Junias Junia (Romans 16:7)
A person saluted by St. Paul and coupled with Andronicus. As the name occurs in the accusative (Ἰ ουνίαν), 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 (v. 3, the order, however, being ‘Prisca and Aquila’), Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister (v. 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 .).
T. B. Allworthy.