- 2 days ago
In this video, we read and discuss Romans 16:1–16, the first of two sets of personal greetings at the end of the letter.
🔸Phoebe: A diakonos/servant from the church at Cenchreae near Corinth, likely carrying the letter to Rome. I explain Roman patronage to show why she was probably wealthy, influential, and able to travel for business and ministry.
🔸Prisca/Priscilla and Aquila: The unusual ordering of their names, manuscript differences, their resources and house churches, their expulsion under Claudius and return, and how they may have protected Paul.
🔸Epaenetus: Paul's first convert in Asia and a refugee from the Claudian expulsion.
🔸Mary: A Jewish woman and important laborer in Rome.
🔸Andronicus and Junia: Relatives of Paul. Debate over whether they were notable “to” or “among” the apostles and why I think Paul meant “well known to the apostles.”
🔸Ampliatus/Amplias: Probably a slave or freedman.
🔸Urbanus: Probably also a slave or freedman and a well-known missionary.
🔸Stachys: A host or patron of apostles and missionaries.
🔸Apelles: Greek believer who was faithful through persecution.
🔸Aristobulus: Possibly a relative or descendant of Herod the Great.
🔸Herodion: Probably not related to Aristobulus, but related to Paul.
🔸Narcissus: Probably another slave or freedman. Possibly a secretary and advisor to Emperor Claudius.
🔸Tryphaena and Tryphosa: Jewish women who might have been sisters. Ministered somewhere outside of Rome.
🔸Persis: A Jewish woman from Persia who had ministered somewhere Paul had visited.
🔸Rufus: Possibly a Roman or Helenized Jew who knew Paul when he was young.
🔸Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, and Hermas: Men who might have led home fellowships around Rome.
🔸Philogus, Julia, Nereus and sister, and Olympas: Might have been leaders of home fellowships, possibly couples and/or families.
Were Andronicus and Junia Apostles? https://americantorah.com/2025/01/02/were-andronicus-and-junia-apostles/
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
🔸Phoebe: A diakonos/servant from the church at Cenchreae near Corinth, likely carrying the letter to Rome. I explain Roman patronage to show why she was probably wealthy, influential, and able to travel for business and ministry.
🔸Prisca/Priscilla and Aquila: The unusual ordering of their names, manuscript differences, their resources and house churches, their expulsion under Claudius and return, and how they may have protected Paul.
🔸Epaenetus: Paul's first convert in Asia and a refugee from the Claudian expulsion.
🔸Mary: A Jewish woman and important laborer in Rome.
🔸Andronicus and Junia: Relatives of Paul. Debate over whether they were notable “to” or “among” the apostles and why I think Paul meant “well known to the apostles.”
🔸Ampliatus/Amplias: Probably a slave or freedman.
🔸Urbanus: Probably also a slave or freedman and a well-known missionary.
🔸Stachys: A host or patron of apostles and missionaries.
🔸Apelles: Greek believer who was faithful through persecution.
🔸Aristobulus: Possibly a relative or descendant of Herod the Great.
🔸Herodion: Probably not related to Aristobulus, but related to Paul.
🔸Narcissus: Probably another slave or freedman. Possibly a secretary and advisor to Emperor Claudius.
🔸Tryphaena and Tryphosa: Jewish women who might have been sisters. Ministered somewhere outside of Rome.
🔸Persis: A Jewish woman from Persia who had ministered somewhere Paul had visited.
🔸Rufus: Possibly a Roman or Helenized Jew who knew Paul when he was young.
🔸Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, and Hermas: Men who might have led home fellowships around Rome.
🔸Philogus, Julia, Nereus and sister, and Olympas: Might have been leaders of home fellowships, possibly couples and/or families.
Were Andronicus and Junia Apostles? https://americantorah.com/2025/01/02/were-andronicus-and-junia-apostles/
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
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LearningTranscript
00:00:01We are reading Romans 16.
00:00:05We finished chapter 15 last time, so we are starting on 16, verse 1.
00:00:11We're starting on another element of the Romans chiasm.
00:00:15We're on the second half of the gratitude and praise element.
00:00:20And in this case, Paul is starting off with gratitude and praise for Phoebe.
00:00:26And at the beginning, it was gratitude and praise for all of the Romans.
00:00:30And then he's going to move into greetings.
00:00:32So in the greetings lists, a whole bunch of names.
00:00:35So we're going to have a couple of topics where we can have some good discussion.
00:00:40But for a large part of tonight, I'm probably just going to be in lecture mode,
00:00:45talking about what we can know about some of these people just from this text
00:00:51and a little bit from tradition and extra biblical sources.
00:00:56But it really is amazing how much you can get out of the text just based on what Paul says
00:01:01in a single sentence.
00:01:03So I'm hoping that that is not going to be dull or tedious.
00:01:09I do have to admit that at times, researching who all these people were was a little bit tedious.
00:01:15I probably spent, I don't know how many hours, 10 to 20 hours researching all the people in this chapter
00:01:23so that I can have some idea of who they were.
00:01:27It's been interesting.
00:01:28But, you know, when you get to the long list of names that don't show up anywhere else in history,
00:01:33it can be a little tedious.
00:01:35All right, let's go on to the reading.
00:01:37I commend to you, our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Kentria,
00:01:41that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints
00:01:44and help her in whatever she may need from you,
00:01:47for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.
00:01:51Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus,
00:01:54who risk their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks,
00:01:57but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well.
00:02:00Greet also the church in their house.
00:02:03Greet my beloved...
00:02:04I don't know how to pronounce this name.
00:02:07Who was the first convert to Christ in Asia?
00:02:10Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you.
00:02:12Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners.
00:02:16They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.
00:02:20Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord.
00:02:23Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ and my beloved Stachys.
00:02:27Greet Apellas, who is approved in Christ.
00:02:30Greet those who belong to the family of Aristopoulos.
00:02:33Greet my kinsmen Herodian.
00:02:35Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus.
00:02:38Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphena and Tryphosa.
00:02:42Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.
00:02:46Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord.
00:02:49Also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.
00:02:52Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Atrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them.
00:02:59Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus, and his sister, Olympus, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them.
00:03:06Greet one up, greet one another with a holy kiss.
00:03:10All the churches of Christ greet you.
00:03:13Okay, so that's a lot of names.
00:03:15It's almost like reading something from the Book of Numbers or Chronicles.
00:03:19So first, let's talk about Phoebe.
00:03:24I commend to you, our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Contraea, that you may welcome her in
00:03:29the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you.
00:03:33For she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.
00:03:36All right, so we can learn quite a bit from this.
00:03:40Contraea is, it's a port of Corinth.
00:03:44Corinth sat on what's called an isthmus, which is like a narrow neck of land between two larger bodies of
00:03:50land.
00:03:51And Greece is a peninsula, but it's a peninsula that's cut in two.
00:03:56And the lower half is Achaea, I think, and the upper half, I don't remember what the upper half is
00:04:03called.
00:04:04But Corinth sits on the isthmus that's right between the two.
00:04:08And so it has a port on either side.
00:04:11And Contraea, I believe, is the port on the east side.
00:04:15But it's about 11 miles from the city of Corinth.
00:04:20So we know that Paul spent a significant amount of time in Corinth.
00:04:24And he probably wrote the Book of Letter, wrote the Book of Letters.
00:04:28He wrote the Letter of Romans from the city of Corinth.
00:04:31And so he was very familiar with people who live there.
00:04:35And this is one of the reasons he's commending Phoebe to the Romans.
00:04:39She is probably carrying his letter to them.
00:04:42So she's acting as his courier.
00:04:45He says that she is a servant of the assembly at Contraea.
00:04:49A servant, the Greek word here is diakonos, where we get the term deacon.
00:04:56It means what we think of today as deacon, but not exactly.
00:05:01At the time that Paul was writing this, I don't think that there was any specific office that would have
00:05:07been called deacon.
00:05:09Their churches or assemblies, whatever you want to call them, they weren't really that formal in structure.
00:05:14They didn't have a pastor, a board of elders, a set of deacons, ushers.
00:05:20They didn't have all that.
00:05:22They had, maybe they had a teacher or they had a couple of teachers and they had elders who were
00:05:29maybe not,
00:05:32they might not have even considered them an office in the church, but more like a role in the church.
00:05:39And the word deacon literally means, or diakonos literally means a servant.
00:05:44So in a sense, all of these people were servants, but then they also had people who did all kinds
00:05:52of services.
00:05:53If you remember in Acts, there's the story of the, there were two groups of Jews in the city of
00:06:02Rome who were believers.
00:06:03They were Hellenized Jews, and then they were the Jewish Jews.
00:06:07And there was some conflict about the widows in both groups.
00:06:10There were lots of contributions coming into the assembly.
00:06:13And then the apostles would hand out donations to the widows to help maintain them.
00:06:20But the Hellenized Jews complained that their widows weren't getting an even portion.
00:06:25So the disciples got together.
00:06:28They chose seven men and put Stephen in charge of them.
00:06:32And these men are deacons.
00:06:34And Stephen was like the head deacon of this committee.
00:06:38Other things, somebody could be in charge of childcare, somebody in charge of maintaining the facilities.
00:06:46All of these people are deacons because they are servants of the assembly.
00:06:51So when Paul says that Phoebe is a servant of the assembly at Contraea, it's not saying that she had
00:06:59a specific office in the church.
00:07:02It meant that she performed some service for them.
00:07:06And we can get some clues as to what that service might have been here.
00:07:10Paul says that she was a patron of many and of himself as well.
00:07:14Now, in Roman culture, patron had a specific meaning.
00:07:18And it's very similar to what we think of.
00:07:21And we get our word patron from the Latin word.
00:07:24A patron was, if you've seen the movie The Godfather, the Godfather acts as a protector and a almost like
00:07:35a mayor of the neighborhood.
00:07:37And when people need a favor, they come to him and he doles out favors and he's like a coordinator
00:07:44and facilitator, community organizer, all of these kinds of things.
00:07:48And this is what a patron did.
00:07:51And it wasn't necessarily family-based, although family was always a big part of it.
00:07:56But if you were a craftsman or an artist or any kind of skilled person or even just a laborer,
00:08:05you would try to attach yourself to a patron who would then provide like a social safety net kind of
00:08:14thing, a welfare system.
00:08:15But a privately owned and operated welfare system where they would help support you.
00:08:20And in return, you would work for them.
00:08:23You would do favors for them.
00:08:26You would help defend them.
00:08:27You would defend their name in public.
00:08:29Essentially, you would become a miniature tribe within your local community.
00:08:37And so this Roman patronage system was, it's hard to describe.
00:08:42I think the example of the godfather in the movie is about as close as I can come, but not
00:08:49necessarily with the criminal element.
00:08:51So Phoebe was wealthy.
00:08:53She had a lot of people who depended on her and who looked up to her as a leader in
00:08:58the community.
00:08:59And when Paul says that she was a patron of many and of himself, that probably means that she had
00:09:05begun focusing her patronage into ministry outlets.
00:09:10So instead of funding the arts or a particular type of trade or craft, she was funding missionaries.
00:09:20So she was probably financing the travels of Prisca and Aquila and Apollos and Paul and other missionaries who were
00:09:29traveling around the Greek world.
00:09:31And using that network to further her own business needs along the way.
00:09:37So then when she comes to Rome carrying Paul's letter, he says, help her in whatever ways that she needs.
00:09:46And this is part of the patronage system.
00:09:49Paul, she is a patron of Paul.
00:09:51It doesn't necessarily mean in Paul's case that he was accountable to her, but he does feel obligated to try
00:10:00to help her in whatever endeavor she has.
00:10:03So she has come to Rome on her own carrying this letter, but she probably also has business interests.
00:10:10Being a patron, she's wealthy.
00:10:12Being a woman who's traveling on her own and a patron with her own funds, she's probably a widow.
00:10:18So she's not necessarily accountable to anybody else.
00:10:21And she's running her family business.
00:10:25And the help that the people in Rome could give her are introducing her to people that she might be
00:10:32able to do business with, introducing her to the other assemblies in Rome, because she's probably going to be carrying
00:10:38this letter around to the various home fellowships in the greater Rome area, giving her lodging, although being wealthy, not
00:10:47really sure that she would require that.
00:10:49I don't know the details of how that kind of thing happened in Roman society.
00:10:54I'm not sure if they had hotels in the same way that we think of them.
00:10:57Any thoughts about Phoebe or questions about any of that?
00:11:01Jay, would her circumstance have been the norm in Roman society?
00:11:07I know that there are many that have a hard time with the role of women in terms of authority,
00:11:15both then and now.
00:11:18How would she fall within that realm of thought?
00:11:26Money goes a long ways.
00:11:28Roman and Greek society were much more patriarchal than ours.
00:11:34A younger woman who was married with children really didn't have any rights that her husband didn't say that she
00:11:41has.
00:11:41She really couldn't operate independently.
00:11:44And if she was a slave, that was even more slaves could sometimes operate under the radar of everybody else
00:11:51because the social elites pretended to ignore them most of the time.
00:11:56But in this case, she's probably a widow and she's obviously she's definitely wealthy.
00:12:03And this gives her a lot of freedom that other women wouldn't have.
00:12:06She would have the freedom to be able to move around and essentially operate as a man would within this
00:12:13culture.
00:12:14She could do business.
00:12:15She could book travel on her own.
00:12:17She probably did not travel by herself.
00:12:19She probably traveled with some kind of retinue, especially if she's carrying money and doing business.
00:12:25She would have some kind of armed escort, but these would be servants or family, people who are accountable to
00:12:34her and loyal to her.
00:12:37So for a wealthy widow, it was a very different world than for most women.
00:12:44Sure.
00:12:45I make it sound like I'm some kind of expert in ancient Roman culture, and I'm not.
00:12:49So please don't take my word for anything.
00:12:52If you're really curious, you might want to do some research on your own.
00:12:56This is I've done a lot of reading and listen to a lot of lectures on the topic, but I
00:13:02am not a scholar on this in this area.
00:13:05Anybody else had any thoughts about Phoebe?
00:13:08It's something that I should have mentioned before I started talking about the individuals.
00:13:12Just an introduction to this chapter.
00:13:15All is sending greetings to people.
00:13:19And in the Greek, the word here for greetings means something like salute.
00:13:25So it can mean what we think of as greetings, like say hello to so-and-so.
00:13:28But it can also be give them my acknowledgement or tell them that we know that they are honorable, great
00:13:37people.
00:13:38Not necessarily.
00:13:39It's a little more formal than say hi to so-and-so.
00:13:42And there's a case like further on in the chapter, Paul says something about all the assemblies.
00:13:48Can't remember who it is.
00:13:50All the assemblies greet so-and-so or greet you.
00:13:52I think it is at the end.
00:13:54And it's not like all of the assemblies that Paul has visited have all told him, oh, say hi to
00:13:59the people in Rome.
00:14:00So they're all saying, Paul is saying, they all salute you.
00:14:05They all acknowledge that you are God's people and they respect you.
00:14:12Something like along those lines, I think.
00:14:15There's another aspect of this list is if you've heard of a guy named Hippolytus.
00:14:21He was a Christian theologian who lived the end of the second century, beginning of the third century.
00:14:29He wrote, he was one of the most prolific early Christian writers.
00:14:35He wrote histories, he wrote theologies, he wrote sermons, all kinds of stuff.
00:14:42And one of the things that he's most known for is defending church authority.
00:14:50He wanted everybody to believe the same thing.
00:14:53He wanted everything to be in order.
00:14:56He wanted all congregations to have the same liturgy.
00:15:01He was really a champion of ecclesiastical authority and liturgical conformity.
00:15:09And one of the writings that he has left behind is a list of the 70 apostles.
00:15:17I think it's in Luke or Mark, I don't remember right now, where Yeshua sends out 70 or 72, depending
00:15:24on who you ask, disciples on a missionary trip.
00:15:29Hippolytus has a list of these names.
00:15:33And he says, most of the names in this list in Romans 16, he says, these were part of the
00:15:4172 disciples.
00:15:43And this one is now the Bishop of Colossus.
00:15:47And this one is the Bishop of Thebes.
00:15:48And this one is the Bishop of so-and-so.
00:15:50Well, honestly, I think he just made it up.
00:15:54I think that he was trying to reinforce the authority of Rome and say, all of the people who established
00:16:03your churches in all of your cities, we sent them there.
00:16:06We gave them the authority to do that.
00:16:08And he was creating a mythology around these names in Romans 16 to create a justification for saying that, for
00:16:20dictating to all of the congregations what they can believe and how they should live and carry on their services
00:16:29and organize their structure.
00:16:32And so I don't give a lot of credence to his list.
00:16:34I think most of it is just made up stuff, self-serving.
00:16:40I don't trust Hippolytus.
00:16:42So there are a lot of traditions about who some of these people are that I don't think are correct
00:16:48because they're derived from Hippolytus' list.
