Junia (New Testament person)
According to professor and pastor [[Gilbert Bilezikian]], the term "apostle" connotes the highest level of leadership and authority in the early church. Initially, only the original disciples (meaning "students", "learners") of Jesus were called "apostles" (meaning "those sent forth with a mission). After Jesus' resurrection, the designation was given to missionaries involved in establishing churches and who saw the resurrected Christ before his [[Ascension of Jesus|ascension]]. This included more than "five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time" and then Paul himself. After that, the appellation of apostle was extended to Christian disciples who had never seen Christ but who were pioneer missionaries, such as Apollos, Epaphroditus, Sylvanus and Timothy. The description of "apostles" as one of the three higher spiritual gifts that Christians should desire is evidence of continued accessibility to this ministry for qualified persons. They could aspire to become apostles, prophets, or teachers. Bilezikian writes that the term "apostle" was still used in this broad sense in the post-apostolic writing of the [[Didache]].
Against the Galileans
Along with abandoning Jewish teachings, Julian also charges the Galileans with abandoning those of the original apostles (327A). He claims that no apostle claimed that Jesus was God until John, and he probably only did so to clarify an important dispute within a disunited church (327A). Galileans also disobey the words of Jesus, as they revere tombs and the dead, while Jesus referred to gravesites as places of impurity (335B). Julian then brings up other Jewish practices abandoned by Galileans such as circumcision and the celebration of Passover, wondering why they have abandoned such practices when they were assigned such importance in the Jewish law (351A), going so far as to claim that the religious practices of Moses and Abraham are far closer to the religious practices of the Greeks than those of the Galileans (356C).