In the comments section of some of the Wayne Grudem interview posts, an article by Wallace and Burer on Junia the apostle came under fire. Dr. Burer has now emailed me and asked me to publish this response, which he has written and which Dan Wallace has seen and approved.

Specific posts where this issue is discussed on this blog are:

• Wayne Grudem - Part Three


• Wayne Grudem Replies to a Critic


• Blogspotting - Wayne Grudem Edition

Further information is available in the original paper (M. H. Burer and D. B. Wallace, "Was Junia Really an Apostle? A Re-examination of Romans 16:7", NTS 47 (2001): 76-91. The NET Bible footnotes (as they very frequently do) have a helpful brief description of this controversy over Junia, and there is an online article by Dan Wallace on this issue.

The point at stake is essentially whether it is appropriate to translate Romans 16:7 as the ESV does: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles", or as the NIV does: ". . . they are outstanding among the apostles".

This verse is used as a critical argument by some egalitarians because they believe that if Junia was a woman, and if she was an apostle (incidentally, this word may just mean messengers here) then that verse may be used to counteract some of the other verses which speak to male leadership.

Now this is, of course, an argument fraught with difficulty, even if it is allowed to stand up, since we should not use one verse of the Bible to neutralise another. Nonetheless, it is helpful for us to understand why many scholars do not even believe this verse says what the NIV translated it as. So please bear with Dr. Burer as he explains the technical details of the evidence which lies behind the kind of translation the ESV provides.

Additional Notes on Psalms of Solomon 2:6

Michael Burer

Because of the recent discussion surrounding our citation of Ps. Sol. 2:6, I would like to make a quick response. At issue here is whether ἐπισήμῳ should be taken as an adjective or as a noun. In our initial analysis in the NTS article, we took it to be an adjective and thus fitting our hypothesis that ἐπίσημος plus (ἐν plus) dative personal adjunct should be best understood as meaning “well known to . . .” as opposed to “distinguished among . . .” What I wish to offer here is a quick defense of our interpretation of this occurrence of the word as an adjective, not a noun. The text of Ps. Sol. 2:6 reads as follows (I have given an alternate translation for the disputed line):

οἱ υἱοὶ καὶ αἱ θυγατέρες ἐν αἰχμαλωσίᾳ πονηρᾷ ἐν σφραγῖδι ὁ τράχηλος αὐτῶν
ἐν ἐπισήμῳ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν

the sons and the daughters in painful captivity, their neck in a seal,
in (a place) visible/notable/prominent/infamous among the gentiles
or: with a mark among the gentiles

There are two ways to understand ἐπισήμῳ in Ps.Sol. 2:6. It can either be the neuter dative form of the noun, ἐπίσημον, meaning “(distinguishing) mark” or the like, or the masculine dative form of the adjective, ἐπίσημος. At first blush the former seems to be correct based on the fact that the word ἐπισήμῳ is preceded by the preposition ἐν, which would imply a noun form following it. There is nothing in the verse which discounts this as a possibility; at issue is whether this is the only possibility.

Comparison of this construction with other uses of ἐν plus a form of ἐπίσημος leads to the conclusion that the noun form is not used here. Take, for example, the only other occurrence of ἐπίσημος in this text, Ps. Sol. 17:30:

καὶ ἕξει λαοὺς ἐθνῶν δουλεύειν αὐτῷ ὑπὸ τὸν ζυγὸν αὐτοῦ
καὶ τὸν κύριον δοξάσει ἐν ἐπισήμῳ πάσης τῆς γῆς
καὶ καθαριεῖ Ιερουσαλημ ἐν ἁγιασμῷ ὡς καὶ τὸ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς

And he will have gentile nations serve him under his yoke
and he will glorify the Lord in (a place) visible from the whole earth
and he will cleanse Jerusalem to be as holy as she was from the beginning (literally, he will cleanse Jerusalem with sanctification as even [at] the beginning)

If the logic of arguing for ἐπισήμῳ as a noun in 2:6 is valid based on the fact that it is preceded by ἐν, then the same would need to be true here, but that would lead to a reading that is almost nonsensical: “he will glorify the Lord with a mark of all the earth.” A much more logical way to take this construction is as a reference to a place with the noun τόπος elided [Ed. - that is, left out, but assumed in the expression]: “he will glorify the Lord in a prominent [place] of the earth,” that is, Jerusalem. This is the way the standard translations render Ps. Sol. 17.30: See R. B. Wright, “in (a place) prominent (above) the whole earth” (Charlesworth, p. 667); G. Buchanan Gray, “in a place to be seen (of) all the earth” (R. H. Charles, II, p. 650); L. Brenton, “a place visible from the whole earth.” This use is also confirmed by our examination of the papyri. Let me cite that section from our original article here:

