yet, this very reliable early testimony is completely discounted via critical means.

So critical methods must be employed, even in assessing such an early and generally (but not totally) reliable source as Eusebius.

We have gone round and round about the value of Irenaeus as a historian

First off, his value as a historian is diminished by his statement that the church at Rome was "founded and established by Peter and Paul". This statement looks impressive but it cuts two ways: (a) he is clearly wrong about Paul, who neither founded nor set up the church at Rome. The only chance that Peter would have had to visit Rome would have been the vague mention in Acts 12:17, when he “went to another place”. But in that case, if (as in another Eusebian “whopper”), the “other place” had been Rome, then he would have had to travel, in that world, from Jerusalem to Rome and back for the Jerusalem council in just the space of a few years. That is highly unlikely, given that he was documented to be in other places during those years. Barrett posits an “itinerant ministry”. Marshall, who wrote a commentary on Acts, suggests that accounts that put Peter in Rome during that time are “highly fanciful”.

Aside from that, the whole purpose of the 2nd half of Acts was to talk about how Paul got to Rome. Do you think that if Peter had gotten there first, that it would have been far more important to Luke to note that Peter was there? Yet Paul’s arrival there was the entire focus of the book.

Look at Romans 16:7. What is being said here?

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

In fact, it is very likely that someone like Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7) “in Christ before me”, had traveled from Jerusalem to Rome shortly after Pentecost and established one of many house churches there. That Paul mentions that they were “apostles”, but more, they were “outstanding among the apostles”, and also, they were “in Christ before me”. That latter phrase opens a space of about a year before the conversion of Paul, and as “apostles”, it is quite likely that Andronicus was the first (or, at the very least, an early)“bishop” of a Roman church. Thus, contra Irenaeus, it is far more likely that Andronicus and Junia “founded and established” a church at Rome.

Second, even if it Irenaeus’s list does have the names of presbyters from Roman history, its “neatness” betrays the tumult of that era in that city. The Shepherd of Hermas, for example, speaks of “the elders (presbuteroi) who preside (proistamenoi – plural leadership) over the church.” (all at the same time - Vis 2.4). This is a primary source document from within the city of Rome that provides support for all of the “scholarship” that you decry, the “snippets” which speak of a “gap” in the “unbroken succession within the first century of the church”. But this is not all there is. Later, Hermas reiterates the structure of this leadership, and the fact that they are not leading, but rather that they fight among themselves. He calls them “children”.

Now, therefore, I say to you [tois – plural] who lead the church and occupy the seats of honor: do not be like the sorcerers. For the sorcerers carry their drugs in bottles, but you carry your drug and poison in your heart. You are calloused and do not want to cleanse your hearts and to mix your wisdom together in a clean heart, in order that you may have mercy from the great King. Watch out, therefore, children, lest these divisions of yours [among you elders] deprive you of your life. How is it that you desire to instruct God’s elect, while you yourselves have no instruction? Instruct one another, therefore, and have peace among yourselves, in order that I too may stand joyfully before the Father and give an account on behalf of all of you to your Lord.” (Vis 3.9)

That makes it far more likely to believe Irenaeus’s list is an after-the-fact "construct" created from names known to the community, than that it was some sort of on-going list maintained as an on-going record.

And third, the list is offered as evidence that "teaching” at Rome had been “preserved and transmitted” to that time. There was no hint that Irenaeus believed that it would be some kind of “continuous line of succession until the end of time”. There is no warrant for that at all.


 

What was the ancient church in Rome like? See “House Churches in Rome”

For several weeks now, I’ve been summarizing what some of the major commentators have been saying about the people and the network of house churches found in early Rome in the first century. This is the Rome to which Peter supposedly traveled, where it is thought that he may have died (though historically, there is practically no mention of him at all being in Rome; when Irenaeus talks about “…the church that is greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and set up by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul at Rome …” this is the reality to which he was referring, and it is this reality of which we can say he was not an entirely accurate reporter of history).

There is a reason why I’m going into such detail on this. Recently, I’ve been citing from the James Puglisi work How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? In that work, I’ve quoted Herman Pottmeyer saying that “anyone who wishes to come to an understanding of the papal ministry cannot avoid dealing with the history of this ministry. The historical facts are not disputed...” In an earlier article from that same work, John P. Meier, a leading Catholic Biblical scholar, pointed out, “A papacy that cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins can hardly hope to be a catalyst for unity among divided Christians.” So the implication is that, until this point, the papacy has not given a “credible historical account of its own origins.”

There is yet another reason to understand all of this. I’ve also ordered a copy of the new Loftus book, The End of Christianity.