00:16:51Really, the greetings in this chapter are much more profound than showing how this person who started from humble beginnings
00:16:59in Rome became the Bishop of Byzantium.
00:17:03It's more profound because it's not a list of ecclesiastical dignitaries.
00:17:09It's a mix of rich people, poor people, completely unknown people, personal friends, relatives.
00:17:16It's just showing the realness of Paul's letter, that he was writing to real people that he either knew himself
00:17:26or knew by reputation.
00:17:28These weren't mythological figures.
00:17:31They're just ordinary people trying to live a life in Rome in a world that is completely hostile to everything
00:17:38they believe in.
00:17:39And I think that there's a lot more encouragement in that than there is in the idea that Urbanus went
00:17:48from being a slave to being a bishop of some city.
00:17:51All right, so now that the rewind is done, we'll move up to Prisca and Aquila in verses 3 to
00:18:015.
00:18:02Prisca and Aquila, or Priscilla and Aquila, depending on which book and which translation you're reading, these are a lot
00:18:09more well-known than most people in this book.
00:18:11They come up several times in the Book of Acts.
00:18:14They're in Corinthians.
00:18:16Some interesting anomalies here.
00:18:19Some manuscripts say Prisca, some manuscripts say Priscilla.
00:18:23And Paul usually puts Prisca before Aquila.
00:18:27In almost every case that these people are named, she is before he.
00:18:32And they're a husband and wife team.
00:18:35And this is really unusual.
00:18:37I mentioned Roman and Greek society were very patriarchal.
00:18:41And it was almost universal to put the man's name before his wife's.
00:18:45But Paul makes a point of flipping it around the other way and doesn't explain why.
00:18:51The only place where it's not is in Acts 18, where they're first introduced, I think.
00:19:00Luke wrote Acts, and he introduced them as Aquila and Priscilla.
00:19:04So Luke uses the longer name, which is actually the more informal name.
00:19:10Paul uses the shorter name, Prisca, which is more formal.
00:19:15But there's a difference in manuscripts here in that the Textus Receptus, the manuscripts that the King James Version and
00:19:22most older translations are based on, uses the more informal name, Priscilla, every time.
00:19:28So I'm pretty sure it's every time.
00:19:33But since the King James was translated, we have discovered older and more complete manuscripts.
00:19:39And in most of those, Paul uses the shorter version, which is the more formal name.
00:19:45So he calls Priscilla by a formal name and puts her name first, which makes me think there's some kind
00:19:52of interesting dynamic going on here.
00:19:55Technically, we know more about Aquila.
00:19:58Acts says that Aquila was a Jew from Pontus, and this is the region on the north side of Asia
00:20:06Minor on the coast of the Black Sea.
00:20:08It doesn't say that Prisca was a Jew, but it says that Prisca was Aquila's wife.
00:20:17But this thing where Paul uses her formal name and puts her name first, it makes me think that she
00:20:25might have been from some notable family.
00:20:28We don't know who Aquila was other than being a Jew from Pontus, but I suspect that he married into
00:20:35money and possibly political influence.
00:20:39And we can know that Priscilla and Aquila, Priscilla is a much more natural because we act, people today are
00:20:46named Priscilla.
00:20:47I have never met anybody named Prisca.
00:20:49So I'm just going to say Priscilla because it rolls off the tongue easier.
00:20:53We know that they had money because they had homes in both Rome and Ephesus, which is unusual enough.
00:20:59But they had homes that were big enough to host assemblies in both places.
00:21:04They also traveled extensively.
00:21:07They traveled around as missionaries.
00:21:10They worked with Paul at times.
00:21:12And they brought Apollos, who was another missionary, brought him under their wing and taught them a better theology.
00:21:20So Priscilla and Aquila were very well taught, very well educated.
00:21:26They knew the scriptures.
00:21:28They knew who Yeshua was.
00:21:30And it's just interesting to me that the Roman assembly has people like Priscilla and Aquila and some of these
00:21:38other names that we're going to see.
00:21:40But they still needed instruction from Paul because they were still getting some things wrong.
00:21:45Something you might remember from way back at the beginning of this Roman study is that in, I put AD
00:21:5349 on here.
00:21:55I'm not sure that's correct.
00:21:57Sometime between AD 44 and AD 49, the Jews were expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius.
00:22:04But then they were, when Claudius died in AD 54, they were allowed to come back.
00:22:10But we know that Priscilla and Aquila were expelled from Rome at that time because scripture tells us.
00:22:16And they moved to Ephesus and they traveled around in that area.
00:22:20They spent time in Corinth and some other Greek cities around Asia Minor where they taught, they traded, they hosted
00:22:31an assembly in their home.
00:22:33And then when Claudius died and they were allowed to come back to Rome, they did.
00:22:38Paul also says that they risked their necks for him.
00:22:41But we have no record of that.
00:22:43We don't know when that happened.
00:22:44I suspect that this was probably in Ephesus because when Paul was there, Ephesus was the home of the Artemis
00:22:55cult.
00:22:56Artemis worship went way back and they had this shrine to Artemis.
00:23:00And there was a conflict with a silversmith who was a, he worked with all of the idol makers.
00:23:09And I don't know exactly what he provided to them.
00:23:13Maybe he smelted the silver for them and provided it to the idol makers.
00:23:16I don't really know exactly.
00:23:18But he got together with all the idol makers and started a riot.
00:23:22And they were going to lynch Paul.
00:23:24But some influential people stepped in and calmed the crowd down a little bit and let Paul escape.
00:23:32And I suspect that Priscilla and Aquila were involved in this because this was their second home.
00:23:38Rome was their primary base.
00:23:40Ephesus was their second home.
00:23:43It's possible they had another home in Corinth too, for all I know, because they did spend a significant amount
00:23:48of time there.
00:23:50But we don't really know.
00:23:52They risked their neck for Paul somewhere.
00:23:54And that seems the most likely place based on what we know from Acts.
00:23:59Any thoughts about Priscilla and Aquila?
00:24:02More questions?
00:24:03Let me take a look at my notes here real quick.
00:24:07Yeah, I don't think I have anything else to add here.
00:24:10All right, so let's go on to Epinetis.
00:24:15Epinetis?
00:24:16Your guess is as good as mine how to pronounce that.
00:24:19Let's see.
00:24:20Paul says.
00:24:21Would it be Epinetis?
00:24:24Epinitis?
00:24:25I don't know.
00:24:26It could be.
00:24:27Epine.
00:24:28Yeah.
00:24:29Epilepsy.
00:24:29I don't know.
00:24:30Let's see.
00:24:31In verse 5, Paul says that he was the first convert to Christ in Asia.
00:24:36Now, I don't think that he means he was the first convert out of anybody in Asia.
00:24:42I think he means that he was Paul's first convert to Christ in Asia.
00:24:47And since Paul began his ministry way over in his own hometown around in the region around Tarsus, my best
00:24:55guess is that's where this guy was from.
00:24:59And then I don't know how he ended up in Rome, but maybe he went on a missionary trip of
00:25:04his own or who knows.
00:25:07But Paul has a special relationship with this guy because this was his first convert to Yeshua.
00:25:15I'm guessing since he was in Asia and then came back to Rome, that he was probably a Jew who
00:25:22was expelled along with Priscilla and Aquila.
00:25:24And there are several people in this list who were in that boat who Paul knows personally, but now they're
00:25:31in Rome.
00:25:32And I believe the most likely explanation for that is that these people were Roman residents who were expelled in
00:25:4049 or whatever year that was and then came back five years later in 54 AD.
00:25:45And so Paul met them somewhere along the way, even though he's never been to Rome, he knows quite a
00:25:50few people who were there now.
00:25:51Not a whole lot we can say about this guy because he doesn't show up anywhere else that I know
00:25:56of.
00:25:56And then there's Mary.
00:25:58We can be reasonably sure that Mary was Jewish because there weren't many Romans or Greeks named Mary or Miriam
00:26:06or Maria or anything like that.
00:26:09Eventually, that became a very common name in Latin languages, but that's only because they were Christianized.
00:26:17At this time, there were no Christians.
00:26:20There were these believers, followers of the way or Nazarenes, whatever they were called at that time, but they weren't
00:26:25called Christians yet.
00:26:27And so this was probably a Jewish woman.
00:26:30And Paul says that she worked hard for you, for the Romans.
00:26:35My best guess is that she was like Phoebe in Cantrea, but she was in Rome.
00:26:42It doesn't say that she was a patron, so I don't have any reason to believe that she was wealthy
00:26:47or financing anything, but she was a servant of the assembly at Rome.