P.Oxy. 1408 speaks of “the most important [places] of the nomes” (τοῖς ἐπισημοτάτοις τῶν νομῶν). [Ed. - A “nome” was a province in Egypt.] In this text that which is ἐπίσημος is a part of the nome; the genitive is used to indicate this. On two other occasions this same idiom occurs, each time with a genitive modifier: τοῖς ἐπισημοτάτοις τόποις τ[ῶ]ν κωμ[ῶν] (“the most conspicuous places in the villages”) in P. Oxy. 2108 and τ[οῖς ἐπι]σήμοις τοῦ νομοῦ τόποις (“the well-known places of the nome”) in P. Oxy. 2705. In each of these instances, that which is ἐπίσημος is compared to its environment with a partitive genitive; it is a part of the entity to which it is being compared. This was a sufficiently common idiom (though occurring only these three times in the Oxyrhynchus papyri) that the editors conjecture the reading in the lacuna at P. Oxy. 3364, line 22: [τ]ῆς ἐπιστολῆς τὸ ἀντίγραφον ἔν τε ταῖς π[όλεσι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐπισήμοις τῶν νομῶν τόποις ([Place] “the copy of the letter in the c[ities and in the public places of the nomes]”).

The phrase in P.Oxy. 1408 is governed by ἐν, and the word τόποις is not in the text of the papyrus (although the editors do suggest that its omission was a mistake on the part of the original author of the papyrus); this is a nice parallel to the text in Ps. Sol. 17:30. Thus there appeared to be an idiom in Hellenistic Greek which allowed the adjective ἐπίσημος when it referred to a place to stand alone, the noun τόπος being elided. This makes a great deal of sense when applied to Ps. Sol. 2:6: “their neck with a seal in a [place] well-known to the nations.” Understanding this idiom to be in play allows one with warrant to interpret ἐπισήμῳ in that text as an adjective, not as a noun, even though it is preceded by ἐν.

In light of this subsequent analysis, our initial assessment of Ps. Sol. 2:6 would require some modification, but not wholesale revision. Regarding this passage we stated initially:

In Ps Sol 2:6, where the Jewish captives are in view, the writer indicates that “they were a spectacle among the gentiles” (ἐπισήμῳ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν). This construction comes as close to Rom 16:7 as any we have yet seen. The parallels include (a) people as the referent of the adjective ἐπίσημος, (b) followed by ἐν plus the dative plural, (c) the dative plural referring to people as well. All the key elements are here. Semantically, what is significant is that (a) the first group is not a part of the second—that is, the Jewish captives were not gentiles; and (b) what was ‘among’ the gentiles was the Jews’ notoriety. This is precisely how we are suggesting that Rom 16:7 should be taken.

We appreciate that several writers have pointed out that our translation and citation of the passage in the original piece were not the best. (In reflecting on this, neither Dr. Wallace nor I could remember who was responsible for this part of the article.) We should have included more of the Greek text, including the preposition ἐν so that readers could see that there was another way of understanding the construction. The English translation we gave, “a spectacle among the gentiles,” was exactly the wording given in a recent, standard English translation of Psalms of Solomon, in James Charlesworth’s The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1985), vol. 2, p. 652. The translation “spectacle” is a way of saying in English that they were “in a place visible/notorious” and so the translation is not incorrect, though not as literal as “in (a place) visible” or “in (a place) notorious” among the Gentiles. But that more literal translation still supports our understanding of Rom. 16:7 as “well-known to the apostles,” for in Ps. Sol. 2:6 the place was “visible” or even “well-known” to the Gentiles. (The text does not say, “in (a place) visible among other places” or something like that, which would be parallel to “outstanding among the apostles.”)

In retrospect, we now think it would be better to include the preposition ἐν before the word ἐπισήμῳ in our citation, and change the statement to “The parallels include (a) people as the referent of the adjective ἐπίσημος” to reflect that here most likely the referent of the adjective ἐπίσημος is a place, not people. We would not be willing to change, however, the basic conclusion that this passage confirms our hypothesis that ἐπίσημος plus (ἐν plus) dative personal adjunct should be best understood as meaning “well known to . . .” This is especially so for two reasons. First, the other use of ἐπίσημος in Ps. Sol. 17:30 uses the genitive case (different from the dative case in 2:6) to show that the prominent place was part of the earth in keeping with our hypothesis about the inclusive use of ἐπίσημος, but this instance in 2:6 uses the dative in keeping with our hypothesis about the exclusive use of ἐπίσημος. Second, point (c) in our initial assessment of Ps. Sol. 2:6 would stand, as it is very reasonable to see ἔθνεσιν here as referring to people.

We would also plead with others to tone down some of the rhetoric on this issue and refrain from intemperate language. Our goal is to pursue truth, wherever that may lead. Let us work together to understand the biblical text better without denigrating one another.