Luke's Key Witness?

Who was Joanna, and why does she play such a central role in Luke's final chapter? Curiously, this in-depth investigation leads us to challenge our assumptions about Theophilus, and even Luke himself.

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An intriguing first-century ossuary¹ was discovered a few decades ago in the area of Jerusalem. This burial box belonged to “Yehohanah, daughter of Yehohanan, son of Theophilus the high priest.” According to the Jewish historian Josephus, a man named Theophilus did in fact serve as Israel’s high priest from 37-41 AD, and since Luke dedicated his Gospel to a “most excellent Theophilus” (Lk 1:3), some have inquired whether both references could be referring to the same individual. As it happens, Luke also mentions a female disciple named “Joanna” in two places (Lk 8:3, 24:10).

I first became aware of a disciple of Jesus named Joanna back in 2007 as I was reading a book by Ben Witherington. I recall being somewhat perplexed after reading the heading of his first chapter: “Joanna and Mary Magdalene: Female Disciples from the Seashore of Galilee.”² I was, of course, familiar with Mary Magdalene, but I found myself asking, “Who is Joanna?” Though I had a degree in Historical Theology and had worked for a Christian organization for close to two decades, for some reason this particular female disciple of Jesus had completely escaped my notice. Here’s Luke’s first reference to this somewhat obscure disciple:

Soon afterward [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means (Lk 8:1-3).

In the above passage, Joanna is described as the wife of Chuza, who is an equally obscure character, since he is never mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. According to the ESV, Chuza was Herod’s “household manager,” but I later discovered that this translation is rather interpretive. The Greek word that Luke used was “epitropos,” which is the same word that Philo used when he described Joseph’s role as the vizier of Pharoah’s kingdom.³ Josephus used this same word when he spoke of Daniel’s role under King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon,⁴ as well as the procuratorships of Pilate, Felix, and Festus under Caesar.⁵ In other words, a king’s epitropos is much more likely to be a governor or prime minister who manages, not just the king’s household, but all the affairs of state. As F.W. Farrar observed over a century ago, “The word epitropos, ‘administrator,’ conveys the impression of a higher rank than steward (oikonomos).”⁶

In his book, Gospel Women, Richard Bauckham observes that in the neighboring kingdom of Nabatea, “the aristocratic Syllaeus was the epitropos of King Odobas,” and the fact that he was “of noble birth would seem required by the fact that he was considered eligible to marry Herod the Great’s sister Salome.”⁷ Now, if Joanna is to be identified as the individual mentioned on the ossuary, then the same thing could be said of Chuza. In order to marry the granddaughter of the high priest, he too must have been born into a noble family himself. In fact, in his book, Bauckham also discusses evidence that may point to Chuza’s aristocratic background.⁸ In the end, the Cambridge scholar concludes that Chuza was much more than a mere steward, arguing that he was “a very high-ranking official at Herod’s court.”⁹ Therefore, if Chuza functioned as the vizier, governor, or prime minister of Herod Antipas, apart from the king himself, he likely would have been seen as the most powerful man in Galilee.¹⁰ After thinking through the implications of Chuza’s office, commentator James Edwards concluded that in the person of Joanna, “The Jesus movement has thus infiltrated the highest echelons of society.”¹¹

What’s even more intriguing, however, is the way Luke highlights Joanna’s role in his narration of the climactic events related to Jesus’ resurrection. As the women went to the tomb that morning, they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. While they were considering this, two men in dazzling apparel appeared to them and said:

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them (Lk 24:4-11).

In this section of Luke’s concluding chapter we discover that, though she is a woman of incredibly high social status, Joanna remained a committed follower of Jesus throughout his three-year ministry. In fact, she ended up following him all the way to Golgotha. Since she is specifically mentioned by name in Lk 24:10, she’s very likely to have been one of “the women who followed [Jesus] from Galilee” who observed the crucifixion from a distance (Lk 23:49). But there also happens to be a curious feature of Luke’s resurrection account that isn’t easily noticed. A textual analysis of the passage I cited above from chapter 24 reveals the following chiastic structure:

According to the Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies, a chiasm is “a rhetorical device whereby parallel lines of a text correspond in an X pattern, such as A-B-C-B-A.” The word is “Derived from the Greek letter chi, which is shaped like a letter X,” and by the use of this structural device, “an author can show both progression of thought and intensification of meaning.”¹² Another dictionary says this structural device focuses our attention “on the central issue, the turning point.”¹³ And in their Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, Walter Kaiser and Moises Silva write, “Far from being merely a superficial decorative ornament, chiasm is one of the major artistic conventions used for narratives in the Bible. As such, it can be a key for detecting the author’s aims for the main event or principle idea typically occurs in the apex—that is the middle of the story.”¹⁴ This device, they argue, can serve to alert the reader “to be on the lookout for any special nuances the author intended the text to convey.”¹⁵

Richard Bauckham highlights the chiastic structure of Luke 24:8-11 in his book Gospel Women and discusses the significance of Joanna’s role in light of the fact that her name appears at the heart and center of this narrative.¹⁶ Commentator John Nolland similarly refers to this as a “playful little chiasm…centering on Joanna,”¹⁷ and Richard Anderson concludes that, “Joanna is in the center and the position of prominence of this previously misunderstood chiasmus.”¹⁸

This is odd. For some reason, Luke chose to create a chiastic structure in the final chapter of his Gospel related to the climactic events of Jesus’ resurrection. But why should we find Joanna’s name highlighted here? Why is she so special to Luke, and why does she feature so prominently in this part of the narrative? I’ll attempt to answer these questions, but first, there’s more to Joanna’s story that we need to unpack.

Luke’s Herodian Source?
According to Luke, Joanna wasn’t merely a follower of Jesus, but was also one who supported him financially (Lk 8:3). Since she was the wife of Herod’s prime minister, some scholars have suggested that she may have been one of Luke’s sources of information for statements uttered by Herod. “In Matthew 14.1–2,” writes Lydia McGrew, “we learn what Herod Antipas thought about Jesus when he heard of his miracles. Matthew says, as does Mark 6.14, that Herod initially thought Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Both Gospels then launch into a flashback story about how Herod had John the Baptist beheaded.” But, she says, there’s “an interesting little factual addition in Matthew’s Gospel.” According to Mt 14:2, “when Herod speculated that Jesus might be John the Baptist come back to life, he said it to his servants. No other Gospel mentions this.”¹⁹

If Herod had expressed his views about Jesus out loud to his servants, then it’s certainly possible that this information could have made its way to the early Christian community, particularly if members of Herod’s court happened to be followers of Jesus. Therefore McGrew considers Luke’s report about Joanna to be highly significant:

If we look at Luke 8.1–3 we find a plausible way in which Matthew could have heard what Herod was saying to his servants. This passage in Luke, I want to stress, is not about the beheading of John the Baptist nor about Herod. Luke is talking about a completely different topic, namely, a group of women who followed Jesus in Galilee and gave money to his ministry. Among those in the list is Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. Here we find Luke mentioning a high-ranking servant of Herod whose wife was involved in the new movement following Jesus. It seems like a reasonable assumption that Chuza himself was also sympathetic to Jesus, and Joanna’s discipleship provides an entirely natural way in which Jesus’ male disciples, such as Matthew, could have learned what Herod said to his servants.²⁰

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