00:26:54And whatever work she's doing, I don't know.
00:26:57Maybe she was making sure that there was food and drink for everybody who showed up.
00:27:05Maybe she was a messenger.
00:27:08Maybe she was the janitor.
00:27:10We really don't know.
00:27:12But what we do know is that she worked hard to either establish or maintain the Roman assemblies.
00:27:18And that makes her a deacon just like Phoebe.
00:27:21Andronicus and Junia.
00:27:24This is probably, these are probably the most controversial names in this chapter.
00:27:30And people actually do get upset.
00:27:32More about Junia, of course, than Andronicus.
00:27:36This is probably, it doesn't say so, but this is probably another husband and wife ministry team.
00:27:42Let me bring that back up on the screen and read that passage.
00:27:47Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners.
00:27:51They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.
00:27:55So Andronicus and Junia, Paul calls them my kinsmen.
00:28:00Now, we have already seen at least three Jews in this list.
00:28:05Aquila, we know, is a Jew.
00:28:07Mary is almost certainly a Jew.
00:28:11There was a third.
00:28:12Priscilla is probably a Jew, too.
00:28:14We just don't know for sure.
00:28:15We know what Aquila is.
00:28:17So, but he doesn't call them his kinsmen.
00:28:20So there's something different about Andronicus and Junia.
00:28:23And I'm guessing that they're from the tribe of Benjamin, or they are more closely related.
00:28:28If they're not from the tribe of Benjamin, maybe they're related to Paul's mother or something like that.
00:28:34But these are probably more closely related than simply being fellow Jews.
00:28:39He also says they are fellow prisoners.
00:28:41That means that they were victims of some kind of persecution.
00:28:47So this is a common tie that he has with Andronicus and Junia and with Priscilla and Aquila, is that
00:28:55they were all subject to persecution.
00:28:57We don't know where.
00:28:58The only record we have of Paul being a prisoner is in Philippi when he was in jail with Silas.
00:29:05We don't have any record in Acts that there was anybody else there, that there were any other believers there,
00:29:10rather.
00:29:11We know there were other prisoners.
00:29:13But he doesn't necessarily say they were prisoners in the same place.
00:29:16So it could be that they were in prison somewhere else, and he's just aware of it.
00:29:21We know that they were early converts to Yeshua.
00:29:23They were converts before Paul.
00:29:27It's even possible that Paul himself persecuted them.
00:29:31Maybe Paul's the one who put them in prison.
00:29:34That's obviously speculation.
00:29:36A lot of this is speculation based on hints in the text, like whether they're from the tribe of Benjamin
00:29:42or not.
00:29:43We don't have any way of really knowing that.
00:29:45We just know that they are more closely related to Paul than Mary and Aquila are.
00:29:53So, then we come to the real controversy in this verse.
00:29:56Are they notable to the apostles, or are they notable among the apostles?
00:30:01Notice in the English Standard Version here, it says, they are well known to the apostles.
00:30:08We go to the King James, it says, who are of note among the apostles.
00:30:14They're both translating the same words.
00:30:16There's no difference in manuscript here.
00:30:19The problem is that prepositions are notoriously difficult to translate.
00:30:24The word and can mean all kinds of different things.
00:30:27In this case, let me find my notes here.
00:30:31There are two words involved here.
00:30:34There are actually three words involved in the controversy.
00:30:38Sorry, I got so many notes here.
00:30:40I've got two and a half pages written on just this verse alone.
00:30:43First, he calls them, there's the word apostles.
00:30:47What does this word mean?
00:30:49Is he talking about the 12 disciples, Paul, Barnabas, Timothy, this inner circle?
00:30:57Or does he mean people who are sent on a mission?
00:31:01Apostle really literally means just someone who is sent.
00:31:04But we generally think of this as the apostles with a capital A.
00:31:09So the apostle Paul, the apostle John.
00:31:13If Andronicus and Junia are notable among the apostles, that means that they're on a par with, at least with
00:31:25the lesser known disciples.
00:31:26You know, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, these kind of people.
00:31:30But it says they are notable, which means they should be more notable than those.
00:31:35More like James and Peter and John and Paul.
00:31:38The problem is that we have no record of that.
00:31:42There is no hint.
00:31:43They're not mentioned anywhere else in scripture.
00:31:45They never wrote anything.
00:31:47They're not mentioned by any of the early church fathers until more than a century later.
00:31:53And then it's just commentary on Romans.
00:31:57So it really seems unlikely to me that Paul is saying that they are notable among the apostles with a
00:32:04capital A.
00:32:05But this phrase, among or notable among or of note to, whatever it means.
00:32:13Trying to find the phrase here.
00:32:17Episemos.
00:32:19Episemos means notable and in.
00:32:22Episemos in.
00:32:24Which can mean in or to.
00:32:26Or among.
00:32:28Or among.
00:32:29It can mean all kinds of things.
00:32:31That word in.
00:32:32So that's really what this controversy hinges on.
00:32:37And there's a guy named.
00:32:40Michael Burr.
00:32:42Michael Burr and.
00:32:45Dan Wallace.
00:32:47They wrote a paper some time ago in 2001.
00:32:51They wrote a paper called Was Junia Really an Apostle?
00:32:55An Examination of Romans 16, 7.
00:32:58And what they did is they took a whole bunch of Greek manuscripts, as many as they could find, that
00:33:04use the same phrase.
00:33:06Episemos in something.
00:33:09And what did it mean in these other cases?
00:33:12And they found 30 some cases.
00:33:15And in all of those, they noticed a pattern.
00:33:19If it was in the dative case.
00:33:21I don't know if you've done any translation in languages that use declensions and cases like dative and genitive and
00:33:28nominative.
00:33:30English is a little funny that way.
00:33:31But most other European languages use these cases.
00:33:38So if episemos in, and then the next word, is in dative, then it means that whatever it is, is
00:33:48notable to the other thing.
00:33:50If it's in genitive, then it means it's notable among the other thing.
00:33:55Here in Romans 16, 7, it's in dative.
00:33:58So it should mean notable to the apostles and not among the apostles.
00:34:04That means that the apostles know who Andronicus and Junia are.
00:34:09And that makes sense since they were some of the earliest believers.
00:34:13Not all Greek scholars agree with Burr and Wallace's findings on this.
00:34:18So there were a lot of challenges.
00:34:20So Burr wrote another paper where he analyzed more than 100 papers, 100 Greek manuscripts.
00:34:28And in, I don't remember the exact numbers here.
00:34:32I might have it written down.
00:34:35Okay, so among these 100 new passages, he found 36 texts that use almost the exact same construction as in
00:34:43Romans 16, 7.
00:34:44And in every one of them, where it was a dative case, it meant to and not among.
00:34:52So I think the linguistic argument is pretty strong.
00:34:59That Andronicus and Junia were not apostles in that sense.
00:35:03That they were well known to the apostles, but they were not apostles themselves.
00:35:09The circumstantial evidence, the fact that there's no mention of them anywhere else in scripture, if they were so notable
00:35:16as apostles, shouldn't they have written something?
00:35:20Shouldn't we have heard something about them from somebody else?
00:35:23Since we don't, the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong also that they were not apostles.
00:35:29John Chrysostom did mention Junia.
00:35:33He said, how great the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of
00:35:39apostle.
00:35:40This is John Chrysostom.
00:35:43He wrote Greek.
00:35:44That was his native language.
00:35:45So you would think that he would understand what this would mean.
00:35:49But he's pretty much alone in all the Greek manuscripts of interpreting it this way.
00:35:55And Chrysostom was also an extreme anti-Semite.
00:36:01He was an antinomian.
00:36:04I don't think that he's a reliable witness.
00:36:07I think that he had too many personal hangups with Jewish scriptures to really be someone to be learning from.
00:36:16And he's considered one of the early church fathers.
00:36:19I would class him with the other heretics personally.
00:36:23Probably not as bad as Marcion, but in that same category.
00:36:27So I don't consider him a worthwhile witness.
00:36:31A little bit later in 246 AD, Oregon of Alexander speculates that Andronicus and Junia were among the 72 disciples
00:36:40sent out by Yeshua.
00:36:42But again, this is just speculation.
00:36:45He didn't really have any evidence for that.
00:36:47He just thought, hey, maybe it's possible that they were some of these people.
00:36:51But speculation from somebody who lived 200 years after the fact doesn't really seem to hold a lot of weight
00:36:58either.
00:37:00All of the rest of the evidence says that they were not apostles.