That work begins (Chapter 1) with this little but bold proclamation:

The end of Christianity is not some far-off dream, nor is it on the verge of occurring. Instead, it happened two thousand years ago—in fact, Christianity never even began; it was stillborn….there is no such thing as the religion of Christianity; at best it is a multitude of related but distinct and often-enough opposed traditions, shifting and swaying with the windsof local culture and passing history … (Dr. David Eller, “Christianity Evolving: On the Origin of Christian Species”, Chapter 1 in Loftus, ed., ©2011“The End of Christianity”: Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, pg. 23.)

There’s no need to fear Eller. With this statement he immediately shows himself to be a hack, given that the life of Christ and the origins of Christianity are extraordinarily well attested in history.

But on the other hand, it is the Roman Catholic church and its constant protestations of its own authority, which are extraordinarily poorly attested in history, which give individuals like Eller the kind of toe-hold they need to bloviate and sell books. Eller’s statement is true about Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism was stillborn. That’s what Eller and the others can attack freely; it’s the falseness of Roman Catholicism that gives people like Eller the opportunities they have to attack Christ and Christianity.

But again, the historical work that is being done on the earliest church is going to be immensely helpful in sorting out fact from fiction. This historical work is going to be like Trigonometry and Calculus: these things will always be taught, so long as the subject is taught. But the question going forward will be, will anyone care to understand them?


Introduction and Summary
The nonexistent early papacy
House Churches in the New Testament

Households in Ancient Rome
Part 1: Households in Ancient Rome: An Introduction
Part 2: Christians and Jews in First Century Rome
Part 3: Commerce and Household Communities
Part 4: Household Leadership as Church Leadership
Part 5: Patronage and Leadership

The People of Romans 16
Aquila, Priscilla, Acts 18:2 and the Edict of Claudius
“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, διάκονον and προστάτις”
Andronikos and Junia, Part 1
Andronikos and Junia, Part 2

Moving forward, my hope is, Lord willing, to continue to expand on this list and this material, and to make it available in an easy to digest form. In the same way that the printing press aided Martin Luther and helped the Reformation sweep across Europe, the Internet and its ability to make accurate information available immediately around the world, is only going to help to clarify the misunderstandings about Christianity and what it means to have faith in Christ.

Andronikos and Junia, Part 2

… and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, (Acts 2:10).

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. (Romans 16:7, NIV).

ἀσπάσασθε Ἀνδρόνικον καὶ Ἰουνίαν τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου καὶ συναιχμαλώτους μου, οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ (Romans 16:7, NA27).

Jewett continues in his description of Andronikos and Junia:

Given the pairing with the male name first, it is likely that Andronikos and Junia are a married couple. Paul refers to them as τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου (“my kinsmen”) which probably indicates Jewish origins for both, as the parallel in Rom 9:3 suggests. That “kinsmen” in this instance refers to fellow Benjamites or “close companions,” swings from over to underinterpreting this straightforward reference, in order to explain the oddity of identifying some of the names in this chapter as Jewish. My audience theory explains such details as Paul’s effort to affirm the legitimacy of some of the Jewish Christians currently being discriminated against by the Gentile Christian majority in the Roman house and tenement churches. By placing himself in solidarity with Andronikos and Junia, Paul counters the prejudicial treatment about which he apparently was well informed.

Andronikos and Junia are not only compatriots, but also “my fellow prisoners,” probably indicating that they had shared a particular prison experience with Paul Since the possessive pronoun “my” along with the prefix συν- (“with, fellow”) indicate shared experience, and since the parallels to the use of συναιχμάλωτός (“fellow prisoner/prisoner of war”) in Phlm 23 and Col 4:10 refer to persons who were evidently sharing Paul’s imprisonments at the times of writing, it seems gratuitous to suggest … that Andronikos and Junia simply “had like him been imprisoned for Christ’s sake, but not necessarily at the same time. That “fellow prisoner” was merely a metaphor I reference to militant struggle … seems most unlikely because it would then remain unclear why all the other early Christian evangelists mentioned in this chapter were not also so designated.

Studies of the Roman prison system indicate that incarceration was ordinarily not used as punishment as in modern jurisprudence but was designed to secure arrested persons until they could be tried, to coerce confessions and other forms of cooperation with magistrates, or to confine condemned persons until they could be punished. Prisoners were typically kept together in confined spaces where the conditions of crowding, inadequate ventilation and sanitation, deprivation of nourishment and sleep, as well as violence among inmates were frequent causes of complaints. The use of iron chains and stocks typically added a significant measure of torturous punishment to Roman imprisonment. Since the prison system was administered largely by military authorities, it was natural for Paul to refer to himself and his colleagues as συναιχμαλώτοι (“fellow prisoners of war”), which was probably understood within the context of the conflict between Christ and the principalities and powers alluded to in Rom 8:38-39 and 2 Cor 10:3-5). Since most of the Jewish community had been brought to Rome as prisoners of war to be purchased as slaves, the choice of this expression would have had an evocative connotation for some of Paul’s audience.

