Female Apostle(s) at the Roots of Christianity

Abstract

There is an increasing demand for the ordination of women as priests within the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican’s primary argument against priestly ordination of women is biblical, appealing to certain historical events, specifically Jesus’ (alleged) choice of male apostles only. This article calls for a rethinking and rephrasing of such appeal to history. Due to the nature of our sources, the historically responsible question should not be whom Jesus appointed as apostles, but who were apostles in first-century Christianity. The article points out flaws in the Vatican’s reasoning in this respect and brings attention to evidence from earliest Christianity that does indeed speak in favor of women as priests, if an appeal is to be made to history in the first place. The evidence is Junia, a first-century female apostle, described as “prominent among the apostles” by the apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans.