Epenetus (Greek Epainetos, 'praiseworthy') is named by Paul in Romans 16:5 with a single significant phrase: 'the firstfruits of Asia unto Christ' (Greek aparchē tēs Asias eis Christon). The Greek aparchē — 'first fruits' — is a deliberately liturgical agricultural term: Epenetus is identified as the very first Christian convert of the Asian Roman province (the western Asia Minor region that included Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, and the cities of the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse), the symbolic 'first fruits' of the great harvest of the Asia Minor Catholic mission.
Whether the precise chronology places Epenetus as a convert of Paul's first contact with Ephesus (Acts 18:19, the brief visit of c. AD 52) or of the longer Ephesian mission of AD 52–55 is unclear from the Pauline letter. Either way, he stands at the foundation of the great Christian community that would by the late 1st century include the Johannine community of Ephesus (see John the Evangelist, already in catalogue) and produce the entire Asia Minor tradition that would dominate early Christian theological development through the 2nd century.
Tradition holds — preserved in the Byzantine menologia — that Epenetus moved later from Ephesus to Carthage in North Africa, where he served as bishop and died around the late 1st century. He is venerated in the Byzantine Catholic tradition as one of the Seventy Apostles and as a foundational missionary figure.