Joanna

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Jesus had an entourage, and that entourage, according to the Gospel of Luke, included several women of substance. Luke tells us that as Jesus traveled through the cities and villages of Galilee, “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God,” he was accompanied by the twelve as well as by “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna and many others, who provided for them out of their resources” (Luke 8:3).

All Four Gospels agree that Jesus accepted women as traveling disciples. Jesus is the first Jewish leader of his day we know of to do so.¹ But our focus here is not on all the women who followed Jesus, but one: Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’s estate agent.

Herod Antipas was a son of King Herod the Great who came to rule over Galilee and Perea (the desert region south of the Galilee and east of the Jordan and Dead Sea).

As the wife of Herod Antipas’s steward, Joanna was no peasant. Rather she would have been a middle- or even high-status woman apparently able to travel on her own or with friends without fear of reprisal. This is surprising, because women in early Jewish culture were not supposed to fraternize with men they were not related to, never mind travel around Galilee with them. Joanna, however, not only followed a man around Galilee, she supported him financially. Joanna apparently had access to her 014husband’s material wealth (we know it wasn’t her own, because in her society, women of her class could not inherit money or have their own), and, we are told in Luke 8:3 (quoted above), she used it to become one of Jesus’ patronesses. Her funds helped Jesus, the twelve, and the women disciples travel, eat and minister together.

Joanna’s support of Jesus is especially surprising because her husband Chuza worked for the oppressive tetrarch Herod Antipas, the infamous beheader of John the Baptist. Herod cannot have been pleased that his estate manager’s wife was running after Jesus, a radical sage and acquaintance of John the Baptist. It surely didn’t help Chuza’s situation that Jesus had called Herod “that fox,” referring to his sly and predatory character (Luke 13:31–32).

That Joanna would nevertheless leave her home and put her husband’s career at risk to follow Jesus shows how very attractive the ministry of Jesus must have been to women. And for obvious reasons: First, Jesus did not treat women as if they were made unclean periodically by menstruation (see Mark 7:15). This allowed women to become his close and constant disciples without fear of contaminating others in the circle. Second, Jesus apparently dismissed contemporary taboos against men even talking with women who were not their relatives. This was a radical step to take in a highly patriarchal culture like Galilee. (The equivalent would be if an Imam in Iran suddenly invited women to come be his closest followers and disciples.)

When Jesus traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, his unusual entourage of women and men accompanied him. This, too, is extraordinary. Normally women went to the festival with their own families, but Joanna and the other Galilee women broke these cultural rules to be with Jesus.

The group was present at the crucifixion. Luke 23:49 tells us, “All his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” According to Luke, Joanna and other women not only witnessed the death, but followed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb (Luke 23:55). When they saw where Jesus was laid, they went to someone’s house and prepared burial spices and ointment, and then returned to the tomb once the Sabbath was over to anoint and cleanse Jesus’ body and to wrap spices in the burial shroud to retard the odor.²

But when the women—Luke later identifies them as “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women” (Luke 24:11)—arrived at the tomb on Easter morning, “they found the stone rolled away from the tomb … When they went in, they did not find the body” (Luke 24:3). Two angels—“men in dazzling clothes”—approach the women and ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” The text continues: “Then they remembered his [Jesus’] words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.”

Notice the repetition of the word “remember”: The author is here telling us that the women had, when Jesus was still alive, received private teaching from him about his coming death and resurrection. It was not just the twelve who were taught this at Caesarea Philippi, as we might have assumed based on Luke 9:18–27 alone.

The men apparently thought that the women’s tale of a risen Jesus was nonsense, “an idle tale,” and “they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). This is not surprising; women in this culture were generally considered too emotional to be valid witnesses. For this reason, it is all the more striking that women were the key witnesses to the heart of the later Christian creed, that they were last at the cross, first at the tomb, first to hear the Easter message, first to proclaim it and first to see the risen Lord (Matthew 28 and John 20).

Joanna’s story seems to end here. But there is a small linguistic link between Joanna and a woman named in Paul’s Letter to the Romans that just might suggest otherwise.

In Romans 16:7—a crucial verse for evaluating the role of women in the Jesus movement—Paul mentions several church leaders and workers who are in Rome or will be traveling to Rome, and asks the locals to treat them well. The list includes a handful of women, including one Junia and her husband Andronicus. The Latin name Junia is equivalent to Hebrew Joanna.³

In Paul’s day, Galilee and Judea were territories within the Roman empire. In order to survive, many Jews, especially the elite, adopted Roman customs, conventions and even names. It is no accident that Herod Antipas, a Jewish client king of Rome, named his capital Tiberias after the Roman emperor. Even the Sea of Galilee came to be known as Lake Tiberias in this period (John 21:1).

As an estate agent, responsible for managing and buying the king’s land, Chuza moved in circles where he would have had close contact with Rome and Romans. It is quite possible that his wife adopted a Latin name. Might Paul’s Junia be the woman Luke calls Joanna?

On first blush, this seems unlikely since Junia is said to be married to a man named Andronicus, which is not equivalent to the Hebrew Chuza.

There are several clues in the full verse, however, that suggest another verdict. Paul writes: “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen who were in prison with me; they are notable among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.” First, Paul tells us Junia is not Roman, but Jewish. She is one of his people, his “kin.” Second, Paul knows this couple intimately; indeed they had done time together. Apparently they had been imprisoned because of their work as ministers and missionaries. This is actually quite unusual. Criminal women were generally not jailed but put under house arrest—unless they had done something really notorious or notable to offend a city’s officials. Paul appears to be suggesting that Junia and her husband were, like him, ringleaders of the “notorious” Christian sect that was causing so much trouble throughout the empire.

Third, Paul notes that Junia and Andronicus were in Christ before him. Paul was converted only two or three years after Jesus died, which would mean that Junia and Andronicus numbered among Jesus’ earliest followers.⁴ Finally, and most importantly, the couple are said to be “notable” (or, depending on the translation, “prominent” or “outstanding”) “among the apostles.”⁵

Paul’s Letter to the Romans predates the earliest gospel (Mark) by at least ten to twelve years, which means this is the first New Testament reference to a woman as an apostle. This is impressive, especially when we remember that when Paul uses the term “apostle” this way (without any qualification), he means an Apostle with a capital A—that is, someone who has seen the risen Lord, been commissioned by Him and now serves as a missionary (see for example, 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:7).⁶

In sum, Paul is writing about a Jewish woman called Junia, but presumably named Joanna in Hebrew, who was an early, close and prominent follower of Jesus, who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection, and who then boldly spread the gospel. Might she be the Joanna of Luke’s gospel?

I believe she is. But what happened to Chuza? I suspect he divorced Joanna, and she remarried a Christian named Andronicus and started on a life of missionary work that took her to the heart of the empire (and, at least once, to jail). It’s easy to see why Chuza 046would have divorced a woman who was using his money to chase after a radical prophet who had insulted his boss. In the honor-and-shame culture in which they lived, Herod Antipas would hardly have retained Chuza as estate agent if Chuza retained Joanna as a wife. The divorce would also explain why Joanna was free to follow Jesus to Jerusalem at Passover.

Readers might think that the issue of women in early Judaism and early Christianity is a subject so well covered that there is little else to say about someone like Joanna.⁷ But, as we continue to learn about the social context in which women operated in the first-century world, and as small points of language and linguistics become clear, fresh insights are made possible.

I admit, it takes a great deal of detective work (some will say speculation!) to connect Joanna with Junia. In any case, Luke presents Joanna as a bold and prominent apostle. Paul’s Junia is similarly characterized. Whether they are two women or, as I believe, one, they provide an unusual glimpse at the unusual role of women in the early Church.⁸

Jesus had an entourage, and that entourage, according to the Gospel of Luke, included several women of substance. Luke tells us that as Jesus traveled through the cities and villages of Galilee, “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God,” he was accompanied by the twelve as well as by “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna and many others, who provided for them out of their resources” (Luke 8:3). All Four […]