Junia and Michael Burer

The Better Bibles Blog has posted today on the NET Bible, and Michael Burer's three principles of Bible translation,

1. Just because something has always been translated a certain way does not mean that it is correct.
2. We should always value the light ancient documents shed on our understanding of the Scriptures, even for an issue as mundane as the meaning of a single, obscure word.
3. We should always use the most up to date, accurate tools available. (In this instance, HALOT has the more accurate information as opposed to the other well-known Hebrew lexicon BDB.)

Michael authored the article Was Junia Really an Apostle with Dan Wallace. Subsequent to this article the NET Bible, ESV and HSCB have all translated Romans 16:7 as "Junia ... well-known to the apostles." My detailed response is here, please read from the bottom up.

Two years ago, I wrote a post on the BBB, at length recounting the many grammatical difficulties in the article by Wallace and Burer.

Michael Burer emailed me two years ago saying that he had been asked to respond to the work of Linda Belleville and J. Epp with respect to Junia. His response is now posted on CBMW,

My schedule has not permitted me time to develop an in-depth response to any of these reviews. What I can say at this point is that I have not read anything in any of them that has dissuaded me from the viewpoint Wallace and I advanced in the original article. (In the next few years I hope to develop a suitable response to these critiques.)

Yes, you read it right. At least three reformed Bibles have removed evidence from the English Bible that a woman was "among the apostles" - whatever that means, and there is no reaction, just - "my schedule does not permit." This is the level of interest in defending women - yawn.

In the meantime, the Vamva version of the NT, a revision of the Greek NT done by an orthodox Greek bishop, says clearly μεταξὺ - "among." However, it appears that Americans think they know better than the 19th century clergy of Greece, they know better than the translators of the KJV, better than Luther, better than Calvin, better than Jerome, better than Chrysostom, better than ... Burer and Wallace have based their surmise, that Junia was not an apostle, on these three principles,

1. Just because something has always been translated a certain way does not mean that it is correct.
2. We should always value the light ancient documents shed on our understanding of the Scriptures, even for an issue as mundane as the meaning of a single, obscure word.
3. We should always use the most up to date, accurate tools available. (In this instance, HALOT has the more accurate information as opposed to the other well-known Hebrew lexicon BDB.)

Let me address them.

1) There is little regarding doctrine that has been hidden for 20 centuries and revealed in the last few years. The two big ones are that teshuqa means that it is the rebellion of women to want to control their husbands, and this is the main cause of divorce in our day. The second is that all the early church fathers, and native speakers of Greek were mistaken regarding Junia being an apostle. She was not. How convenient!

2) Wallace and Burer's argument from the Pss. of Solomon contains several serious errors.

a) They stated that Pss. 2:6 is a "close parallel" with Romans 16:7. They now admit that it is not.

b) They argued that en plus the dative is not usually inclusive, but that a genitive would be expected. In the NT these two structures are used synonymously and there are exact examples of this.

c) They say that when used "in collocation with words of perception" it means "to." However, there is NO word of perception in Romans 16:7.

Here is how they state their main argument,

When, however, an elative notion is found, evn plus a personal plural dative is not uncommon. In Pss. Sol. 2:6, where the Jewish captives are in view, the writer indicates that “they were a spectacle among the gentiles (ἐπισήμῳ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν)

Semantically, what is significant is that (a) the first group is not a part of the second—that is, the Jewish captives were not gentiles; and (b) what was ‘among’ the gentiles was the Jews’ notoriety.

Clearly, it says that the Jews were captives in a "place" that was among the Gentiles. It is inclusive. Episemos does not relate back to the Jews but to the place. Episemos with en plus the dative does have the meaning "among." Junia is episemos, that is, "among" the apostles.

3) When Burer and Wallace state that we should use the most up to date tools available, they may be referring to the use of a computer database search, in which snippets of lines of Greek are excerpted from the text and lined up in a list for analysis, without reference to the original context. Does this seem useful?

I posted a Response to Michael Burer on the BBB two years ago. In the comment section I posted this,

Suzanne McCarthy

Posted May 30, 2007 at 7:40 pm | Permalink

Mike Burer has written to say that he will eventually be preparing a response to Epp, Belleville, Bauckham, and myself.

I have no timeline. As he intends to publish this as a paper, I appreciate that this could take some time.

And then in the spring of 2008 he posts that his schedule "has not permitted" him to look at this. But, even more shocking is that this passes without comment. Nobody cares. Nobody holds his toes to the fire. Nobody will face up to Wallace and Burer and ask "What about Junia?"

Basically, as it only affects women - let's plaster over the disagreement and carry on.