Junias Junia
Junias Junia [1]
( Romans 16:7)
A person saluted by St. Paul and coupled with Andronicus. As the name occurs in the accusative (Ἰουνίαν), it may be Junias, a masculine name contracted from Junianus, or Junia, a common feminine name; in either case a Latin name. If the name is that of a woman, she was the sister, or more likely the wife, of Andronicus. Other couples saluted in Romans 16 are Aquila and Prisca ( Romans 16:3, the order, however, being ‘Prisca and Aquila’), Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister ( Romans 16:15). Andronicus and Junia(s) are described as ‘kinsmen’ of the Apostle, as his ‘fellow-prisoners,’ as ‘of note among the apostles,’ and as having become Christians before St. Paul (see Andronicus). It is surely not at all impossible that St. Paul should include a woman among the apostles in the wider sense of accredited missionaries or messengers, a position to which their seniority in the faith may have called this pair. So Chrysostom understood the words ( Hom. in S. Pauli Ep. ad Rom .).