00:37:04And that is still extremely controversial in theological circles today.
00:37:10Mostly it has to do with the argument about whether women should be apostles.
00:37:15The role of women in ministry.
00:37:18And I just don't think that this passage is even relevant to the argument.
00:37:23Paul was not saying that they were apostles.
00:37:25He wasn't saying they were not apostles.
00:37:27He was just saying that they were notable to the apostles.
00:37:30The apostles knew who they were.
00:37:31And that's really all he's saying.
00:37:34Any questions on Andronicus and Junia?
00:37:38So, Jay, you define an apostle as sent out, correct?
00:37:42Yeah, it's someone who's sent on a mission or as a representative of somebody else.
00:37:48So, if the gospel is to share, or the purpose of the gospel is to share the message,
00:37:54then in essence, anyone following the gospel has that, those marching orders.
00:38:00So, when you say sent out, is that sent out specifically by a group?
00:38:04Or is that concept of sent out to be your marching orders?
00:38:10You know, the gospel marching orders.
00:38:13Like, are you an apostle?
00:38:15Are you an apostle?
00:38:16I believe in a sense we're all apostles.
00:38:18Because we have all been given a mission to go out and make disciples of the world.
00:38:23So, would they not fall within that same category?
00:38:26Yeah, they definitely would.
00:38:27That's just not what Paul is saying here.
00:38:30Yeah, it seems to be a very, it seems to be a point that's being used to argue women shouldn't
00:38:38be in this ministry or that.
00:38:41The point seems very obscure, not yours, but the fact that this is a controversy is strange to me.
00:38:48Yeah, I think people are making way too much of this passage than they should.
00:38:52I have pretty, I'm, my views on the whole topic are pretty patriarchal, but I, I don't know, I, some
00:39:02people would probably call me a soft complementarian, but I can't stand that term.
00:39:06I think that there is a distinction between apostles, capital A, and apostles, little a, and it's how, it's context,
00:39:13and how is the word being used.
00:39:15In this verse, I think Paul is using apostles with what I would call a capital A.
00:39:20He's saying that Andronicus and Junia are well-known to the apostles.
00:39:25If he meant all believers, then he would have said they're well-known to the, to the congregations, the Ecclesia,
00:39:33or something like that.
00:39:34But because he says, well-known to the apostles, I think he's talking about the disciples, whether it's the 12
00:39:42or the 72 or Paul and Luke and Timothy and all of these other people.
00:39:48So he's using it in a much more narrow sense.
00:39:52And in the broader sense, Andronicus and Junia are apostles because they have been sent by God on a mission,
00:39:58whether it's to Rome or to somewhere else.
00:40:01I, I don't really know.
00:40:03Wherever it was that they were oppressed and imprisoned, they were probably sent there by God to do something.
00:40:09So they were small a apostles in that sense.
00:40:13Well-known to the apostles.
00:40:15No, that could be, you could be infamous, infamous.
00:40:18Yeah.
00:40:19It could be known.
00:40:20It's the same word in Greek.
00:40:21Yeah.
00:40:21You can be known in a good or bad sense, so to speak.
00:40:24So I wouldn't think that he would make that comment, but just extrapolating this translation to the word to on
00:40:34that, it seems to be, it seems to be driven by, I've got an agenda.
00:40:41I'm not saying you do, but that's just how it strikes me.
00:40:44I'm not saying I'm accurate or not.
00:40:46It just seems so.
00:40:48The word to, there is a preposition there.
00:40:50It has to be translated somehow.
00:40:52And I think the ESV is correct to translate it to the apostles instead of among, because that's how it's
00:40:58used in most Greek contexts.
00:41:00Right, but to discern what that means is, you know.
00:41:03Yeah, all it seems to mean is that the apostles know who they are.
00:41:07Yeah.
00:41:08And they know them well.
00:41:09Like, they are well-known to the apostles.
00:41:13And that probably means that they're well-known.
00:41:18Ah, okay, okay.
00:41:20Yeah, I don't think it means that they're infamous, but it's more like the apostles all know who these people
00:41:26are.
00:41:28Gotcha.
00:41:29Okay, thanks.
00:41:32By the way, I posted a link to an article in the portal this morning where I talk about this
00:41:39verse and some of the controversy and the arguments for one understanding or the other and why I understand it
00:41:49the way that I do.
00:41:50You can go to americantorah.com and find the link there.
00:41:53All right, verse 8.
00:41:55Greet Amplius, my beloved in the Lord.
00:41:58That's the King James Version.
00:41:59This is another place where the Textus Receptus manuscripts use an informal, familiar name for somebody, whereas older, more complete
00:42:10manuscripts use a more formal name, Amplius.
00:42:14Amplius, so I suspect that there was some kind of scribal tradition along the way, like later on as the
00:42:22Christian church grew and became more established, that some of these people took on a more familiar sense.
00:42:30Like, oh, we love Amplius.
00:42:33He's such a great guy.
00:42:34We're just going to call him Amplius.
00:42:37And that's how it got written down in manuscripts from that point on.
00:42:41But Paul preferred a more formal name.
00:42:44Paul didn't want to use the familiar name for whatever reason.
00:42:48I don't really know why.
00:42:50And he did the same thing with Prisca versus Priscilla.
00:42:54And I don't know what in Latin makes a name formal versus informal.
00:42:59Obviously, it's not the length, since Priscilla is informal and Prisca is formal, but Amplius is formal and Amplius is
00:43:08informal.
00:43:10In any case, this is a common Latin name for slaves or freedmen.
00:43:18The people have changed their names a lot more frequently in these ancient cultures than we tend to.
00:43:25They didn't just change their last name when they got married, but they would change their first name.
00:43:30Since they were slaves, they would frequently change their name in honor of their master or somebody they admire.
00:43:40When Emperor Claudius was in power, his right-hand man changed his own name, gave himself a middle name, and
00:43:50called himself Claudius.
00:43:52And we're going to talk about him a little bit later, too.
00:43:56So lots of slaves tended to have the same name for whatever reason.
00:44:02I don't know whether they were naming themselves after a specific person, or it just meant something particular.
00:44:09I'm a slave, but I have this particular aspiration, so I'm going to change my name to this.
00:44:14I don't really know.
00:44:16I believe that Amplius means something like expanded or growing larger.
00:44:23You can see that in the root there for amplification, to amplify.
00:44:28Same root.
00:44:29So it's probable that Amplius was either a slave or a freedman.
00:44:34And there is actually in the Domitia, Domitila or Domitia, I'm not sure, that's probably pronounced in L in Latin.
00:44:44I learned Castilian Spanish in high school, so I want to pronounce it Domitia, which I know is also butchering
00:44:51Spanish, but still.
00:44:54There is a catacomb in this Roman suburb, Domitila.
00:44:59It was named after a woman who owned the property.
00:45:03And within this catacomb, there's a tomb that has the inscription Ampliatus.
00:45:08And the tomb is richly decorated.
00:45:13And it's much larger than other tombs in the catacomb.
00:45:17And I believe that it actually says that the man who was buried there was a slave or a freedman.
00:45:23And so some people have speculated that maybe this is the same guy.
00:45:27The problem is that the Domitila catacomb wasn't used for burials until 115 or 120 AD.
00:45:36And this letter was written around 150-something AD.
00:45:41150 by 156, something like that.
00:45:46So if it's the same guy, then he must have been really young when Paul wrote this letter.
00:45:52So I kind of doubt it.
00:45:54I don't think it's the same guy.
00:45:56However, there is another argument.
00:45:58Because in the very next verse is this urbanus, which is another common Latin name for slaves or freedmen.
00:46:07And there is a late medieval theologian who wrote a history of Rome.
00:46:14He wrote a lot of theological stuff about Rome.
00:46:17And he claimed that he found a list of imperial freedmen.
00:46:22And Ampliatus and Urbanus were both on it.
00:46:26And the list dated to 115 AD, which would be just a few years before that catacomb became used as
00:46:32a tomb.
00:46:34In that case, maybe the tomb, the catacomb was put into use just to bury Ampliatus.
00:46:40That seems kind of a stretch to me.
00:46:42I suspect that because these are common names among slaves, then it's just a coincidence that both names ended up
00:46:48on a list of imperial freedmen from 60 years later.
00:46:54Don't really know.
00:46:56That's just my feeling is that it's a coincidence and it's not the same guy buried in the catacomb.
00:47:02Just the historical trivia.
00:47:03I'm not sure if that really interests anybody else.