The honorific expression ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις should be translated “outstanding among the apostles” rather than “remarkable in the judgment of the apostles, because the adjective ἐπίσημος lifts up a person or thing as distinguished or marked in comparison with other representatives of the same class, in this instance with other apostles.

Schreiner agrees with this assessment, with some qualification:

How should we understand the words ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις (episemoi en tois apostolois)? Murray (1965:230) is virtually alone among modern commentators in understanding it as “outstanding in the eyes of the apostles.” The consensus view is that the phrase means “distinguished among the apostles.” The latter is almost surely right, for this is a more natural way of understanding the prepositional phrase. In saying that they are apostles , however, Paul is certainly not placing them in the ranks of the Twelve. In 1 Cor 15 (vv. 5, 7) Paul distinguished between the Twelve and the apostles, and so it would be a mistake to think that the latter are coterminous with the former. Other members of the early church had apostolic authority in addition to the Twelve: Paul, Barnabas (Acts 14:1-4, 14), and James the brother of Jesus (Gal 1:19). It is improbable, however, that Andronicus and Junia had the same level of authority as Paul, Barnabas, and James. The term ἀποστόλος is not a technical term (cf. 2 Cor 8:23; Phil 2:25; see Ollrog 1979:9-84), and in the case of Andronicus and Junia the likely idea is that they were itinerant evangelists or missionaries. The term ἀποστόλος is used of itinerant evangelists in the Apostolic Fathers (cf. Did. 11.3-6; Herm. Vis 13.1; Sim 92.4; 93.5; 102.2). They did not exercise the same kind of authority as Paul, Barnabas, or James the brother of Jesus (Schreiner 796-797).

Jewett picks up other ancient uses of the phrase τὸ ἐπίσημον as “used to refer to the badge distinguishing one shield from another,” or “the flag or figurehead that identifies one ship in comparison with an otherwise identical class in the same class.” He cites Chrysostom about Junia: “Even to be an apostle is great, but also to be prominent among them—consider how wonderful a song of honor that is!”

Continuing:

A more debatable question is whether Andronikos and Junia functioned as evangelists or emissaries of a particular congregation, or as witnesses to the resurrection. Since Paul gives no evidence that they had been associated with a particular congregation, in contrast to Phoebe in [Romans 16:1-2], and since his usage of “apostle” is oriented to resurrection witness unless otherwise indicated, it seems likely that he ranked them among “all the apostles” who laid claim to being witnesses of the resurrection. With regard to the locations where Andronikos and Junia served as evangelists, all we can say with certainty is that they had functioned somewhere in the eastern mission during the time of shared imprisonment with Paul, and that they are now in Rome…. Lampe discovered some twenty-nine references to persons with the name of Andronikos in Rome, so there is no reason to suspect he was not a resident there. It seems quite likely that they had missionized in Rome prior to the banishment under Claudius [in 49 A.D.], and had returned to their earlier residence there after the lapse of the Edict. That they were καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ (“also in Christ before me”) means that they were converted prior to 34 C.E., which correlates well with the earlier reference to their apostolic status, because Paul thought of himself as the last in the series of witnesses to the resurrection (1 Cor 15:8). This means that Andronikos and Junia could easily have been among the “visitors from Rome” identified in Acts 2:10 as part of the Pentecost crowd. They could well have been among the Hellenists in Jerusalem (Acts 6:1), who were later scattered to various locations outside of Jerusalem, according to Acts 11:19. The supposition that they were part of the Antioch church seems less plausible in view of their very early origin as Christian missionaries. All we can say with certainty is that this couple had function as Christian apostles for more than two decades before Paul wrote this letter to Rome requesting that they be greeted y other believers in Rome who evidently were not inclined to acknowledge their accomplishments and status (Jewett 964-965).

Andronikos and Junia, Part 1

… and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, (Acts 2:10).

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was (Romans 16:7, NIV).

I’ve spent a lot of time working through the research that describes the households of Rome as one of the basic building blocks of Roman society. How commerce in the city led to movements in and out of the city at the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, in the middle of the first century. How wealth and patronage, even as evidenced in the New Testament, naturally led to “leadership positions” that existed in the house churches in Rome, prior to the arrival of the Apostles.

