JOANNA (Ἰωάννα, Tisch. and Revisers’ Text; but Ἰωάνα, WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] and Nestle; from Aram. [Note: Aramaic.] יוֹחָנָא, Heb. יוֹחָנִה).—The wife of Chuza, the ‘steward’ of Herod Antipas. In Luke 8:1-3 she appears as one of certain women who had been healed, and in gratitude ministered to Jesus and His disciples. The passage reads as though she had herself derived physical benefit from Jesus; but it is possible, as Godet suggests in loc., that the ‘nobleman’ or king’s officer of John 4:46-53 was Chuza. If so, Joanna may have been led to attach herself to Christ through the restoration of her son’s health, or even of his life if the Johannine narrative is to be identified with Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. The latter identification, as early as Irenaeus (adv. Haer. ii. 33), and not without distinguished support (Wetstein, Ewald, de Wette, Baur), is attractive but precarious. Joanna is mentioned again in Luke 24:10 as one of the women who went to the sepulchre to embalm the body of Jesus. She is almost certainly the same person as in Luke 8:3, though her husband’s name does not occur in the later passage. There is no need to explain the omission by a suggestion that he was dead, or had become obscure through dismissal from his office by Antipas because of the relations of his household with Jesus. The Evangelist had already sufficiently marked the identity of Joanna, who through her own devotion would be well known to the disciples. See also Chuza.
R. W. Moss.