00:47:07See, Urbanus, what do we know about him other than that he was probably a slave or a freedman?
00:47:13Go back to the English standard.
00:47:16Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ.
00:47:18So Urbanus was a missionary that Paul knew about.
00:47:22It doesn't really seem that Paul knew him personally because he tends to use words like beloved or to give
00:47:30more information about the person that he knows personally.
00:47:33So he probably knows about Urbanus just by reputation.
00:47:36He's a missionary somewhere.
00:47:38He was probably expelled from Rome, traveled around the Greek provinces, or maybe he established a fellowship somewhere.
00:47:47And then he came back to Rome when Claudius died.
00:47:49There's really not a lot of information available.
00:47:52Hippolytus says they were both bishops of one city or another, and I think he was full of it.
00:47:57Okay.
00:47:58Stachys, another, this is a common Greek name.
00:48:02Paul says, my beloved Stachys.
00:48:05So it's likely that Paul knew him personally.
00:48:09And there is a tradition.
00:48:12Let's see if I have something in my notes about where the tradition comes from.
00:48:15No, I don't know where the tradition comes from, but there are two different lines of tradition.
00:48:22One that says that he was in Hierapolis with Philip, and another that he was in Byzantium with Andrew from
00:48:30the Twelve Disciples.
00:48:32And in both cases, he was a host of a home fellowship, or he was a facilitator for missionaries.
00:48:41He would host them in his house, make sure that they had what they needed, and maybe finance the next
00:48:46leg of their journey.
00:48:48But these are extra biblical traditions, and I'm not sure where they come from.
00:48:52So I don't know whether those are true or false.
00:48:55The next name, Apeles, another common Greek name.
00:48:59Paul says that Apeles is approved in Christ.
00:49:05A little mysterious about what that means, but Paul talks about being approved as someone who has been tested.
00:49:12So it's likely that this is another person who faced persecution somewhere.
00:49:16There was another Apeles who lived later in the second century.
00:49:20Definitely not the same guy, because they're separated by about 100 years.
00:49:25That Apeles was a Gnostic teacher who had all kinds of crazy ideas, but like I said, not the same
00:49:30guy.
00:49:31One of the, it might have been Hippolytus, thought that he was the same as Apollos.
00:49:38But Paul knew who Apollos was and spelled his name correctly in other places, so I don't think it's the
00:49:44same guy.
00:49:45Okay, the next one is a little bit different.
00:49:49Aristobulus says, greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus.
00:49:55It doesn't say greet Aristobulus, but those who belong to his family.
00:49:59So who is Aristobulus?
00:50:01We don't know for sure, but Herod the Great had a grandson named Aristobulus IV.
00:50:08And he went to Rome, was educated in Rome, then went back to Judea.
00:50:13He eventually died around 7 BC.
00:50:16So he was definitely not around when Paul was around.
00:50:19But many of his descendants still lived in Rome.
00:50:23And even in Paul's day, some of his descendants lived there, and they were wealthy.
00:50:28They were related to the Herods.
00:50:30So they had lots of money.
00:50:31They were politically well-connected.
00:50:33And so it's very possible that he was referring to the descendants in the extended family of Aristobulus.
00:50:40And those in the house of Aristobulus wouldn't just be his family, but their slaves, their hired servants, anybody attached
00:50:47to the house would be called part of the house.
00:50:50You can think of Abraham.
00:50:52Abraham had his 300 and some armed men, and he had all of these slaves and servants and workers.
00:50:59All of these people were part of the house of Abraham.
00:51:03Same kind of idea here.
00:51:05We don't know for sure whether this Aristobulus IV is the same Aristobulus that Paul is talking about, but it's
00:51:12a pretty popular tradition among Christian historians and I think is reasonable.
00:51:17There's a pretty good chance that that is who Paul was talking about.
00:51:22Move to verse 11.
00:51:24Greet my kinsman Herodian.
00:51:27Here's another one.
00:51:28This is probably more closely related than just being a Jew.
00:51:31He might even be related to the Herods.
00:51:35Aristobulus, the house of Aristobulus, these were part of the Herodian dynasty.
00:51:40But this Herodian is named separately.
00:51:44It was really common for people in that house to name themselves some variant of Herod.
00:51:49There was Herodias, Herodias.
00:51:55I've got some of the other names here.
00:51:56That's not really important.
00:51:58It's possible that he was a descendant of Herod or part of some other house of the Herodian family.
00:52:03I don't really know, but Paul says he's a kinsman.
00:52:08So I'm guessing that he took this name Herodian or his parents gave him that name to associate him with
00:52:16the Herods in other people's minds, but he was not really from the house of Herod.
00:52:21Instead, he was probably from the tribe of Benjamin or from related to Paul through his mother or through marriage
00:52:30from an aunt or uncle or a cousin, something like that.
00:52:34Yeah, nothing to add to that one.
00:52:36Any questions on Herodian?
00:52:38All right, we're going to try to get through this whole list of names, and I know it can seem
00:52:45a little bit tedious, but Paul wrote it down.
00:52:47So it's worth taking a look at and trying to understand who these people were.
00:52:53All right, next one is a lot like Aristobulus, where he says, greet those in the Lord who belong to
00:53:02the family of Narcissus.
00:53:04So this was another name that was common among slaves and freedmen.
00:53:09This one is a little bit different in that there was a famous, a wealthy, very powerful man named Narcissus.
00:53:17He was dead when this letter was written, but just like Aristobulus, Paul is writing to those of the house
00:53:23of Narcissus, not to Narcissus himself.
00:53:26So this could be his family, slaves, anybody attached to his house.
00:53:31Paul says, those who are in the Lord in the house of Narcissus, so they're probably a minority in the
00:53:39house, too.
00:53:41They're probably not the whole house converted to Christianity or to the way.
00:53:46That's probably not the case.
00:53:48There's just a few of them, and Paul is addressing them.
00:53:52And it's possible that he's not saying the names because this Narcissus had fallen out of favor.
00:53:59Nero was the new emperor.
00:54:01When Claudius died, Nero's mother, Agrippina, forced Narcissus to commit suicide.
00:54:10And anybody associated with him was now out of favor.
00:54:14So it's very possible that Paul didn't want to write their names down when he wrote this letter.
00:54:18So he said, those who are in the Lord in the house of Narcissus, rather than saying so and so
00:54:24and so in the house of Narcissus,
00:54:25because that could be very dangerous to them.
00:54:28Interesting.
00:54:29That's speculation based on history and the text.
00:54:33Don't really know.
00:54:35And I mentioned that Claudius earlier.
00:54:38This is the Claudius I was talking about.
00:54:41This guy named Narcissus.
00:54:43I'm trying to find his full name here.
00:54:45This is in verse 11.
00:54:48Okay, here it is.
00:54:49This is Tiberius Claudius Narcissus.
00:54:52That was his full name.
00:54:54He was the right-hand man of Emperor Claudius.
00:54:57He was a freedman, but he was Claudius's secretary and closest advisor.
00:55:04So you can see why Agrippina, who was an evil woman, when she installed her evil son, she would not
00:55:12want Claudius around because he was loyal to the old emperor.
00:55:15So she forced him to commit suicide.
00:55:19And yeah, then yeah, if you want to read more about that, Tacitus, he wrote Histories of Rome.
00:55:27He talks quite a bit about Narcissus.
00:55:29That's where all that information comes from.
00:55:32Any other, any questions or thoughts about Narcissus and his house?
00:55:37Yeah, if he's making comments of greeting to these various households of influence, he's still trying to influence the Romans
00:55:47in a roundabout way.
00:55:50You know, referencing the House of Trump, whereas you gain some credibility to those people you're trying to convert, I
00:55:59would think.
00:55:59Yeah, and I don't think that Paul talks about not showing favoritism between rich and poor, but he's not above
00:56:08showing honor to people or dropping names when he thinks it's going to help his mission.
00:56:13And I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that.
00:56:15It's just acknowledging the reality of the world.
00:56:18And so, yeah, it's certainly possible that maybe even Phoebe, since she's wealthy herself, while she's there, she's going to
00:56:25be visiting these people and giving them personal news from Paul or trying to make connections so that when Paul
00:56:31does come to Rome, maybe he'll find an inn to go and talk to the emperor.
00:56:36However, he hasn't been arrested yet at this time.
00:56:38He thinks he's going to go to Rome on his own free will.
00:56:41Okay, so let's move on to verse 12.
00:56:46Tryphena and Tryphosa.
00:56:48These are most likely Jewish women.
00:56:51There is a famous rabbi named Tryphon, and there were other Jews with very similar names.