Now I want to spend a bit of time culling other evidence from some of these historical and detail-oriented texts that describe church life in first century Rome.

Lampe notes that “the earliest Christianity spread along the routes that Judaism had already followed: the synagogues were the setting for the first Christian mission. (b) The Jewish as well as the Christian “axis” Puteoli-Rome has a particular economic-historical background. The stretch Puteoli-Rome was the main trade route between the East and the city of Rome in the first half of the first century.”

Robert Jewett, in his Romans commentary, describes Andronikos and Junia, and in doing so, gives another picture of the earliest Christians in Rome:

The names are revealing: Andronikos is a prestigious Greek name frequently given to slaves or freedmen during the Greco-Roman period. Junia is a Latin feminine name, ordinarily given to slaves or freedwoman of the Junia family, of which some 250 examples have been found in Roman evidence. The modern scholarly controversy over this name rests on the presumption that no woman could rank as an apostle, and thus that the accusative form must refer to a male by the name of Junias or Junianus. However, evidence in favor of the feminine name “Junia” is overwhelming. Not a single example of a masculine name “Junias” has been found. The patristic evidence investigated by Fabrega and Fitzmyer indicates that commentators down through the twelfth century refer to Junia as a woman, often commenting on the extraordinary gifts that ranked her among the apostles. The traditional feast of Saints Andronikos and Junia celebrates admirabilem feminam Juniam (“the admirable woman Junia”), which suggests that while some medieval copyists of Romans assumed a male name, the church as a whole had no difficulty on this point until later, particularly after Luther popularized the masculine option. Despite its impact on modern translations based on Nestle-Aland and the UBS [Greek texts], it appears that the name “Junias” is a figment of chauvinistic imagination (961-962).

Schreiner says a very similar thing, in a much more genteel way:

What is of prime interest to modern scholars is the identity of Junia(s). Is the person in question a man or a woman? If the Greek is accented as it is in UBS4/NA27 (Ἰουνίᾶν), then the name is masculine, stemming from the nominative Ἰουνίᾶς (so BAGD 380; RSV, NEB, NASB, NIV, NJB). In these circumstances the name is a contraction of Junianus. Such a contraction is certainly possible, since contractions were quite common generally, and the names Prisca, Patrobas, Hermas, and Olympas are contracted in this list. Some early evidence also supports Junias [the male name]. Most commentaries on Romans, however, favor the feminine Ἰουνίαν (Junia) since the contracted form of Junianus is nowhere found in Greek literature (see NRSV). Moreover, the majority opinion by far until at least the thirteenth century was that the person in question was a woman—Junia. Since the contracted masculine name is lacking in Greek literature and since early tradition identifies Junia as a woman, the likely conclusion is that Junia is a woman, though certainty is impossible. The judgment of many that Andronicus and Junia were husband and wife is also probable (795-796).

This touches on the question of how to reconcile the roles of women in Romans (Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus’s mother, and Julia) with what Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, for example (“likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet”). Schreiner goes on to note:

It is clear from this list that women were actively involved in ministry. The verb “to labor” (κοπιᾶν, kopian) is used of four women: Mary (v. 6), Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis (v. 12). The word κοπιᾶν is used to describe Paul’s ministry (1 Cor 15:10; Gal 4:11; Phil. 2:16; Col 1:29; 1 Tim 4:10) and others who are involved in ministry (1 Cor 16:16; 1 Thess 5:12; 1 Tim 5:17). Here it probably denotes missionary work (cf. Cranfield 1979: 785; Kasemann 1980: 412; Wilckens 1982: 135; Dunn 1988b: 892; P. Lampe 1991: 223). What these women did specifically is not delineated, but we cannot doubt that they were vitally involved in ministry. Dunn (1988b: 894) rightly cautions, however, that κοπιᾶν is a general term and does not denote leadership per se.

As a female missionary Junia may have directed her energies especially to other women. As Kasemann (1980:413) remarks, “The wife can have access to the women’s areas, which would not be generally accessible to the husband.” One should scarcely conclude from the reference to Junia and the other women coworkers named here that women exercised authority over men contrary to the Pauline admonition in 1 Tim 2:12. We see evidence that women functioned as early Christian missionaries, and it may have been the case that they concentrated especially on other women, given the patriarchal nature of the Greco-Roman world. The Pauline pattern prescribed in 1 Tim 2:11-15 was the apostolic pattern in the early Christian mission, and the vibrant ministry of Christian women did not contradict the admonitions delivered in 1 Tim 2 (rightly Murray 1965:228; Moo 1996:927; Schreiner 793-4, 797).