Was Junia Really the First Woman Apostle?

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In Romans 16, Paul says to greet his co -workers in the gospel of Christ. On that list are

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Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and fellow prisoners, he says, who are outstanding to the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

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Some translations read just like that, that Andronicus and Junia are outstanding to the apostles. But there are others, including the

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NASB and the King James, that say they are outstanding among the apostles. Some have interpreted this to mean that Andronicus and Junia were apostles.

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Furthermore, that Junia is the first woman apostle. Entire books have been written from just this one verse.

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But that's a lot of assumption from a simple greeting. First of all, we don't know for sure that Junia was a woman.

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As theologians like Charles Ellicott, Heinrich Mayer, Joseph Benson, Matthew Poole, John Gill, and countless others have noted,

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Junia was likely a man. That aside, Paul was not calling Junia an apostle, but that Andronicus and Junia were known to the apostles as outstanding servants and ministry.

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They were kinsmen, meaning they were Jews by descent, they were fellow prisoners with Paul, and they were in the faith before he was.

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That's it. To know for sure this verse is calling Junia a woman apostle, you would first have to know

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A. Junia is a woman, and B. Junia is an apostle. As it reads, this verse doesn't definitively say either, and nowhere else in the

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New Testament is it said any of the apostles were women. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4 .6,

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learn not to go beyond what is written, so that none of you will become puffed up on behalf of one against the other, when we understand the text.