00:56:58So these are probably Jewish since they're both female names, and they're mentioned together, and their names are so similar.
00:57:06They could be sisters.
00:57:09Maybe they're twins, or maybe they're just sisters who live together, widows who decided to reunite and pool their resources.
00:57:18I don't know.
00:57:20But Paul says that they're workers in the Lord.
00:57:26So they're laboring in ministry somewhere, and with Mary earlier, he said that she was laboring in the Lord for
00:57:35them at Rome.
00:57:36So I'm guessing that Tryphena and Tryphosa had been working in ministry somewhere else, and Paul knew them by reputation
00:57:44because of that, and now they're back in Rome.
00:57:47And maybe they're still doing some kind of ministry there.
00:57:51I don't know.
00:57:52And of course, I don't know that they are widowed either, but since two women's names are mentioned together and
00:57:58their names are so similar, they are probably widowed and probably living there together.
00:58:03And the next one, Persis.
00:58:06Although it sounds like a man's name, this is actually a woman's name, and it literally means a Persian woman.
00:58:14So most historians believe that she was either from, that she was Persian herself, of Persian ancestry, or she was
00:58:22a Jewess who had come from Persia, or family come from Persia, one of the two.
00:58:26And this one also says, greet the beloved Persis who has worked hard in the Lord.
00:58:32And I believe this beloved addition means that Paul probably knows her personally and knows that she has worked hard
00:58:41for the Lord.
00:58:43But we don't know anything else about her other than she was probably Persian and ministered somewhere other than Rome.
00:58:53Okay, next verse.
00:58:55Or does anybody have any questions about these?
00:58:58Okay.
00:58:59I think it is interesting that Paul, who in some of his letters, he emphasizes the authority of husband over
00:59:08wife.
00:59:08And he talks about how in all of the congregations that he sets up, there's some controversy over exactly what
00:59:15he means by this.
00:59:16But he says, I don't allow a woman to speak.
00:59:18I don't think anybody, most people don't believe he's saying he doesn't allow them to speak at all.
00:59:24There's a specific context he's talking about.
00:59:26Now, it may be as congregational leaders, it may be as interpreting prophecy because of the specific context.
00:59:33That's up to question.
00:59:35But Paul does put some limitations on what women can do in the congregation and the authority structure in the
00:59:41family.
00:59:42So I think it's interesting that Paul makes a point of including so many women's names in this list that
00:59:48he wants to specifically call out as honorable workers for the kingdom.
00:59:56And it might be that he is deliberately trying to counter the idea that he is such a patriarchal hardhead
01:00:05that he doesn't allow women to speak or to serve or do anything.
01:00:08That's not what Paul means at all.
01:00:12Everybody should be a deacon.
01:00:14Everybody should be ministering.
01:00:16And Paul is pointing out that these women are working hard for the kingdom.
01:00:20And there's nothing wrong with that.
01:00:22Someday we'll talk about Paul's requirements for congregational leaders or elders.
01:00:28Today is not that day.
01:00:30Let's see.
01:00:32Rufus.
01:00:34Rufus is definitely a Roman name.
01:00:36So he might have been a Roman or he could have been a Hellenized Jew.
01:00:40And I say Hellenized Jew because his name appears elsewhere in scripture, or at least the name Rufus does.
01:00:47In Mark 15, 21, let me pull that verse up.
01:00:51Mark 15, 21.
01:00:54This is in the crucifixion.
01:00:56Yeshua is carrying his cross, but the Romans grab this other guy and make him carry the cross instead.
01:01:03They pressed into service a passerby coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to
01:01:10bear his cross.
01:01:11Now, Simon of Cyrene is obviously a Jew, but his sons are named Alexander and Rufus.
01:01:17So I'm guessing that Simon is a Hellenized Jew because he's given his sons a Greek and a Roman name,
01:01:23which that in itself is interesting, that he's trying to make connections with both Greek and Roman culture while he's
01:01:30a Jew with a very Jewish name.
01:01:32But it is possible that this is the same Rufus.
01:01:36We don't really know because there could have been 100,000 Rufuses in the Roman Empire.
01:01:42It's purely speculation, and it's a common, it's a popular speculation that this is the same Rufus.
01:01:48However, I think the best argument for it is that this Simon of Cyrene, Mark makes a point of giving
01:01:57his sons names.
01:01:58Why would Mark bother to tell us the names of his sons if the names of his sons were not
01:02:03significant?
01:02:04And none of the other Gospels give these names.
01:02:07A lot of theologians say that Mark is, his Gospel is specifically geared towards Roman readers.
01:02:14That the way that he writes and the stories that he presents are something that the Romans would be more
01:02:21likely to connect with.
01:02:24Whereas Luke is more writing in a Greek style, and Matthew and John are both very Jewish.
01:02:30Mark is writing to a Roman audience.
01:02:33So when he points out that this Simon had a son named Rufus, maybe he's actually making the connection that
01:02:39this guy in Rome is the son of Cyrene.
01:02:43This seems like a stretch, and it really is.
01:02:45So I don't, it's probably not the same guy, but I like the idea.
01:02:51So it could be.
01:02:53Okay.
01:02:53Oh, Paul calls him a chosen or elect in the Lord.
01:02:58And doesn't really explain that.
01:03:01But it could mean, really the way that Paul writes in Romans, we're all chosen.
01:03:06We're all his people.
01:03:07So now we're all the chosen people.
01:03:09Or it could be that he's saying, even though Rufus has a Roman name, he's a Jew.
01:03:15So he's part of the elect people.
01:03:17Or, and this is the interpretation I favor.
01:03:20He's saying, this is a really excellent guy in the Lord.
01:03:24He is a choice man in the Lord.
01:03:26Peter uses that, this same Greek word in that way, when he writes about the chosen and priceless cornerstone.
01:03:36I can't remember the exact word, but it's in second Peter.
01:03:38He uses the same word and it doesn't, in context, it's talking about how excellent it is.
01:03:45And we use the same thing today.
01:03:47Like we say, choice beef means it's the best beef.
01:03:51So in the Greek word is used in that same vein.
01:03:56And then we know something else about Rufus.
01:03:59Paul has met Rufus's mother.
01:04:01And not only has met her, but has a good relationship with her.
01:04:05He says, also greet his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.
01:04:11So we don't know exactly what that means.
01:04:14It could mean that maybe Paul knew Rufus when he was growing up, like they were childhood friends.
01:04:20I think it's more likely that in one of the many times when Paul was beaten, that she might have
01:04:28been one of the people who nursed him.
01:04:29And maybe he stayed at her house while he was recovering.
01:04:33But we know that she had some kind of nurturing relationship with Paul.
01:04:36And whether he knew Rufus or not is not clear.
01:04:40But we do know that he knew Rufus's mother personally.
01:04:44But he doesn't give her name, which is curious.
01:04:46Oh, her name's Shaka Khan.
01:04:48We know that.
01:04:50Sorry.
01:04:50You're funny tonight, Scott.
01:04:52You're funny tonight.
01:04:53It's just there.
01:04:54What can I say?
01:04:55I'm grateful for the comic relief because this is not one of our most exciting sessions.
01:05:02All right.
01:05:02Any other comments from the peanut gallery?
01:05:06Okay.
01:05:07Moving on to verse 14.
01:05:11Now we get into two groups of people.
01:05:14Oops.
01:05:14That bottom one says verse 12.
01:05:16I should say verse 15.
01:05:18So these are set in groups of five.
01:05:21And Paul gives five names or five people.
01:05:24And then he says, and the brothers who are with them.
01:05:28At least in the first group, he does.
01:05:30In the second group, he says, all the saints who are with them.
01:05:34So the first group are five male names.
01:05:38Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobus, and Hermes.
01:05:42Hermes.
01:05:44My suspicion is that these were the leaders of a home assembly.
01:05:49And Rome was a big city.
01:05:50They probably had home fellowships scattered all over the city.
01:05:54And one of Phoebe's jobs was probably to carry this letter from fellowship to fellowship so it could be read.
01:06:01And maybe she did the reading.
01:06:02I don't know.
01:06:04But these were probably leaders of one of those fellowships, probably one of the larger ones, which is why Paul
01:06:10calls them out by names.
01:06:12And in the first one, they're all men.
01:06:16And I'm not saying there's anything good or bad about that.
01:06:18But what's interesting about it is that in the second group, they're not all men.
01:06:24That there are two women listed here.
01:06:26One by name.
01:06:27One only by relationship.
01:06:30Philogus, Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympus.
