There has been dispute surrounding both Junia's gender and apostolic status, although she has been viewed as female through most of Christian history as well as by the majority of scholars.

In this chapter, Paul mentions his greetings to a number of other members of the Christian community in his time, one third of them being women.

This could mean Junia was an apostle in the non-technical sense of "messenger" or "representative" or it could refer to a church planter or missionary.

[10] This rejection of Junia's apostolic status has been criticized by Linda Belleville,[9] Richard Bauckham,[12] and Eldon Epp.

[13] Among other things, Burer and Wallace were criticized for using a small sample size and for often including evidence from grammatical constructions that did not support their case; it was also noted that the more standard reading of the passage's Greek was never questioned until the verse was once again understood to contain a woman.

A common argument among Belleville, Bauckham, and Epp is that all native speakers of koine Greek in the earliest years of Christianity read Paul's letter as describing Junia as an apostle.

Bauckham writes that "writers such as Origen and John Chrysostom were educated native speakers of Greek.

"[12] More recently, developing considerations made by Bauckham and Jewett[14] on Paul describing Junia as being a follower of Christ before him, and raising further discussion on Paul's views on apostolic legitimacy, Yii-Jan Lin has additionally argued for Junia's apostolic status.

[16] Beth Allison Barr discusses the Junia dispute in her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021).

[18] Christine Schenk CSJ discusses the matter in her book Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity.

The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many others.

(Luke 8:1-3)Joanna the wife of Chuza is also mentioned alongside Mary Magdalene and other women as those who first visited the tomb and found it to be empty, and it is to this group of women, including Joanna, that Jesus first appears and instructs them to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee in Luke 24:1-10.

Joanna and Junia act as near sound equivalents in the native languages, which Bauckham says is indicative of the identification between the two.

[21] As such, some scholars see Junia's apostleship and the reference to her in Romans 16:7 as proof that Paul the Apostle, whose name is ascribed to thirteen epistles in the New Testament, encouraged female leaders in the Church.

Two centuries later, in 1512, Jacques LeFevre also considered Junia a man, even though in the Latin translation available to him the name was clearly feminine.

The earliest copies of the Greek texts for Romans 16:7 are majuscules (i.e. written only in capital letters) without accent marks.

By the time accentuation appears in manuscripts of the New Testament, Junia is unanimously accented as a female name.

[15] Eastern Orthodox traditions hold that Junia and Andronicus of Pannonia traveled extensively and preached the Gospel to pagans, many of whom were converted to Christianity.

Paul's "enthusiastic acclamation" of Junia prompted Chrysostom, prominent Church Father, to marvel at her apparent devotion such that "...she would be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle.