Junia, the apostle: Part 7

I am working through Wallace's article very slowly. He continues,

“well known to/by the apostles” simply says that the apostles were recipients of information, not that they actively performed “knowing.” Thus, although ἐν plus a personal dative does not indicate agency, in collocation with words of perception, ἐν dative personal nouns are often used to show the recipients.

In this instance, the idea would then be “well known to the apostles.” Second, even if ἐν with the dative plural is used in the sense of “among” (so Moo here, et alii 5), this does not necessarily locate Andronicus and Junia within the band of apostles; rather, it is just as likely that knowledge of them existed among the apostles.

5 Moo, for example, writes: “if Paul had wanted to say that Andronicus and Junia were esteemed ‘by’ the apostles, we would have expected him to use a simple dative or upo with the genitive” (D. J. Moo, Romans, NICNT, 923).

The difficulty with these statements is that there is no verb of perception in Romans 16:7. 'Know' and 'knowledge' are not mentioned. Episemos is made up of two Greek words: ἐπί - on, and σῆμα - a sign, mark, token. The item has a mark on it, is distinguished.

(In fact, I was particularly interested in this word because it is related to the word for shorthand in Greek, σημεῖον. When translated into Latin it becomes nota - shorthand, the stuff that Arrian probably knew and Cicero made sure was used in the senate by the notarii.)

I sometimes feel that people who write articles about Greek are only ever thinking about English, they don't really live in the world of Greek vocabulary. If you want to write about Greek, you should first love Greek, and then worry about proving doctrine as a by-product, if you like.

Note: I think I shall finally admit that I feel myself to be a complementarian. I feel as if I have a uniquely feminine relationship to language. I would have said this was obvious from day one, but people keep challenging me on this anyway.

I keep imagining language with the metaphors of knitting and sewing - embroidery actually. My sense is that a woman can sew if she wants to, she doesn't have to be subordinate to enjoy the pleasure of sewing.

So I am not a female subordinist. I do not believe that a woman's way of interacting with Greek is functionally subordinate to the way a man might interact with Greek.