An ossuary discovered in Jerusalem a couple of decades ago once contained the bones of Joanna, daughter of John and granddaughter of Theophilus, high priest from 37-42AD, who was a son of Annas, and brother-in-law of Caiaphas, both implicated in the trial of Jesus. The discovery has led one apologist, Shane Rosenthal, to suggest that this Joanna might, in fact, be the same Joanna mentioned in Luke’s gospel, and only in Luke’s gospel, as a witness to the resurrection.
Unfortunately I don’t think that works chronologically. And the possibility that Joanna (a common name at the time) might be a family name given, perhaps, to a daughter of Theophilus too, takes us deeper into the realm of speculation, though it is not implausible. However, Rosenthal’s research opens up some suggestive lines of evidence to play with. Primarily, he draws on two current scholarly discussions.
The first is that the Jewish high priest Theophilus is a credible candidate for the addressee of both of Luke’s books – his gospel and Acts. Although Theophilus was not a rare name in the first century Roman empire, nobody else in recorded history is an obvious choice for the dedication, and the suggestion that Luke is addressing a generic “lover of God” is refuted by his address to “most excellent Theophilus,” a form Luke puts in the mouth of Paul when addressing both Festus and Felix. Luke’s Theophilus is therefore someone of great eminence.
Although Luke is usually considered a gentile, on a questionable interpretation of Paul and some traditions, a third century tradition identifies him as one of the Seventy sent out by Jesus, and another that he is the same “Lucius of Cyrene” teaching in the Antioch Church in Acts, and/or Paul’s (presumably Jewish) kinsman Lucius in Romans 16:21.
Furthermore, Rosenthal cites John Wenham, who is not alone is considering “the brother whose praise is in the gospel in all the churches” in 2 Corinthians 8:18 to be a reference to Luke as a gospel writer before the letter was written around 56AD. It is actually quite hard to make good sense of Paul’s words in other ways. It is also Wenham (in Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke ) who points out that
…there is … a period of some seven or eight years, beginning and ending in Macedonia, where Luke drops out of the Acts story.
It is therefore certainly not impossible that Luke might have spent some of that missing time in Jerusalem researching and writing his gospel for the ex-high priest Theophilus. But is there a likely sitz in lieben for such an exercise? One thing that occurs to me (not derived from Rosenthal or Wenham) is the curious fact that the same Luke, in Acts, says very little about the progress of the church in Jerusalem/Judea between Peter’s escape from Herod’s prison until Paul’s fateful final return. That’s a surprising omission for a history of the early Church, especially when Luke does record the authority of the Jerusalem Church to settle the issues raised by the Gentile expansion.
Usually it is explained purely by Luke’s focus on Paul’s Gentile mission taking the gospel “to the ends of the earth.” But I tentatively suggest another possible, though more prosaic, explanation for the silence of Acts between the Jerusalem church hiding away to prevent arrest in ch12, and the “thousands of Jews, all zealous for the law” when we get to Acts 21. There, Peter warns Paul more about offending these Jewish Christians than about keeping his head down from the temple authorities, though in the event he is targeted by them – but for allegedly compromising the law, not simply for being a Christian. James was not targeted, until his judicial murder by another high priest in 62AD, which caused such a public uproar that the high priest had to resign – clearly in Jerusalem Christianity was popular.
What if, in the years before Wenham’s absolute latest date for Luke’s gospel, 55AD, James and the Jerusalem church were negotiating a cautious peace accord with the Jerusalem hierarchy, since persecution had failed to prevent mass-conversions and therefore benefited neither side? Somehow the temple authorities had to work with the large number of priests following Christ in Acts 6:7. And what if Theophilus, part of Annas’s still-powerful priestly family, was either appointed as a go between by the Sanhedrin, or was known to have some sympathy with the Church by the Christians? In either case, the respectful provision of Luke’s “orderly account” to him would be a suitable deposition for such a tribunal. To me that makes a lot more sense than Luke’s agreeing to perform such a mammoth task, plus the Acts supplement, for some random Roman patrician who happened to be interested. It would also explain the heavily Jewish elements of the gospel, and Luke’s particular focus on the temple authorities more than the Pharisees.
Subsequently, when Paul faced charges that would lead him to face his high-priestly accusers in Rome, it would also make sense for Luke to write Acts as another deposition to the same representative of those authorities, in order to paint the Gentile Mission as a gain for the Jews, and not a threat. In that case, the absence in Acts of the important history of the Jerusalem church would be very simply explained by the fact that the high-priest Theophilus knew all about that already, because he was there. The silence on that history is a problem for us, but not for a Jerusalem-based Theophilus.
That brings us to the second main thread of Rosenthal’s argument, which is that although the Joanna in Luke is only mentioned twice – once as one of the women maintaining the Lord and his disciples from their own resources, and once as a witness of the empty tomb and resurrection – she seems to be given special prominence. Richard Bauckham is one of those who has noticed a chiasmus in Luke’s resurrection account that centres on Joanna’s name, the ancient equivalent of putting it in bold italics. Rosenthal suggests that, if she was indeed Theophilus’s granddaughter, Luke would be pointing out that his principal witness to the risen Christ was his own granddaughter!
Although, as I’ve said, I don’t think the chronology works for that, it remains the case that if Joanna is being emphasised, it is certainly for the benefit of Theophilus rather than the general reader. If the addressee was the high priest, then some connection with Joanna is implied by this focus. If nothing else, Luke tells us that Joanna had incredibly high social status, for he describes her in ch8 as the wife of Chuza, Herod’s chief steward. Rosenthal demonstrates that the word επιτροπος, “steward,” is more like the relationship of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, or of Joseph to Pharaoh, than of a servant pouring the wine at Herod Antipas’s table. Chuza’s wife was a prominent aristocrat, of considerable wealth. If that sounds unlikely, remember the Countess of Huntingdon’s prominence in the Great Awakening.
In short, even if Theophilus was not related to Joanna, as he might well be given the social and political ties of the Jewish elite, she was certainly part of his social circle, and not simply some Galilean fishwife. In fact, if I’m right in some of these educated speculations, then we learn that, right from the start, Christianity encompassed not only the poor and outcast, but the very highest echelons of society. How else would “another disciple” in John 18 know the high priest well enough to engineer Peter’s admission to his house? How else would the young Antioch church in Acts 13 number Manaen, brought up with Herod the tetrarch, as a leader? Jesus himself was no peasant, but of known priestly and royal descent, like the historian Josephus but without his social connections up there in Galilee – perhaps “genteel poverty” would describe his background. Even Paul, a student of the most powerful Pharisee of his day, Gamaliel, had enough social standing to persuade Caiaphas to appoint him as Witchfinder General to root out the believers at home and abroad.
So the Way of Christ was, from the beginning, a socially, intellectually and spiritually “respectable” movement, yet comprised a majority of folk who who were not wise, powerful or highborn (1 Corinthians 1:26). Despite, or because, of that, it was still despised even when tolerated. It seems to me that not much has changed in that respect.
