Paul’s Coworkers

The Same Paul, Naming Women He Could Not Have Done Without

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord... for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.” Romans 16:1–2 (NIV); see also Acts 18:24–26; Romans 16:3, 7

You can learn what a person believes from what they write. But you learn even more from what they do. Who they call when it matters. Who they trust with the important job. Whose name they bother to remember when the work is done.

We have spent real time in this series on two verses where Paul seems to shut the door on women. So it is only fair to ask a different question. Set the two verses down for a minute. What did Paul actually do? Who did he work with? Whose names did he write down when he had the chance? Read the last chapter of Romans and the answer might surprise you.

Paul ends his greatest letter with a long list of people he wants greeted. It reads like the thank you list at the end of a life’s work. And it is full of women, carrying jobs and titles that do not match the way Paul usually gets quoted.

Phoebe, Who Carried the Letter

First name on the list is Phoebe. Paul writes, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae (Romans 16:1-2). That word deacon is not a soft, watered down word. It is the same word Paul uses for ministers of the gospel, the same word he uses for himself. He did not reach for a gentler title to describe her. He gave her the real one.

Then he calls her a benefactor, which in that world meant a person of means and standing who backed and protected others. And here is the detail scholars keep circling. Phoebe is almost certainly the one who carried the letter of Romans from Paul all the way to the church in Rome. That means the first person to deliver, and most likely to read aloud and explain, the deepest theological letter Paul ever wrote was a woman.

And that second title Paul hands Phoebe carries more weight than we tend to hear. When he calls her a benefactor, the word points to a patron, the kind of person with money and standing who funded and protected others and whose backing opened doors. In that world a patron was not the helper. A patron was the one the helpers leaned on. Paul, the great apostle, says plainly that she had been exactly that for him and for many others. He was not too proud to owe a woman, and not too proud to write it down.

Priscilla, Who Trained the Preacher

Next, Priscilla. In Acts 18, a gifted and eloquent preacher named Apollos is teaching in the synagogue, but his understanding of the faith has gaps in it. Priscilla and her husband Aquila hear him, take him aside, and explain to him the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26). Read that again slowly. A woman helped correct and complete the theology of a man who was already a powerful public preacher. He walked out and preached better because she taught him.

And notice a small thing that is not small at all. When Paul and Luke mention this couple, they usually name Priscilla first, before her husband. In that culture you led with the man’s name, every time. Putting hers first, again and again, was a quiet signal that she was the one people thought of first when it came to the things of God.

And this couple was not a pair of safe, comfortable supporters either. In the same chapter Paul says Priscilla and Aquila risked their own necks to save his life, and that not only he but all the churches of the Gentiles owe them thanks (Romans 16:3-4). Whatever happened, Priscilla put her own body between Paul and danger. Add it all up and the women in Paul’s circle were not standing politely at the edges of the work. They funded it, taught in it, led house churches in it, and bled for it. The same hand that wrote the two hard verses wrote all of that down too, and wrote it with gratitude.

Junia, Who Got Erased

Then there is Junia, and her story is its own sermon. Paul writes, greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles (Romans 16:7). Junia is a woman’s name. For the first thousand years of the church, nobody doubted that. The great early preacher John Chrysostom, who was no champion of women’s equality, marveled at it. He said, just think what a wonderful tribute it is to be called outstanding among the apostles, and how great this woman’s wisdom must have been.

So what happened? Somewhere down the line, certain translators decided a woman could not possibly be called an apostle, so they changed her name. They turned Junia into a man named Junias, a name that does not actually show up anywhere else in the ancient world. For centuries, study Bibles printed a man who never existed, because the alternative was a woman apostle and that felt like too much. Today most scholars have circled back to the obvious. Junia was a woman, and Paul called her outstanding among the apostles.

The man accused of silencing women filled his final chapter with their names. He could not do the work without them, and he was not too proud to say so.

What This Means for Where You Are

People who hold the church office for men have read Romans 16 too, and they have careful answers. Phoebe was a deacon, they say, but the deacon serves and does not carry the authority of an elder. Priscilla taught Apollos, but privately, alongside her husband, and not from a pulpit. Junia, a few still argue, was well known to the apostles rather than counted among them. These are not foolish arguments, and I am not going to treat them like they are.

But step back and look at the whole picture. The same Paul who wrote the two hard verses surrounded himself with women he called deacon, coworker, and apostle. He trusted a woman to carry his greatest letter. He let a woman teach his theology to a preacher. He honored a woman with the title apostle. Whatever Paul meant in those two hard verses, he plainly did not mean that women had no real part in the work. His own life says the opposite, out loud, by name.

If you only know Paul from First Corinthians 14 and First Timothy 2, you have met half of him. Romans 16 is the other half. An honest reader holds both halves in the same hand and refuses to throw either one away.

And it is not only these three. Read the rest of Romans 16 and the names keep coming.

Mary, who Paul says worked very hard for the church (Romans 16:6). Tryphena and Tryphosa, two women he calls workers in the Lord. Persis, another woman who, he says, has worked very hard (Romans 16:12). Of all the people Paul greets by name in that one chapter, around ten of them are women, better than a third of the whole list. These women were not three rare exceptions Paul made room for. They were all through his ministry, doing the work and getting their names written down for it.

And the erasing of Junia should sound familiar to anybody who knows Black history. A woman does the work, leads, even gets called by the right title in her own day, and then later hands quietly write her out. Change her name. Shrink her down. Until whole generations grow up never knowing she was there at all. The womanist scholar Wilda Gafney has spent a career putting those names back on the page. So has this little series. Junia was a woman. Junia was an apostle. Paul said so himself.

REFLECT & RESPOND

• We learn what people believe from what they write, and even more from what they do. What does Paul’s list of coworkers in Romans 16 tell you about him?

• Phoebe most likely carried and explained the letter of Romans. How does it land with you that a woman first delivered Paul’s greatest letter?

• Junia was turned into a man named Junias for centuries. Who else in history has been quietly written out, and why does it matter to put the names back?

• If you hold both the two hard verses and Romans 16 in the same hand, what kind of reader does that force you to become?

SOURCES

[1] Epp, Eldon Jay. Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. For a free treatment, see Bernadette J. Brooten, “‘Junia ... Outstanding among the Apostles’ (Romans 16:7),” https://people.brandeis.edu/~brooten/Articles/Junia_Outstanding_among_Apostles.pdf.

[2] “Phoebe, Prisca and Junia: Three Women in the Eye of the Evangelical Storm.” The Gospel Coalition Canada. https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/ad-fontes/phoebe-prisca-junia-three-women-eye-evangelical-storm/. A complementarian-leaning treatment.

[3] Gafney, Wilda C. “Priscilla: Pastor, Preacher, Apostle.” https://www.wilgafney.com/2020/07/26/priscilla-pastor-preacher-apostle/.

[4] McKnight, Scot. Junia Is Not Alone. Englewood, CO: Patheos Press, 2011.

[5] Schreiner, Thomas R. Romans. 2nd ed. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018. A complementarian reading of Romans 16.

[6] New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.

Leaning on the Rock | Wrestling with the Word