DID JOANNA BECOME JUNIA?

In 2002, Richard Bauckham argued that Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas's finance minister Chupa, adopted "Junia" as her Latin name. Usage of this name later facilitated her missionary travels in the western part of the Roman Empire in conjunction with Andronicus. This paper seeks to evaluate such a historical reconstruction by (1) addressing the evidence of Jews possessing, adding, or changing to, a Roman name, (2) discussing whether Joanna's Jewish name would pose difficulties for Greeks and Romans such that she needed to use a similar-sounding "Junia" as her name, (3) viewing Roman legislation regarding the adoption of Roman names by foreigners in general, and (4) referring to the woman named Junia Theodora in a Ist-century inscription to shed light on our present discussion. I conclude that the hypothesis of "Joanna-becoming-Junia" is very unlikely, if not untenable, in spite of its attractiveness as a historical reconstruction.