That’s very apt, thank you. It’s amazing, but the storylines of the NT are only in recent years starting to come into focus.

I like the idea that it’s meant to be a story, and that Paul understands his role to some extent as a playwright. He is narrating a story, and the named characters are “main characters.”

So then, the Junia of Romans 16 appears to be, as Richard Bauckham and others argue, also the Johanna of the Luke gospel. Then we have another piece of a continuing story, from the earliest days of the Jesus ministry when Joanna meets Jesus, to the last narrative words Paul writes: Romans 16.

And I do suspect Mary Magdalene and brother Lazarus/John are masquerading as Priscilla and Aquila.

Romans 16:3: “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.”

Matthew 26:13: “I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

And piece by piece, a storyline forms of a group of people who struggle through decades, and then through millennia, to bring a message of freedom to all human people.