|
by
Doug Ward |
The miracles and teachings of Jesus attracted large crowds of people (Lk 6:17;
19:37), some of whom chose to follow him as full-time students or disciples.
Among them were his inner circle of twelve (Lk 6:12-16) and over seventy-two
others (Lk 10:1).
Jesus'
disciples included both men and women. Luke tells us that one of the leading
female disciples was "Joanna, the wife of Chuza,
Herod's household manager" (Lk 8:3). She and other female disciples
"had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities" (v. 2) and
supported the community of disciples financially.
|
Joanna
and Chuza |
The details in Luke 8:3 tell us more about Joanna than we might realize. The
name Joanna is a Jewish name. According to the data we have, her name was the
fifth most popular for Jewish women in that era.1
Chuza (which means "jug" in Aramaic) is a
Nabatean name. He may have come to the court of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod
the Great, when Herod married the Nabatean princess Phasaelis.
Over time Chuza rose to the position of
"household manager," which gave him responsibility over Herod's
property and revenues. He would have become a wealthy man.
Joanna
probably came from an upper-class family in Galilee and had wealth of her own.
When Chuza and Joanna married, Chuza
would have converted to Judaism if he had not done so previously. They would
have lived in Tiberias, Herod's capital on the Sea of Galilee. We have no
record of Jesus going to Tiberias (there is only one passing reference to the
city in the Gospels, in John 6:23), but the Herodian elite in Tiberias were
well aware of Jesus' activities and sometimes sought him out. In John 4:46-54
we see the example of an official who came to Capernaum to ask for the healing
of his son, who was near death. That family became believers in Jesus, as did a
friend of Herod's named Manaen (Acts 13:1).
At
some point Joanna had her own healing encounter with Jesus, and she made a
radical decision. Rather than merely be a patron of Jesus' movement, she
decided to go "all in" and become one of his disciples. This would
have raised eyebrows in her social circle, especially considering the
connection of Jesus with John the Baptist. (When Herod divorced Phasaelis and married his half-brother's wife Herodias,
John condemned this union and lost his life as a result-see Mk 6:14-29).
Moreover, common people of Galilee tended to resent Herodians, who were agents
of their Roman overlords. But Joanna was accepted by the followers of Jesus, a
group that brought together people from all social classes and valued service
rather than status (Lk 22:24-27).
Joanna
traveled with Jesus and his disciples all the way to Jerusalem and the cross.
With Mary Magdalene and others, she visited the empty tomb (Lk 23:55-24:10) and
later witnessed her resurrected Lord (Lk 24:36-49). Following Jesus'
instructions to remain in Jerusalem (v. 49), she was empowered by the Holy
Spirit on Pentecost as one of the original members of the Jerusalem church
(Acts 1-2). Perhaps Chuza also joined the fellowship
when he learned of the resurrection from Joanna.
|
Junia and Joanna |
That may be all that we know about Joanna. However, a tantalizing verse in
Paul's epistle to the Romans suggests a further possibility. At the close of
this letter Paul sent greetings to some specific Christians in Rome. In Romans
16:7 he wrote, "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my
kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they
were in Christ before me."
Historically
Rom 16:7 has raised two questions. One concerns the status of the two people.
Were they "well known to the apostles," as in the ESV, or were they
"prominent among the apostles," as in the NRSV? Both interpretations
are possible.2 In favor
of the latter reading-that the two were apostles-is
the fact that most commentators and translators over the centuries have chosen
this reading.
A
second question concerns the gender of the second person. Was this a woman (Junia) or a man (Junias)?
Interpreters in the patristic period took the former view, seeing Andronicus
and Junia as a married couple like Priscilla and
Aquila in Rom 16:3. Then in medieval times, Junias
became the favored translation. Today the majority favor Junia,
partly because Junia was a common Roman women's name,
while we have no other examples of anyone named Junias.
Paul
said that Andronicus and Junia were his
"kinsmen"-that is, they were fellow Jews. They were also "fellow
prisoners": like Paul, they had been persecuted for their faith.
Furthermore, they had become followers of Jesus before he had. These facts
suggest that the two were among the original Jewish believers in Jerusalem but
later had accepted a call as missionaries to Rome. They were not among the
twelve, but they could have been apostles in the broader sense of the word used
by Paul, for example, in 1 Cor 15:5-9. In this broader sense, apostles were
people to whom the risen Christ appeared and whom he commissioned to be
witnesses of his resurrection.
When
Jews traveled outside Palestine, they often adopted names that fit into their
new setting. For example, Saul of Tarsus used the name Paul in Greco-Roman
contexts, and among his companions were John who used the name Mark (Acts
12:12, 25; 15:37) and Silas who also was called Silvanus (Acts 18:5; 2 Cor
1:19). New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham has
proposed that Joanna became a missionary to Rome and took on the name Junia, with Chuza (or a second husband,
if Chuza had died) becoming Andronicus. From their
time in Herod's court at Tiberias, Joanna and Chuza
would have been familiar with Roman ways and would have been ideal candidates
to present the Gospel in Rome. We do not know if this is what happened, but it
is an intriguing possibility. Joanna certainly was a leading disciple, and she
may have become a prominent apostle as well.
1See Richard Bauckham, "Joanna the Apostle," pp. 109-202 in Gospel
Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels, Eerdmans, 2002.
2See
Bauckham, pp. 172-180, for discussion.
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