A Twisted Crown of Thorns ®

This week’s excerpt comes from Tribulogue [an interesting blog I came across this week]. It is an in-depth look into a portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans  where two characters Andronicus and Dunia are mentioned in the sixteenth chapter. So who was Dunia and did her ministry contradict Paul’s admonition about women’s roles in church?

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was (Romans 16:7, NIV).

I’ve spent a lot of time working through the research that describes the households of Rome as one of the basic building blocks of Roman society. How commerce in the city led to movements in and out of the city at the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, in the middle of the first century. How wealth and patronage, even as evidenced in the New Testament, naturally led to “leadership positions” that existed in the house churches in Rome, prior to the arrival of the Apostles. …Read More!