"I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea;that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you; for she has herself been a helper of many, and of myself as well."
Paul, Romans 16:1 & 2
What a remarkable biography we find in these few words, numbering only forty in total in the original Koine.
A few things are spelled out about Phoebe for us, but some things we are left to piece together out of our interest in her. Clues abound, though!
1. She was likely not born to Christian parents.
We can surmise that she began life in a pagan Greek or Roman household, since her parents named her after a goddess, one of the Titans, who, in mythology, were the children of Uranus, the Universe Father, and Gaia, the Earth Mother. Phoebe the Titaness would evolve into the goddess of prophecy and the intellect in Roman times, honored in poetry and art, although not a special object of public worship. Her name meant "shining" or "bright", and our Christian Phoebe lived up to this as a shining example of service to Christ. It would be interesting to know how she came to Christ, and whether or not her family also later became Christians but this is a tale left to imagination alone.
2. She was likely a single woman, having chosen unmarried life or perhaps a widow.
Paul mentions no man in connection with Phoebe, as he did with other couples or kinsmen in his epistolary greetings and acknowledgements like Aquila and Prisca or Apphia and Philemon.
3. She was likely between thirty and forty years of age.
She was young enough to travel to Rome, a journey from Cenchrea of two to three weeks by Roman Road and about ten days sea voyage by boat. However, the sort of reputation Paul acknowledges seems of a kind that is built up over time. This and her financial status might indicate some maturity.
4. She was a woman of means.
Travel in Roman times was the prerogative of the well supported, so her ability to visit Rome and the fact that she had ministered "help" to Paul and to "many" other Christians have led to a unanimous consensus among commentators and scholars that Phoebe was financially independent. Because the first gathering places of the believers in Christ were mostly private homes--"house churches"--there is every possibility that, as with Lydia of Thyratira, the seller of purple in Acts the Sixteenth Chapter, she owned the "doma" (house) in Cenchrea where the church met.
New laws under the Principate had changed the status of Roman women since the days of the Republic; they had more financial autonomy and more economic opportunities, even new roles in unofficial administrative employments. Phoebe also might have inherited wealth.
"Servant" Phoebe; Remarkable Service Only, or a Leader?
In any discussion of Phoebe, there must arise the question that attends the word which Paul used to describe her in his letter...dia'konos.
The same word is translated 'deacon' in the letter to Timothy in regards to Christian leaders, although its development as an officious or ecclesiastical appellation was an evolution of later church history.
Alternately, the nearly 40 times the word appears elsewhere in the New Testament Greek, it is translated as servant.
The fact that the 1st Timothy and Titus epistles use almost exclusively male terminology in his detailing of the qualifications, and, possibly, cultural perceptions of women in the translators' era, led them to presume that it was unfitting to translate dia'konos in Romans 16:1 as deacon, but some translations today do use the word deaconess, and even those which use servant include the alternate reading in the margin.
That is an exegetical argument beyond this Footnote's scope, and there is a great deal of discussion on both sides of the issue concerning the internal issues of the text.
Church history is another matter.
John Chrysostom (c. 347–407 AD) acknowledged female leadership in the primitive church, and even earlier, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253 AD) expressly stated that the role of deacon had been appointed to both men and women. In the Orthodox Tradition, female deacons are, from an early era, a continuing office, though with gender specific ministries among mostly women.
Pliny the Younger, writing in 112 AD to the Emperor Trajan concerning the "problem" of dealing with Christians, mentions that he tortured and interrogated two deaconesses about Christian beliefs and practices.
"Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses [ministrae]. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition." Epistle 96.
Renowned New Testament scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer, in his authoritative commentary on Romans, notes that Paul’s use of diakonos indicates a recognized church role rather than a generic domestic task: "Phoebe is explicitly designated as a 'minister' [diakonos] of the church at Cenchreae... This indicates that she held an official position of ministry in that local church."
He notes also that a specific geographical indicator of a church is mentioned in association with her name, and that the word translated as "helper" in Romans 16:1 is from the Greek prostatis (translated as benefactor, helper, or patron), which in contemporary Greco-Roman usage often carried connotations of a leading officer or superintendent.
It has often been pointed out, as well, that in Roman times, a letter's courier was not just a mail carrier; they were trained by the author to read it and explain it to its intended audience to make known the author's meaning. This practice came into being because of the difficultly in deciphering the crowded, non punctuated writing style known as scripta continua.
In Roman letter form, a commendation was in most every case a polite and unspoken request for real hospitality.
So it is not impossible to conceive that Phoebe both read the letter aloud in an assembly and taught upon it, spending some time among them.
In the end, however, at present the intriguing question of Phoebe's exact form of service is unknown.
A Good Example for Christians Today
Theological debates aside, there is no question that Phoebe makes a wonderful first entry of our Footnote Faithful.
A lifetime of service to the early church leaders, to her fellow Christians, and a willingness to travel to a city 600 miles away by land and stay with the church shows a devotion to Christ her Lord that any man or woman should wish to emulate today.
Practical Application of a Faithful Footnote in Our Lives
What avenues of service do I have in my fellowship to be a helper to my brothers and sisters?
If I am blessed with means, how can I best sow into the service of my fellowship and the works it supports?
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