01:06:33So Philogus, Nereus, and Olympus are men.
01:06:36Julia and Nereus' sister are women.
01:06:40And in the first group, Paul says, and greet the brothers who are with them.
01:06:45In the second group, he says, and greet the saints who are with them.
01:06:49And I'm guessing that these two home fellowships were evolving different cultures.
01:06:54One being very patriarchal, and the other being a little more complementarian or egalitarian, depending.
01:07:01We can only speculate from the little bit of text we have here.
01:07:05And we don't know anything about these people.
01:07:07But I think that that is a possible reason why it's worded the way that it is.
01:07:14I'm more curious why Nereus' sister is not named.
01:07:19But I don't have any answers.
01:07:21Any questions or comments on this one?
01:07:24On these two verses?
01:07:26It's very possible you just didn't know her name.
01:07:29Yeah, it's possible.
01:07:30This could be just the way that Paul had received these names.
01:07:35And I suspect that Philogus and Julia are probably a husband and wife.
01:07:40Nereus and his sister in Olympus.
01:07:43Okay.
01:07:45Is that the last one?
01:07:46Oh, that's the last of the names.
01:07:47All right.
01:07:47We have one more verse, though.
01:07:50And that's verse 16.
01:07:51I'm going to bring that one onto the screen.
01:07:54Bring it on home.
01:07:56Greet one another with a holy kiss.
01:07:58All the churches of Christ greet you.
01:08:00So we are not going to start greeting each other with a holy kiss in our fellowship.
01:08:04Just letting you know now.
01:08:06In case anybody was wondering.
01:08:07Even today, Mediterranean cultures, some European cultures, have a practice of a kiss on the
01:08:17cheek as a greeting.
01:08:18And usually it's just touching cheeks together.
01:08:21And I actually witnessed this in South Louisiana when we go visit Paul's family.
01:08:26This is a really common greeting among Cajuns.
01:08:30And that just took me completely off guard the first time that happened.
01:08:33I'm like, what in the world is happening here?
01:08:36But this is still pretty common.
01:08:37I just thought it was normal.
01:08:38Yeah.
01:08:38They thought it was normal.
01:08:40I'm thinking, you've got to go home.
01:08:44And this is a cultural thing.
01:08:46It's just a common way that people greeted each other.
01:08:48And it was much more common then than it is now.
01:08:51Even European cultures are starting to move away from this.
01:08:54And people are just going to handshakes instead.
01:08:56And a handshake is essentially our modern version of the kiss on the cheek.
01:09:00At least in most of America.
01:09:02Excuse me.
01:09:03It wasn't a sensual thing in any respect.
01:09:07One big difference between the way it's done now and the way it was done then is that
01:09:12it was pretty much a taboo for a man to greet a woman like this in public or for a
01:09:19woman
01:09:19to greet a man like this.
01:09:21With close friends and family, it was acceptable within your home or within an intimate setting.
01:09:28Like if you have visitors at your house, then it would be more acceptable for a man to greet
01:09:35a woman with the kiss on the cheek like this.
01:09:38But out in public, you didn't do that.
01:09:40And I don't think Paul is telling people that wherever you go, if you meet each other,
01:09:44give each other a kiss, a holy kiss.
01:09:47No, he's saying he's going along with the cultural norm for greetings.
01:09:52But he is adding something to it.
01:09:55As far as I'm aware in my hour or so of searching on the Internet, which I realize that's not
01:10:04exactly
01:10:04a scholarly work, Paul is the only person in history to use this phrase with a holy kiss.
01:10:12This was not a Greek or Roman idea.
01:10:16And what I think Paul is doing is he's combining two cultural traditions.
01:10:20And here's another tradition that you see even today in many areas in the United States, in
01:10:28Europe, the Middle East, and that's kissing a sacred object, whether it's an idol or an
01:10:35amulet or a Torah scroll.
01:10:37If you go into somebody's house and they have mezuzah, it's a Jewish tradition.
01:10:42You kiss your fingertips and touch the mezuzah.
01:10:44In a synagogue, they have the, I don't remember what this is called, but essentially they pull
01:10:50the Torah scroll out and they parade it around the auditorium and they do the reverse.
01:10:56They will touch the fringe of the cover on the Torah scroll and then kiss their fingertips.
01:11:02Same kind of thing.
01:11:04Catholics will, at certain festivals or just if they're devout, will kiss a crucifix or
01:11:10defeat of a statue or something.
01:11:13It's the same thing that the ancient Romans and Greeks did this with their idols.
01:11:19And Paul is taking these two ideas, the normal cultural greeting of a kiss and the veneration
01:11:26of sacred objects.
01:11:27And he's saying, greet each other with a holy kiss, because now you are the temple of the
01:11:33living God.
01:11:34The Holy Spirit is in you.
01:11:36First Corinthians 3.16, he says, don't you know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?
01:11:43And in earlier in Romans, he says that we are all called to be saints.
01:11:48We are all called to be sacred, set apart for a divine purpose.
01:11:53And I think he's creating a new tradition by combining two cultural practices.
01:12:00Don't just greet each other.
01:12:01But when you greet each other, consider that you are greeting another temple of God and
01:12:06treat each other with that kind of respect and honor.
01:12:09That's what I think he's really saying when he says, greet one another with a holy kiss.
01:12:13And he uses this phrase in a couple of his letters.
01:12:16It's not just here in Romans.
01:12:17It's the last phrase, all the churches of Christ greet you.
01:12:21And this goes back to what I said at the beginning about the meaning of greeting.
01:12:26It also means salute.
01:12:28We give you honor.
01:12:30So all the churches that Paul had visited didn't all write to him and say, hey, when you write
01:12:36to the Romans, make sure you tell them hi for us.
01:12:38No, he's saying that all the churches, all the assemblies of the ecclesia, they know about
01:12:44you and they salute you.
01:12:46They honor you.
01:12:47So he's just stating a fact, not passing on a greeting, so to speak.
01:12:53Okay.
01:12:54Any questions or thoughts about verse 16?
01:12:56It is interesting that it's the only time anybody says something like that.
01:13:01So the fact that somebody might make a suggestion that it's something we should do, it seems
01:13:08very strange.
01:13:10I'm just saying that.
01:13:12Yeah.
01:13:12I'm trying to think of somebody did do that in our culture.
01:13:17We think of something similar with a handshake.
01:13:19We don't have, excuse me.
01:13:23We don't have an analog with a handshake of a sacred object.
01:13:27I don't think, not that I can think of.
01:13:30So I'm trying to think of how, if Paul was writing to somebody in modern day Chicago or
01:13:36New York, how would he word this?
01:13:38Read each other with a sacred handshake?
01:13:41Sacred fist bump.
01:13:42Yeah.
01:13:43Yeah.
01:13:44I'm not sure how he would say that, but if there's some cultural norm where we treat
01:13:49sacred objects differently with the way that we handle them, then we tend to treat them
01:13:54carefully.
01:13:55But would Paul say, greet each other with a careful handshake?
01:13:59Doesn't really carry the same meaning.
01:14:01So this is a difficult one to just read it and figure out what he means.
01:14:05What is a holy kiss?
01:14:07And I, I don't think I ever really understood that until I made the connection with, oh, holy
01:14:13is sacred.
01:14:14And you are greeting someone with the same emotion that you would greet a sacred object.
01:14:22You are venerating that person as a vessel containing God.
01:14:28So treat them accordingly.
01:14:31Could it have something to do with the marriage?
01:14:35A holy kiss is, to me, suggestive of a marital relation.
01:14:41Maybe he's equating our relationships in the church as we're married to Christ, that type
01:14:47of thing.
01:14:48I don't think so.
01:14:50Because the kiss was a typical greeting.
01:14:52And it wasn't a sensual romantic thing like that.
01:14:57It was in public, at least men greeted other men with a kiss.
01:15:02Women greeted other women with a kiss.
01:15:04Men never greeted another woman with a kiss.
01:15:07Unless maybe it was his wife.
01:15:09But yeah, so I don't think that's what he had in mind.
01:15:13All right.
01:15:14Well, today was definitely very different from what we've done before.
01:15:16I don't normally just go all lecture the whole time.
01:15:20And it's not my favorite way to do things.
01:15:22But with this particular chapter, it really seemed the only practical way to address this
01:15:27list of names.
01:15:28But we're not done with Romans 16 yet.
01:15:31We have another 11 verses to go.
01:15:35So there's some more greetings in here, but of a different nature and a little bit more
01:15:41theology that we can talk about next week.
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