Junia (gens)

The gens Junia was one of the most celebrated families in Rome. The gens may originally have been patrician. The family was already prominent in the last days of the Roman monarchy. Lucius Junius Brutus was the nephew of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last King of Rome, and on the expulsion of Tarquin in 509 BC, he became one of the first consuls of the Roman Republic.

Origin of the gens

Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether the Junii were originally patrician. The family was prominent throughout the whole of Roman history, and all of the members who are known, from the early times of the Republic and on into the Empire, were plebeians. However, it seems inconceivable that Lucius Junius Brutus, the nephew of Tarquin the Proud, was a plebeian. So jealous of their prerogatives were the patricians of the early Republic, that in 450 BC, the second year of the Decemvirate, a law forbidding the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians was made a part of the Twelve Tables, the fundamental principles of early Roman law. It was not until the passage of the lex Licinia Sextia in 367 BC that plebeians were permitted to stand for the consulship.

Junia

Junia or Junias (Greek: Ιουνια / Ιουνιας, Iounia[s]) was a 1st-century Christian highly regarded and complimented by apostle Paul. Paul possibly refers to Junia as an apostle. The consensus among some modern New Testament scholars is that Junia was a woman.

Apostle Paul wrote in the Romans 16:7:

Scholarly debate

The translation of the verse presents two problems:

These two questions are still under scholarly debate.

Junia's apostleship

Grammatical issue: "prominent among" or "well known to"?

The meaning of "outstanding among the apostles" is rendered by some translations as "well-known to the apostles"—suggesting that the couple were not apostles but enjoyed a high reputation among the apostles. Some New Testament scholars consider that the Greek phrase episêmos en + dative (literally "noted among") does not automatically demand that the noted person is a member of the group among whom the person is noted. A well-known example of this grammatical construction is found in Euripides' Hippolytus 101:3 where the goddess Aphrodite is "famous (episêmos) among mortals," but evidently is not included as being among the mortals. For this reason some versions, such as the ESV, translate the Greek phrase as "well known to", unlike other versions such as NRSV which translate "prominent among." Those who have argued for the ESV translation include Michael Burer and Daniel Wallace who agree that Junia was a woman but assert that the correct rendition of the Greek text places her as well known to the apostles rather than prominent among the apostles. That translation would indicate that the pair were not apostles, but that they enjoyed a high reputation among the apostles.