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Summary
- Julia is in the Bible, greeted by name in Romans 16:15 — “Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas.” That is her entire appearance.
- The name is the feminine of Julius, the Roman family name of the gens Julia. It was very common in the first century, including among freed slaves who took the family name on manumission.
- Romans 16 greets twenty-six people by name in a church Paul had never visited, and he knows which worked hard, which were imprisoned with him, whose house the congregation met in.
- Many of the names — Philologus, Nereus, Olympas, likely Julia — are those of slaves and freed slaves. This is the church at the centre of the empire.
- The list proves what the letter argued: fifteen chapters about slave and free, Jew and Gentile, ending in actual people named individually.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Behind the Name entry for Julia (feminine of Julius, the Roman family name); Scripture quotation from the NIV via BibleGateway (Romans 16:1-16, especially 16:15). The prevalence of these names among slaves and freedmen in first-century Rome is standard in commentary on Romans 16.
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