EUNICE. - Mother of Timothy, a disciple of St. Paul. Luke (Acts 16:1) presents Timothy as the son of a “faithful Jewess,” i.e., a convert to Christianity; her name is found in 2 Tim 1:5, where Paul recalls as an illustrious example the faith of Timothy’s grandmother (Lois) and his mother E.
Both women must have contributed to the formation of Timothy, who, instructed from childhood in the Holy Scriptures (2 Tim 3:15), joined the Apostle at a very young age. E. was married to a pagan (Acts 16:1): for this reason, out of consideration for the Jews of the region, Paul circumcised Timothy. Mixed marriages were frequent, especially among Jews of the Diaspora, particularly when the husband was a pagan. E. may have been, strictly speaking, only a proselyte to Judaism; but it is more likely that she was a Jewess by birth, in the full sense of the term *Ioudaios*, by which she is described in Acts 16:1. Perhaps out of deference to her husband she had consented to the circumcision of her son. Nothing precise is known about the date of E.’s conversion to Christianity. Note the *práxon* (πράξον) in 2 Tim 1:5, which probably refers to the priority of Lois’s and E.’s adherence to the faith in relation to Timothy’s conversion, which also took place before Paul’s second visit to Lystra. At that time, indeed, Timothy was already well regarded and esteemed in the community (Acts 16:2).