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]].
Rejection of Jesus
Jesus is rejected in Judaism as a failed Jewish Messiah claimant and a false prophet by most Jewish denominations. However, Messianic Jewish congregations like Jews for Jesus have made the case that he is the Messiah promised by the Torah and the Prophets. On the Jewish side, the accounts of Jewish rejection of Jesus are prominently featured in the Birkat haMinim of the Amidah and the Talmud. The Talmud indicates that Rabbi Gamaliel II directed Samuel ha-Katan to write another paragraph for the central Amidah-prayer, inveighing against (early Christian) informers and heretics, which was inserted as the twelfth paragraph in modern sequence (Birkat haMinim).