Romans 16:6-7 - Exposition

Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on you ( ὑμᾶς , rather than, as in the Textus Receptus, ἡμᾶς ). Salute Andrenicus and Junia , my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles who also were in Christ before me. It is a question whether by "my kinsmen" ( τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου ) here and afterwards St. Paul means that the persons so called were his relations, or only that they were Jews (cf. Romans 9:3 , where he speaks of the Jews generally as τῶν συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα . There are in all five persons so designated in this chapter. The designation "fellow-prisoners" implies that these two had been, like himself, at some time imprisoned for the faith, but it does not fellow that he and they had been in prison together. If, in speaking of them as "of note among the apostles ( ἐπὶσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις )," he means to designate them as themselves apostles, this is an instance of a wider use of the term "apostle" than is generally understood (see note under Romans 12:6 , etc.). The phrase, however, will bear the interpretation that they were persons held in honour in the circle of the original twelve. The term, οἱ ἀποστόλοι , is certainly often used distinctively of them, as in Acts 9:27 and in Galatians 1:19 , by St. Paul himself, the reference in both texts being to his own relations to them; and so here, speaking of two persons, who he also says had been in Christ before himself, he may only mean to point to their having been, as they still were, distinguished in association with the original apostles even before his own conversion.